Mixing Remote and Local Teams

Having a mixed location workforce feels like a natural step when transitioning to a fully distributed business, yet this intermediate step can present its own unique challenges.

Integrating remote workers into a non-remote team can be difficult because they don’t share physical office interactions with the local team.

The post-office relationship is also missing. When coworkers are going out for coffee, beer, or a football match after work, remote workers can feel disconnected.

There’s a simple strategy which your company can employ in order to overcome mixed location hurdles. Here it is: Start behaving like a fully distributed company.

Make remote work part of your DNA. Find ways to practically demonstrate to your team (both local and remote) that you’re committed to building a location-independant workforce.

This might mean making Slack the core office communication tool (#watercooler channel and all).  Maybe it means scheduling regular group-chats, or forcing project teams to be location blended.

If you can show your team what a fully distributed company looks like, your vision will naturally translate into better remote communication, more persistent distributed team members, and closer mixed teams.


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