How to Work Remotely: 12 Steps from Remote Work Leaders

Almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century, the traditional office paradigm is gradually being replaced by a more flexible, cost-effective, and employee-friendly model: remote work. This shift has been propelled by technological advancements, evolving employee expectations, and, more recently, global events. 

However, this transition to remote work isn’t as straightforward as simply trading an office cubicle for a desk at home. Employers, employees, and freelancers all face unique challenges, from maintaining productivity and effective communication to managing time zones and ensuring work-life balance. 

This guide aims to shed light on some of these nuances and provide actionable strategies for remote workers to navigate the complexities of remote work successfully.

Understanding Remote Work

Before we can dig into the meat and potatoes of your work environment and managing the work itself, we first need to contextualize your role as a remote worker, beginning with breaking down the different dimensions of flexibility in work.

1. Understand the Different Types of Remote Work Flexibility

Let’s dig a bit deeper into each of these dimensions of flexibility.

Location Flexibility

If you prefer to report to the office a certain number of days per week or month (structured hybrid) or would like to select which days you work in the office and which you work remotely (flexible hybrid), hybrid remote work is likely for you.

At the extremes of the location spectrum, you can also choose to work in office every day or to be fully remote, where you never need to go into your company’s physical location.

HINT: If some of these terms sound new to you, our guide to remote work terminology may be a quick and easy way for you to deepen your understanding of remote work.

Schedule Flexibility

Unlike traditional in-person 9-5 jobs, positions with schedule flexibility offer the freedom to set your own schedule and work when you’re most productive. There are four main types of work hours as defined in our Guide to Workplace Flexibility:

1. A rigid 9-5 schedule – the traditional work methodology that’s been around for over 200 years.
2. A condensed workweek – this is where an employee works fewer than five days per week. Typically, we see this occur with employees working four days per week as opposed to five.
3. Nonlinear workdays – a flexible schedule allowing remote workers to work outside of the traditional 9-5 workday hours. This includes working shorter hours on some days and longer hours on others.
4. ‘Work whenever’ – an arrangement where employees have the freedom to set their own schedules, allowing them to implement a high level of autonomy in their schedules.

Determining what level of schedule flexibility suits your needs can help you identify the types of remote roles that would be a good fit for you.

Job Flexibility

Remote work can also provide more autonomy and control over your workload, allowing for a better balance between personal and professional responsibilities.

At one end of the spectrum, with greater oversight from your employer comes accepting work as assigned. But if you’re a freelancer with an ebbing pool of clients, you may have the freedom to accept work as desired.

In between these two extremes is job sharing, where two or more employees split a full-time job and its responsibilities. This allows a greater degree of control over your workload, allowing you to pursue other interests while still staying connected to your company.

PTO Flexibility

Some companies offer unlimited PTO as part of their remote work policies, while others have more traditional accrual systems in place. Understanding the type of PTO flexibility offered by your employer is essential in managing time off.

To learn more about the different types of remote work flexibility, check out our guide to workplace flexibility.

2. Set Clear Expectations

Working remotely requires a level of trust and clear communication between employers and employees. If your manager has provided written documentation of expectations, make sure you understand them thoroughly. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask for clarification. 

And if there are no written expectations in place, take the initiative to request them. These expectations should apply to your specific situation of working remotely and should be revisited regularly to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Setting Up Your Environment

Now that you’ve garnered an understanding of how you prefer to work remotely, you need to set up your remote work environment to mold around your needs.

3. Optimize Your Work Environment and Work Style

A well-designed work environment is crucial for maintaining your productivity, focus, and mental health. Whether you’re working from home or working in a co-working space, ensure your workspace is comfortable, quiet, and free from distractions.

When working from home, try to designate a specific area of your home as your ‘office’ to help establish some boundaries between work and personal life. 

On top of your physical surroundings, try to understand your work style by asking yourself some questions.

• Are you more productive in the mornings or evenings?
• Do you prefer to work in shorter, focused bursts or longer periods with breaks in between?

Understanding your preferences will allow you to structure your day better to match your natural energy levels, while having a clearly defined work environment will ensure you can develop some consistency in your work habits.

4. Set Healthy Boundaries and Develop a Routine

Speaking of remote work habits – developing a routine and setting boundaries as a remote worker is crucial. Without the physical confines of an office, it’s quite easy to blur the lines between work and personal life, leading to overworking, burnout, and an overall decrease in well-being.

To circumvent this, set healthy boundaries by establishing clear working hours and sticking to them. Whether you need to input your hours into a physical calendar or prefer to use a digital one like Google Calendar, communicate your boundaries with your employer and colleagues so they can respect your time.

Additionally, developing a daily routine will almost certainly help maintain these boundaries, providing structure and balance in your remote work life. This routine should include:

• Set working hours, including start and end points
• Built-in breaks
• Meals
• Designated time for personal activities, like walks

Stick to your routine as often as possible to avoid overworking. This process will take constant iteration to ensure your work-life balance is at the right equilibrium, much like a tightrope walker constantly adjusting to stay perfectly aligned.

5. Create Boundaries at Work

In addition to setting boundaries between work and personal time, it’s essential to create boundaries within your work life. This can involve:

• Setting specific times for checking emails and responding to messages
• Turning off notifications and logging out of work-related programs outside of working hours
• Avoiding taking on additional tasks or projects outside of your designated workload

Managing Your Work

Now that you’ve contextualized how you want to exist as a remote worker and have structured your environment to support yourself, let’s dig into how you can properly manage your workload.

6. Setting and Sharing Daily Priorities

An incredibly effective way to stay on track and accountable while working remotely is by setting daily goals and priorities. Not only does this help you to stay focused, but it also allows your team to understand what you’re working on and how they can support you.

A fantastic example of this, which we use every day at Workplaceless®, is a Daily Check-in Slack channel, where team members share their top three priorities for the day. Not only does this encourage productivity and transparent work habits, but it also fosters a sense of community and support within our remote team.

BONUS TIP

Take this to the next level by writing out all of your weekly tasks at the start of your work week, and pull from this weekly list every day to ensure you stay on top of all of your longer-term personal and work goals.

7. Learn Effective Time Management Skills

We have an idea of what work needs to be done – how do we stay on top of it? 

• Time blocking: This involves scheduling specific tasks for designated blocks of time to prevent multitasking and increase focus.
• Utilizing productivity tools: There are numerous tools available, such as ClickUp, Toggl, or Trello, that can help track time spent on tasks and organize workflow.
• Prioritizing tasks: Focus on completing high-priority tasks first, and if possible, delegate or outsource lower-priority tasks.

We’ve written a more comprehensive guide on time management when working remotely to dig deeper into this topic.

Communicating Effectively

You’re  at the point where you’ve developed a work environment conducive to a healthy work-life balance, understand your role as a remote worker, and have developed a few ways to manage your workload. But we haven’t yet discussed how your work fits into the greater picture of your team. To do so, we need to discuss developing better communication skills.

8. Develop Asynchronous and Synchronous Communication Skills

Communication in remote work happens via various channels – email, instant messages, phone calls, video conferencing – making it essential to understand the differences between asynchronous and synchronous communication.

Asynchronous communication refers to communication with an immediate response (like a Microsoft Teams message), while synchronous communication is a real-time communication method, like a video call. 

Our guide on synchronous vs. asynchronous communication breaks down the difference between these two communication styles to a more granular level – we’d argue it’s crucial to understand since remote teams need to be masters of communication.

For further research, our discussion on what we’ve coined the Placeless Taxonomy, a classification system for different types of communication tasks, will allow you to understand and rank certain types of communication according to how difficult they are to achieve asynchronously.

BONUS TIP: Use A Communication Charter

To stratify and standardize your team’s communication, using a communication charter will allow you to outline:

1. How your team will communicate
2. The tools and platforms your team will use
3. Expectations for response times
4. Guidelines for resolving conflicts or gaps in communication

Working with a communication charter will allow you to facilitate better communication and understanding within your team, leading to greater efficiency and more effective remote work. Luckily, we’ve created a template to help you develop an all-encompassing communication charter for your team.

9. Demonstrate Contributions in Remote Work

In an asynchronous work environment, establishing yourself as a contributing member of a team can be difficult. This is where documentation and reporting comes into play.

By documenting your work progress and contributions, you not only keep track of your achievements but also allow others to understand the value you provide to the team. Create a system for tracking and reporting your work, like weekly or monthly reports, and share them with your team regularly.

You could also utilize project management platforms or shared documents to demonstrate your work in real time. This keeps everyone on the same page and allows for asynchronous collaboration and feedback.

Enhancing Professional Growth

Congratulations – in following the steps above, you should have a comprehensive understanding of how to work remotely. Before closing our guide out, we want to discuss growth in the future – after all, while you may become the perfect remote worker after implementing our suggestions, growing and evolving should still be the ultimate goal.

10. Build Connections and Social Capital: Socialize With Colleagues!

The first way to continue to evolve comes from socializing and building connections with colleagues, even if it’s through virtual means.

Joining in on team video calls or gamified team building activities can help you to foster remote relationships and create a sense of community within the remote workplace. Additionally, asynchronous communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can help you stay connected with your team through casual (or work-related) conversations.

The goal here is to develop relationships beyond just work-focused tasks. Strong workplace relationships can lead to future opportunities for growth and development, within or outside of your current remote team.

11. Professional Development for Remote Workers

Understanding how to work remotely is not the exact same as being able to do so. But with remote-specific training, like Workplaceless’s Remote Work Certification, the original remote work certification, which covers topics like effective communication, productivity, and collaboration, you can contextualize and integrate remote work skills into your day-to-day.

Or, if you’re more interested in an all-inclusive curriculum targeted towards career development, building social capital, and designing a flexible career, Growplaceless may be the ideal program to follow.

12. Address Proximity Bias in Remote Teams

Last but not least, proximity bias is one challenge that can commonly arise in remote work environments. This refers to the tendency for individuals to favor those who are physically closer to them, resulting in exclusion or unequal treatment of remote team members, albeit unintentionally.

Mitigating this bias is simple – recognize it and address it within your team. Share resources on proximity bias and have open discussions to ensure all remote workers are included in team activities and decisions.

Final Thoughts

Remote work is no longer just a trend – 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% operate within a hybrid work model. While the majority of the workforce is still in the office, embracing these strategies and tips will allow you to function successfully within a remote team.

Staying organized, communicating effectively, prioritizing self-care, showcasing your contributions, building connections with your colleagues, and continuously learning can only allow you to thrive in the future.