Thoughts on Remote Employees

Some startups are passionate about avoiding remote employees. Others are passionate about being distributed with employees all over the world, like Buffer and KISSmetrics. At AccelerEyes, we have a mixed approach.

Default to Onsite

In most cases, we work with new employees to relocate to Atlanta. There are many wonderful reasons to be here. There are great opportunities for in-person serendipity.

I previously wrote about Yahoo!’s decision to bring all employees onsite. In her explanation, Marissa Mayer outlined many reasons in favor of onsite employees.

If Remote is Best, Do It Right

However, in some cases, a remote working situation is better for the prospective employee. The prospective employee may have any number of reasons to stay put (often family related). Given the specialized skills required for our startup, on occasion it has been good for us to hire remote employees.

When we hire remote employees, we have found that an added attention to communication has made the difference between successful and unsuccessful outcomes. In the most successful cases, I have often felt better connected to the remote employee than the onsite employees, because they have made extra effort to keep us informed about what they do.

Successful remote employees have the following characteristics:

• they are regularly plugged into our online communications (Skype)
• they are productive machines; the lack of interruption translates into a high degree of output (which can be a big plus for the company)
• they are unafraid to pick up the phone to get stuff done
• they travel once a quarter or so to the Atlanta office to get the in-person experience

Joel of Buffer recently had a post that describes the upsides his startup experiences from being fully distributed, including super productivity, incredible amounts of freedom, a futuristic feeling, learning from people around the world, opportunities for world travel, and extensive time zone coverage for their business.

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In any case, we remain open with our employees to tailor the right solution to each situation. Our team is not here to slave away for a monolithic organization. Rather, as an organically grown company, our company’s only objectives are to serve our customers and our own people.

Does your startup have remote employees? How have you made it work?