How to Create a Remote Work Policy and Leverage Rituals to Manage Extreme Emotions

Manager TLDR: Issue 14

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Hey fellow managers and leaders,

We hope you’re staying safe and healthy. We’ll keep this email short because we know how valuable your energy and attention are during this season 🙏.

Based on our research and conversations with leaders, here are four things you should know these days:

🏠 How to transition your team to remote work

TLDR: In light of the world’s current situation, we asked a panel of remote work experts for their tips on how to transition your team to working from home. Some tips include:

Document all your processes in a wiki or employee handbook.
Trust your remote employees to do their work.
Schedule regular check-ins and team meetings.

🌎 Remote work policies from 10 remote-first companies around the world

TLDR: If your team is transitioning to remote work, it’s a good idea to create a remote work policy that everyone in the company can read and access at any moment. Here are 3 of the 6 topics you can cover in that document:

Availability: are employees expected to work between a specified time?
Communication: how are teams expected to make and record decisions?
Security: what security measures should be taken when working remotely?

🤝 Why remote work makes disagreement hard – and how to do it anyway – Zapier

TLDR: Disagreement is a good thing, but when you don’t see a person’s facial expressions, communication can be easily misinterpreted. Here are 3 tips to make these conversations a bit easier:

Don’t wait. Disagreement is a lot easier when you don’t have to turn the ship all the way around.
Schedule a 10-minute video call. This will help you avoid misinterpretations.
Choose a “safe word” that your team can use when a project is going off the rails.

🗣 The restorative power of ritual – Harvard Business Review

TLDR: Rituals are a powerful human mechanism for managing extreme emotions and stress, and we should be leaning on them now. Here are our top 3 takeaways from this article:

Idiosyncratic rituals can restore your sense of control.
Rituals don’t have to happen organically; you can artificially insert them into your life.
You should leverage technology to recreate and invent new team rituals (for instance, starting all your meetings with an icebreaker).