Ease the communication between your team by helping your team understand where you are.
Out of the office? Keep a shared team calendar and ensure you update it, so your team knows when you are not working and for how long. It’s easy to maintain and provides a level of transparency about availability.
In the zone - Sometimes, you need to get your head down and code, or sometimes, you need to disappear for a bit. Make sure you let people know you are unavailable by setting your Slack status (or similar) with the reason and expiry time. Usually, people are happy to wait if they have some context.
@name around? - Have a simple way to check if a teammate is around but in a way that it doesn’t matter if they can’t answer.
Be Responsive - **If you are not in the zone (but inside your working hours), then be responsive to other team members’ questions. If people need help and you have the skills, then jump right in.
Be Available - This is a step more than being responsive. Create a Zoom room where you always share your desktop. Then, if someone wants to reach you, he/she can jump in!
Clock-in, clock-out - Make your teammates aware when you have started work, and finished for the day. A simple “Hi, I’m around” and “Signing off for the day”in Slack is all you need.
Seek & Give feedback - Seek and give feedback. You have to take a more active role in seeking and giving feedback. Do not wait for the next retro to address concerns.
Remember - It can be hard for people to develop the same level of empathy when the relationship isn’t face to face. When the conversation is via a video screen avoid making assumptions about your co-workers intentions.
bringing back the feeling of being co-located but in a remote way
Signally availability of your team members is important in a remote-first world. You can’t just look over at someone's desk and see if they are there or if they are in deep work with a “DO NOT DISTURB” face. Using the status on Slack can solve part of the problem, but that only really saying when you are not available, “In a meeting” or “Out sick”, but it doesn’t work as well for "I want to pair" or even "fancy a coffee".
TLDR: create a dedicated slack channel, put in some "enduring" zoom links, when you are on the zoom call then add your emoji so others can see and join.
Setup a new slack team-based slack channel which is dedicated to the task e.g. #clientx-meeting-rooms. Do not use this channel for anything other than adding the room details
Create team slack Emoji’s, one for each team member preferably with a real photo and name.
With a pro zoom licence, create a small number of ‘Enduring Meetings Links’. Schedule a meeting in zoom and create a recurring meeting (Recurrence = No Fixed Time).
Add these links to the channel and label their purpose. E.g. meeting room, watercooler
If you join a meeting link then add your emoji
If you leave a meeting link then remove your emoji
Rooms are available on a first-come-first-serve basis
Try “Hey are you free, I’m in clientx meeting room#1 with Sarah to chat about this, can you join now”?
This has been tried and tested with the CondéNast project with significant success, where it has helped to bring back some of the feeling of being co-located but in a remote way.
