Distributed Happiness by Morgan Sowden

How do you work effectively with remote teams? Morgan Sowden – CTO at Lendinvest and Co-Founder at Paydesk answers this question in his ProductTank London talk. He takes us through:

• Why you should hire remote team members
• Benefits of remote work
• What to do once you have a remote team

Watch the video to see Morgan’s talk in full. Or read on for an overview of his key points.

Why hire remote?

When assembling a product team, one of the options available to companies is to hire remotely. Hiring remotely can provide access to a better talent pool as well as offer better retention and more competitive salaries. Jobs that require a lot of independent work such as developers and DevOps engineers are ideal for remote work, whereas jobs that require a lot of collaboration such as product managers and designers are harder to hire remotely. A company needs to decide if they want to hire through an agency or directly. Each option comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Benefits of remote work

Working remotely can be appealing to a number of persons. Some of the benefits of being a remote developer include no commute, more flexible work hours, a competitive salary and more work/life balance. However, there are some drawbacks as well such as missing out on important team decisions and loneliness. In order to alleviate some of these drawbacks for their remote employees, companies can utilize distributed teams or create remote centers where groups of remote employees can collaborate.

Once you have a remote team

Once a company has a remote team they should invest in collaboration resources such as Slack. It is also important to have great video conferencing software so that you can regularly involve remote team members in company decisions and meetings. You should also plan for regular visits of the remote team to encourage team bonding and keep everyone in the loop.

The key takeaways from this talk are that setting up a remote team, especially for developers who tend to be more independent, can provide many benefits. Remote work can lead to better retention and access to a larger talent pool. However, as product managers, it is important to treat remote team members as core team members and do as much as possible to involve them in all company affairs.