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Ask HN: Effective communication methods with remote employees.

39 points| zeynalov | 14 years ago | reply

We have a startup in Germany, which should work with their employees remotely. It's a startup, doing online paid services for foreigners willing to come to Germany. We have employees for each country, native speakers, and it's very hard to find all of them in one city to be able to work in an office space. Therefore we can only work remotely. But we can't communicate, solve problems properly and effective online. We hired some of them from their country, thousands kms distance from Germany. When we hire, we must explain the workflow which is very hard explaining it online. We used:

Trello Skype Mobile tel Complex explanations are drawn in Photoshop(!!!) sent via emails

None of them were useful and everytime when I hire someone I try to fly there and explain the work etc. Can you please list your favorite tools communicating your remote employees. This thread can also be used as a reference for others having remote employees or freelancers.

30 comments

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[+] darkxanthos|14 years ago|reply
I work at Cheezburger and our group is spread around the country with one person even working in Poland. Here are the tools we use:

Campfire (casual group conversations.. basically our "watercooler") Skype (Main IM program for important questions, voice chat, video chat) Ventrilo (Great for casual chat throughout the day.) Google Chat (Some people use this in addition to Skype... dunno why!) Webex (Whole company dev meetings/screen sharing) Google Sites (Company blogs/information sharing) Google Groups (For email lists) Gmail Fogbugz Wiki (dev work processes) PivotalTracker (organizing team work)

For me personally having never been a remote worker before, it works so well that I don't feel like a remote worker. As you can see that's an awful lot of technology though. We're constantly trying new things to consolidate but the tools that do everything seem to just do it poorly.

[+] ryanwaggoner|14 years ago|reply
Can you expound a little on Ventrilo? It looks interesting, and I'd like to hear more about how you use it.
[+] smalter|14 years ago|reply
To plug my own product: try http://iDoneThis.com

We make it easy to know what everyone is getting done. Tracking and accountability are two of the biggest problems we've seen with remote teams.

Often work with remote employees requires asynchronous communication because of time differences, making it difficult to sync up via Skype or Hipchat (two great tools).

With iDoneThis, we email everyone and ask what they did. They just reply and it goes into a central place. The next morning, everyone gets a digest with what they did.

It's been a big help for us sync up with our remote developers who are freelancing for us. We use it along with Skype, Campfire, Trello, and Google Groups.

[+] jensnockert|14 years ago|reply
At my workplace, we mostly use IRC for synchronous communication when solving problems, it works very well for programming imho.
[+] guruz|14 years ago|reply
At woboq here we are both using IRC with an IRC channel for the two of us. As IRC client we use Quassel which is an IRC client that keeps you connected on IRC and you can attach/detach from it. This means you never lose any message and can read the backlog.

We also use a private Wiki together if some information needs to be more persistant than a chat log.

This worked well for the periods when we are not in one office (the periods had a maximum length of 3 weeks so far). It also helps to have this when working at the same place: You can keep distractions low by just writing what you want instead of always using real verbal communication.

[+] dcaylor|14 years ago|reply
There is a gap between IM/chat and email and documents, specifically in regard to remote team collaboration. That was one of the strengths of Google Wave, except that Wave had a learning and familiarity threshold people weren't willing to climb over. There's a huge opportunity there for a startup that I haven't seen anybody really tackling yet.

You can't get away from the value of face to face meetings though. If it is possible, getting face to face occasionally is a huge benefit in strengthening relationships in a team. In the end, teams are about relationships. Remote teams work great, and I prefer them to co-located teams, but figuring out a way to meet in person on occasion is worth the effort.

[+] ovidiu|14 years ago|reply
We use http://www.tandberg.com/ and I find it incredibly good. I recommend you to go see a real demo, because you can't grasp the real feel by just looking at some pictures. It's quite expensive, but in my opinion it's worth every dollar.
[+] ayers|14 years ago|reply
I have used Mikogo quite successfully in the past. Something that I found useful was that you can swap who the "Presenter" is at any time. This allowed different members to share their desktops when trying to explain something.

http://www.mikogo.com/

[+] yalooze|14 years ago|reply
We use Skype for voice but their desktop sharing is abysmal. Mikogo, on the other hand, works brilliantly.
[+] j45|14 years ago|reply
I systemize and automate businesses end-to-end for a living.

Don't despair, this is a bit of an art and it's slowly becoming a science.

I have largely virtualized my consulting practice that I have run for 10+ years using remote developers both locally and out of town.

This is a problem I have obsessed over solving the past 12 years. It was hard enough to get it working in-house with employees, to learn the key qualities needed to make it work from anywhere.

There are a few key things you must solve:

0) KNOW YOUR PROCESS.

Are you able to take all the steps of your process and lay it out on a flowchart, no matter how complex?

Can you take any request currently in your business and place it on this flow chart?

Once you can do this, you are ready to systemize. Until then, this is where you are needing to clarify and build out things.

1) A CENTRAL SYSTEM THAT HANDLES YOUR WORKFLOW.

There is no magic ONE tool that will solve anything. Most suggestions will be helpful with one or a few parts of the process. Instead you will need to connect multiple tools to get what you need.

The key is having a central communication system. It doesn't sound like you have this yet. This is a non-neogotiable.

The communication system must be based around requests/cases. All communication, regarding work people need to do, needs to be in this system. The cases need to be run through a fulfillment process that captures and reflects your competitive advantage.

2) DOCUMENTATION IS YOUR FRIEND.

Documentation can suck, royally. Meaningful documentation is even harder. But it's the only thing that allows people to answer their own questions. Being able to capture your intellectual capital and spread it is critical to having your business grow.

If you're having trouble teaching, remote workers are having a hard time remembering. The key is to create a culture of self-serve updating documents. A wiki is often critical for this, however I am also a _big_ fan of videos integrated.

3) BUILD YOUR TIME / BILLING TRACKING INTO THE BREAD.

Billing, and time tracking, also sucks. Whatever unpleasantness we don't want to deal with now has to be dealt with doubly later.

It's best to bake time tracking/billing into the bread and your process. With the right configuration based around your process this is pretty possible.

If you have to track billing/time for this, it must be a simple, usable, system that is hopefully integrated right into your system. I am a quickbooks guy for most of my stuff, however I've started using Freshbooks for the Accounts Receivable / time collection side of my business and it's working a lot better.

If you have a process but works and just lacks in being clearly explained / taught, I can help you with that. Reach me by email or ask any questions here. I guarantee results if you're willing to do what's needed.

[+] hluska|14 years ago|reply
Thanks for taking the time to write that - it is extremely useful!
[+] ahoyhere|14 years ago|reply
As for baking your time tracking / billing into "the bread," I couldn't agree more. You might like my app, Freckle, which makes it not only dead simple to use a timer or enter time by hand, but also has integration points for github & beanstalk:

http://letsfreckle.com/startups

(Not mentioned on the startup-oriented page: we also have budgeting, budget alerts, invoicing, etc. An iPhone-friendly mobile web UI and also native apps coming.)

[+] DevX101|14 years ago|reply
I'm working on codemeet.com to solve this problem. I'm looking for beta testers. Contact me.
[+] zeynalov|14 years ago|reply
Looks really nice. Is it only for code? I would like to write some text with formatting and draw some arrows on my ipad with my fingers, tables or something like this for effective speech, and then save it online, that employee can use it as a future reference. I would definitely buy/subscribe to your app if it will have these features. Not all of employees are developers, most hired people are non-developers. If you would have these features it would be a game-changer startup.
[+] kittxkat|14 years ago|reply
Looked amazing, so I signed up but was disappointed so see that the code editor was a huge letdown. I know you're in Beta, but the whole site appearance was shattered. If you're at this early stage of concept, I wouldn't even have enabled signing up.

http://i.imgur.com/U0Jde.png

Windows XP, Chrome 16.0.912.63

Edit: After I've waited a few mins, it seems the site has finished loading and seems "normal". Well then.

[+] janus|14 years ago|reply
I work remotely with a web designer (I'm a programmer), and we mostly use a combination of Skype, GitHub and Gmail (for asynchronous communication)

We haven't found collaboration software for documentation and such good enough for our needs yet, but we are trying Trello.

[+] typicalexample|14 years ago|reply
Have you tried Google hangouts? We've been pretty happy with its screen-share (Hangouts with extras).

Also we use redmine as a wiki+issue tracker with git integration. An almost github like setup :)

[+] zeynalov|14 years ago|reply
I didn't used Google hangouts, but what is the difference between Hangouts and Skype? are there any better features?