Remote work resources
I’ve thought quite a bit about remote work in the past few years. If you need to get your head around this way of working, the materials included below might be useful to you. They are by no means comprehensive, but could be a solid starting point.
I deliberately haven’t linked to tools here (directly, at least). Tools aren’t as important as you think.
Contents:
Remote work books
This isn’t a comprehensive list of books that cover remote working, and some are better than others. There’s no one ‘right way’ to do remote work, so it’s helpful to get some different perspectives and ideas on approaches and structures so you can bring options to your own team.
Berkun, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work
Blake, Where in the World Is My Team?: Making a Success of Your Virtual Global Workplace
Caulat, Virtual Leadership: Learning to Lead Differently
Eikenberry and Turmel, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership
Fried and Hansson, Remote: Office Not Required
Miles, Virtual Culture: The Way We Work Doesn’t Work Anymore, a Manifesto
Orti, Thinking Remote: Inspiration for leaders of distributed teams
Osman, Influencing Virtual Teams: 17 Tactics That Get Things Done with Your Remote Employees
O’Duinn, Distributed Teams: The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart
Sutherland, Work Together Anywhere: A Handbook on Working Remotely—Successfully—for Individuals, Teams, and Managers
Remote work academic articles
Most of these are behind a paywall. Sorry. It’s always interesting to go straight-to-source and examine the underlying research to remote management theories. Some of these are quite old, but that makes them more interesting: they are technology neutral and examine the broad topics of ‘virtual work’. The newer articles take as given our ability to work remote and findings are based on sociological methods to recommend leadership styles and working practices.
Ayoko, Konrad, and Boyle, ‘Online work: Managing conflict and emotions for performance in virtual teams’.
Cheshin, Rafaeli, and Bos, ‘Anger and Happiness in Virtual Teams: Emotional influences of text and behavior on others’ affect in the absence of non-verbal cues’.
Cramton, ‘The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration’.
Ford, Piccolo, and Ford, ‘Strategies for Building Effective Virtual Teams: Trust is Key’.
Gajendran and Harrison, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown about Telecommuting: Meta-analysis Of Individual Consequences And Mechanisms Of Distributed Work’.
Gross, ‘Connecting the Links Between Leadership Styles and Virtual Team Effectiveness’
Huang, Kahai, and Jestice, ‘The Contingent Effects of Leadership on Team Collaboration in Virtual Teams’.
Karis, Wildman, and Mané, ‘Improving Remote Collaboration With Video Conferencing and Video Portals’
Kłopotek, ‘The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Remote Working From The Perspective Of Young Employees’
Lauring and Jonasson, ‘Can leadership compensate for deficient inclusiveness in global virtual teams?’
Maes and Weldy, ‘Building Effective Virtual Teams: Expanding OD Research and Practice’
Nordbäck and Espinosa, ‘Effective Coordination of Shared Leadership in Global Virtual Teams’
O’Neill, Hambley, and Chatellier, ‘Cyberslacking, Engagement, and Personality in Distributed Work Environments’.
Qureshi and Vogel, ‘Adaptiveness in Virtual Teams: Organisational Challenges and Research Directions’.
Reis, ‘Managers’ Remote Work and Expertise across Cultures’.
Sénquiz-Díaz and Ortiz-Soto, ‘A Multifold Perspective of Knowledge Sharing and Virtual Teams: The Development of An IMOI Model’
Townsend, DeMarie, and Hendrickson, ‘Virtual Teams: Technology and the Workplace of the Future’.
Notable remote work articles
A few articles that I found better than the usual, banal ‘remote work is a novelty’-type articles. Some are more ‘future of work’ focused, others are ‘how to make it work’ focused.
(Anything by Doist!) Blog
Buffer, ‘State of Remote Work 2020’
Fortune, ‘Virtual Offices: What happens when all employees telecommute’.
HBR, ‘How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote’
HBR, ‘Is It Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere?’
HBR, ‘Presenteeism over Productivity’.
HBR, ‘To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home’.
HBR, ‘Why Remote Work Thrives in Some Companies and Fails in Others’.
HelpScout, ‘What We’ve Learned Building a Remote Culture’
HubSpot, ‘2019 Remote Work Report’
HubSpot, ‘How to Work More Effectively With Global Teammates’.
HubStaff, ‘Why Remote Work is Better’
McKinsey, ‘A blueprint for remote working: Lessons from China’
Signal vs Noise, ‘Is group chat making you sweat?’
StackOverflow, ‘Making Remote Work’
The Cut, ‘All Anyone Really Wants at Work Is Autonomy’.
The Next Web, ‘Will remote work ever become mainstream?’
Vox, ‘How remote work is quietly remaking our lives’
Wired, ‘How Slack ruined work’
Remote work guides
It seems that every company that works remote is compelled to publish a ‘remote work guide’. Some are better than others. These are the better ones.
Remote work podcasts
Many podcasts sometimes feature remote work, not so many are all about remote work.
Remote work communities
A lot of communities are glorified digital nomad lifestyle blogs, others are job boards with a strong content marketing game. Communities seem to come and go very quickly, so look for the ones that have been around a while.
More remote work resource lists
My own list is just one of hundreds that exist all over the internet. If you want to explore even more remote work resources, you can continue down the rabbit hole by going through these lists as well:
https://springworks.in/remote-work-resources
https://www.timecamp.com/blog/2020/03/wfh-the-complete-list-of-remote-work-resources/
https://hackernoon.com/the-ultimate-list-of-resources-for-remote-workers-aefb24529c4f
https://www.loom.com/blog/best-remote-work-resources
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/resources/
https://medium.com/@ninan99/remote-work-resources-fee6370f432d
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