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Making remote working work for you

Tips for staying connected, collaboration, and more

Kavya Sukumar

For the past year I’ve worked from Seattle, while the rest of the Storytelling Studio team is split between New York and Washington, D.C.

Seattle was the first city I lived in when I moved to the United States eight years ago. It has since then become home, and I appreciate the ability to work here remotely more and more everyday.

Working remotely gives you a lot of freedom. But it also poses a new set of problems.

I have led two un-conference style sessions in the past year, including one recently at NICAR in Jacksonville, and had numerous conversations about remote working. Here is a selection of tips and tricks on making remote working work for you and your team:

Stay connected

Try to have at least one video call a day where you see all your teammates...

...and they see you. For those times you don’t want to turn on your video feed, consider setting up a profile picture on your video conferencing service. Your teammates will appreciate not having to talk to a blank screen.

Invest in a high quality microphone for the team in the office

Unreliable conference room microphones can be infuriating, especially when multiple people are speaking. NPR visuals team uses a table-top boundary microphone, which a number of people on the team highly recommended.

Consider having remote employees on a video call throughout the work day

One of the constant fears around remote working is missing out on hallway conversations that can sometimes lead to great collaborations. Having remote employees on a video call where you can talk to them at any time, just like you would if they were in the same office, can work around this. This reduces the overhead of scheduling a time to talk.

At ProPublica, video feeds from remote employees are displayed on a large screen located in the newsroom. Sisi Wei of ProPublica said that when a majority of the team works from one location, it makes it easy to just walk up to screen and have a conversation like you would if the person worked in the same office.

Remote workers who have tried this recommend using a separate device, such as an iPad, for video. It will reduce the number of active windows on your computer. It also gives you the option of setting the camera further away from you so your teammates can get a better sense of your surroundings and don’t always have just a close up of your face to look at.

Try an audio-only solution

A constant video feed may not be a good fit for everyone. It can sometimes be a little too intrusive and make people feel self-conscious. An audio feed could be a solution.

But most audio solutions handle multiple speakers poorly and have a lag that makes it feel unnatural, according to Mark Boas of HyperAudio. His team uses TeamSpeak which Boas describes as “Slack for audio.”

Visit your team regularly

At least once every quarter plan to see your team in person. Briefly seeing each other at conferences between sessions does not count. Try to schedule these visits independent of projects and events so that remote employees get a chance to be part of a regular work day.

It’s also a good idea to schedule this when you don’t have tight deadlines. It is great to be in the newsroom during elections, but you don’t get time for one-on-one conversations.

Have fun

One of my fears when I started working remote was that all my interactions with teammates would be limited to work-related topics. I was afraid of missing out all the office banter.

The Studio has a weekly BTW meeting where we schedule time for sharing things that have very little to do with work. The visuals team at NPR started sharing pictures of themselves when they were children after every scrum, said David Eads who heads the team.

A little bit of fun in everyday interactions can go a long way in making remote employees feel less isolated.

Work like everyone is remote

Make sure all meetings have a video call option. Limit making decisions in impromptu, pop-up conversations and those happen, always document it. Using a common, remote-friendly medium like Slack or another messaging service can help a lot.

Collaborate in a remote-friendly way

Get a document camera for white-boarding

White-boarding is a great way to generate ideas and work through problems. But pointing a web camera at a wall mounted white board is less than ideal, especially if the camera has a variable focus. NPR visuals team solved this by getting a document camera. A paper placed under the camera is used in lieu of a whiteboard. Remote employees get to see a high-resolution image of the sketch instead of a blurry whiteboard.

Experiment with alternatives to white-boarding

Sketching can be a valuable tool for collaboration, but it does not always have to happen on a whiteboard or on the same paper. On the Studio, we have everyone draw on individual pieces of paper that are later scanned and added to a project’s documentation. Not only is this more participatory, it also improves documentation.

Document rigorously

In many ways, having remote teammates makes the rest of the team adopt good practices that are helpful even for a fully co-located team. One such habit is documenting everything including meetings.

On the Studio, we have had immense success with dedicated documentation days.

Manage your schedule

Bookend your work day with a meeting or an activity

When a team works across timezones, it can add an extra layer of complexity. I am separated from my team by two time zones — a 3-hour difference. I work a 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. schedule. But at the end of the day, I have no social cues that tell me to wind up my work day. When I first started working remote, I would work until people around me stop working (usually 6:30 p.m.).

A constant video feed like the one at ProPublica can stand in for that social cue. Watching the office empty out as your teammates leave for the day on video can be just as effective as in person.

Lena Groeger, who works from the West Coast for ProPublica, suggests scheduling something at the end of the work day. She now goes for a run in the afternoon, instead of in the morning.

A meeting scheduled on your calendar can also help. I have a 5-minute-long meeting which notifies me at 3:25 p.m. everyday to wrap up my day.

Put self-care on your calendar

Reserve time on your calendar for personal time like lunch and coffee breaks. Putting this on the calendar not only reminds you to take a break, but it also reminds your teammates to be more cognizant of your schedule and availability.

Make timezone a part of your conversation

It is easy to miscommunicate schedule when we don’t make timezones a part of our conversation. “Let’s talk at 3:00 pm ET” is clearer than just saying 3:00 pm.

Communicate your schedule

Have a predictable schedule and communicate any departures or changes.

At OpenNews where everyone works from a different city spread over three timezones, they have a Slack channel reserved for away statuses. On the Studio, we change our last names in our Slack profiles to our away status when we are out of office.

Set up your workspace

Have an office

Even if you work from home, carve out an office space. Avoid working from the couch or the bed.

Make sure you have a comfortable desk, chair and ergonomic equipment. Your laptop’s touch pad might not the best for your wrist. I switched from an Apple mouse to an ergonomic mouse and a mechanical gaming keyboard.

Be social

When you work from home, you can go days without leaving a 20 ft radius or talking to a person about anything other than work. It helps to step out and work at least once a week from a cafe or a different space.

A co-working space can help separate your work and life outside of work by giving you a place to go to everyday. Geoff Hing started making his own co-working space by inviting friends to work from his home.


Notes from the NICAR conversation on remote working is available in this etherpad. A huge thank you to Erika Owens for documenting the session in so much detail.