Instant messaging apps or chat solutions replicate the casual flow of ideas that can happen in an office context while connecting team members across countries and time zones for more effective online collaboration.
However, research from <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qat</a><a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">alog and Cornell University</a> shows that instant messaging apps, along with the other tools in your arsenal, actually contribute to disorganization. 54% of people say that apps can make it harder to find information, and cycling through different messaging, collaboration, and productivity tools wastes almost an hour per day.&nbsp;
Our reliance on messaging is a double-edged sword. Hybrid teams need an avenue for communication, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow">but a case could be made for instant messaging apps</a> not being the full-proof solution for modern work.&nbsp;
They do have their pros, though. Team messaging apps allow teams to:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Separate team conversations into channels for different people and projects</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Start voice or video calls</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Share <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">files and documents</a> to collaborate on them</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Communicate with your team across time zones and locations</li>
</ol>
Here are a number of instant messaging apps that we love:
<h2>The 5 best instant messaging apps for hybrid teams&nbsp;</h2>
<h3>1. Slack</h3>
<a href="https://slack.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Slack</a> has, without a doubt, defined the team chat space. It was developed for the user, and packs in delight through audio calls and custom emoji capabilities. For all that Slack has done for the instant messaging space, it makes sense that it&rsquo;s the frontrunner for everyone&rsquo;s favorite. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">However, there is a lot to be said about the impact Slack</a> has had on remote office communication &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll get into in a little bit.&nbsp;
<h3>2. Microsoft Teams</h3>
<a href="http://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Microsoft Teams</a> is part of the Office 365 offering and creates a chat-based workspace. Teams offers instant messaging, video, and audio calls. Teams, as well as the Office 365 offering, is optimized for larger teams who can have a dedicated IT staff to assist with the rollout.
<h3>3. Google Chat</h3>
Google offers a lot of work software, including a free instant messaging app. <a href="https://mail.google.com/chat/u/0/#chat/welcome" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Google Chat</a>, rebranded from Google Hangouts Chat, breaks conversations down into chat rooms, similar to Slack&rsquo;s channels. The ease of Google Chat comes with how easily it integrates with the rest of the Google suite.&nbsp;
<h3>4. Discord</h3>
 <a href="https://discordapp.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Discord</a> is similar to Slack or Microsoft Teams, but its interface was developed to be more gamer-friendly than business-friendly. Huge pros: most of the features that you&rsquo;d need are included in the free plan, and its audio features are an interesting benefit for async communication. Cons: its lack of threads could make file sharing a little chaotic.&nbsp;
<h3>5. HipChat</h3>
<a href="http://www.hipchat.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">HipChat</a> features the classic instant-work-messenger capabilities including 1-on-1 instant messaging, group chat rooms, and file sharing. They also include screen sharing and video conferencing.
<h2>What makes a great work messaging app?</h2>
Workplace communication is vital to creating a healthy, happy, cross-functional team. Especially in the era of modern work, communication has to be a frictionless experience across all sorts of barriers. Your instant messaging app shouldn&rsquo;t be one.&nbsp;
A great instant messaging solution for hybrid teams:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Enables organized communication and collaboration. Team instant messaging apps should enable communication, that&rsquo;s a given. The important part here is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">organized communication and collaboration.</a> It&rsquo;s one thing to shout into a void of singular updates that aren&rsquo;t attached to the context of work, but collaborating requires both organization and context.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Offers a search feature. With instant messaging comes the ability to chat about things unrelated to work. So finding that design file you sent a co-worker on Friday afternoon might not be the easiest thing to scroll for on Wednesday morning. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Being able to search for files and messages</a> based on keywords, channels, or who the message was sent to is a necessity for work IMing.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Provides a user-friendly interface that the whole team actively uses. According to our research with Cornell University, <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">58% of people report</a> that not all departments use the same online apps. Obviously, this leads to silos and creates organizational roadblocks. Instant messaging should be not only accessible to everyone in your company but utilized by every team.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>The three main challenges of team messaging apps</h2>
Of course, the things that should make a team chat app great are expectations, not reality, and there are a lot of things that can become overwhelming when you&rsquo;re expecting an instant response from your coworkers throughout their 9-5 workday.&nbsp;
<h3>1. Information overload</h3>
With the endless number of conversations taking place on your team messaging app, the tool can start to look increasingly like the mythical Hydra &mdash; sprouting new heads (or threads) the more you try to get it under control.
As an individual team member, it becomes harder to know which information is relevant to you, so you might end up missing a crucial project update.&nbsp;
Or, if there are too many messages, team members might feel discouraged and decide not to read them at all. Once those little red notifications take over, it can be hard to get them to disappear.&nbsp;
<h3>2. Short information shelf-life</h3>
The ease and speed of team messaging might be a benefit, but it also has the side effect of devaluing the information that&rsquo;s shared.
Team members get used to messages being swept away in the thread, so information distributed in this way might lose significance. Fine for a quick emoji &mdash; less ideal for important weekly team updates.
<h3>3. Diversity of formats</h3>
In team messaging apps, information is shared in diverse formats &mdash; messages, voice calls, document links. When everyone has their own way of writing updates, setting meeting agendas, or naming links, it&rsquo;s <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-management-tool-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">hard to navigate the complexity.</a>&nbsp;
Details of a project can be spread across multiple messages and/or calls, making it difficult to monitor progress.
<h2>A work hub is a vital addition to your team&rsquo;s instant chat</h2>
Instant messaging isn&rsquo;t sustainable as the sole vehicle for workplace communication. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Information overload</a> can be a huge added burden to employees trying to shuffle through the noise of the day-to-day.&nbsp;
Adopting a work hub in addition to your instant messaging tool helps adds context to the information constantly being sent back and forth. It also gives you a place to connect the work being done with your instant communication, resulting in cross-team collaboration you didn&rsquo;t have to dedicate time to sync on. Plus, it makes all your work inextricably linked.
<h3>Adopt longer, context-driven async updates with a work hub</h3>
A work hub breaks down silos by cascading updates and comms automatically to the right channels, for a feedback loop that doesn&rsquo;t require a pingback. By integrating a work hub with your instant messaging tool, you can send structured updates (complete with context, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-hub-vs-performance-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">goals</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">files</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">and the teams involved</a>) to the right messaging app channel.&nbsp;
Threads in <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog</a> allow everyone to comment on projects in an organized way. You can follow threads and stay aligned with all your critical conversations. Plus, with our smart feed, you get a personalized dashboard of important updates across posts, threads, projects, and goals.
The async messages of a work hub keep everyone in the loop of things without intrusive, focus-breaking noise and red badges &mdash; whether it&rsquo;s a project update, <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/team-updates/" rel="follow">team weekly</a>, or personal news shared with the team.
And when adding a work hub to your existing tool stack, it takes the reliance on instant messaging down a notch. Now you don&rsquo;t have to panic about finding that one file that was sent in the chat before you started talking about the movie marathon you had this week.&nbsp;
<h3>Search for information, easier</h3>
On Slack and Teams, you can have one channel per topic, but when there are tons of messages on each channel, it&rsquo;s hard to retrieve the right one &mdash; especially if you don&rsquo;t have the right keyword or when search doesn&rsquo;t deliver as quickly.
Qatalog doesn&rsquo;t replace your synchronous messaging app but rather complements it. When you integrate your messaging app with Qatalog, you make every single message retrievable, through a powerful, custom-built, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">full-text search</a>. You add context to the messages being sent back and forth. And you cut through the noise.&nbsp;
<h3>Keep work together with a Slack integration</h3>
Sometimes in-depth project discussions end up happening in Slack, when they really should be visible to everyone. Keep track of decisions and feedback by easily adding a thread from Slack directly into Qatalog. Your content stays together and your team stays updated and informed.&nbsp;
<h2>Team instant messaging apps vs. work hub</h2>
There are remote teams that have ditched instant messaging apps entirely, citing addictive qualities, disorganization, and the inability to conduct in-depth conversations. Some have even argued (myself included) that reliance on instant messaging detracts from a true async-friendly working model. Because if your team has to be ready to respond to a message at all time, who is getting the deep work done?&nbsp;
Some teams still rely on instant messaging as their only form of direct communication. By now, you know that we think this is a mistake and it&rsquo;s keeping your company from advancing to modern work. Instant messaging might still feel like the future, but in reality, it sits with the rest of your legacy tools keeping you in the &ldquo;old way of working.&rdquo;
<a href="https://qatalog.qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A work hub</a> isn&rsquo;t a replacement for instant messaging, it&rsquo;s an important addition that gives you context and enables you to connect with your team. The new way of working is communicative and people first, so stop being distracted by the endless notifications.&nbsp;

How is Qatalog different from team instant messaging and chat apps for teams like Slack or Microsoft Teams?

Work hub vs. Team instant messaging apps | Qatalog

A work hub is a vital addition to your team’s instant chat.

Team instant messaging apps vs. work hub

The working world is beginning to realize that our <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/slack-remote-working-broken" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">reliance on instant messaging</a> isn&rsquo;t contributing to our productivity. So now, the race is on to find solutions that work for getting work done. However, implementing these solutions company-wide comes with an essay-long list of challenges. Transitioning from one tool that promised connectivity to another is difficult. And it&rsquo;s tough to be hopeful about a new tool when the first one never did what it promised to begin with.&nbsp;
Some businesses have managed a hybrid transition with only a few scrapes along the way. But remote and hybrid work also have a great way of illuminating bad leadership, shotty processes, and flimsy culture.&nbsp;
One of the defining differences between the companies that have succeeded in building a modern working model and those that haven&rsquo;t is their degree of digital dexterity.&nbsp;
Most companies aren&rsquo;t ready to respond to disruptions that call for meaningful digital change. One Capgemini <a href="https://www.capgemini.com/fi-en/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2018/07/Digital-Mastery-DTI-report_20180704_web-11.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">report</a> shows that less than half of organizations feel they have the right digital capabilities to see through successful transformations, a finding further enhanced by <a href="https://www.people-doc.com/blog/digital-dexterity-what-it-is-why-its-important-and-hrs-role-in-it#:~:text=Gartner's%20research%20shows%20that%20only,employees%20should%20be%20a%20priority." rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Gartner&rsquo;s</a> claim that only 9% of the overall workforce demonstrates strong digital dexterity.&nbsp;
But if the pandemic has proven one thing for companies, it&rsquo;s that they must be ready to reorganize and pivot in response to market challenges as well as opportunities. The more digitally dexterous your organization is, the better prepared the workforce will be in facing a future where rapid adaptation to digital change is the norm and not the exception.
<h2>What is digital dexterity?</h2>
A digitally dexterous organization is alert to emerging technologies and digital solutions. They are agile, ready to shift strategy, and can achieve business outcomes in rapidly changing market conditions using these new technologies.
Now, that definition&rsquo;s a little on the tech-heavy side. Here&rsquo;s another one:
Digital dexterity is not a competency in itself, then, but rather, as <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3084618/defining-digital-dexterity-the-core-workforce-resource-f">Gartner</a> has it: &ldquo;A set of beliefs, mindsets, and behaviors that help ... deliver faster and more valuable outcomes from digital initiatives.&rdquo;
What are the key skills people should have for an organization to be digitally adaptive? The essential quality of digitally dexterous <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/becoming-a-world-class-knowledge-worker/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=digital-dexterity&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">employees</a> is that they are adaptive. Being able to use, think about, and organize digital technologies in innovative and advantageous ways is great &mdash; but a genuinely adaptive employee is the one who adopts these solutions into their everyday routine.
<h2>How to measure digital dexterity of a company</h2>
According to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-06-20-gartner-says-too-few-organizations-have-the-digital-dexterity-to-adopt-new-ways-of-work-solutions" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Gartner,</a> there are six indexes that suggest a company has digital dexterity.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Consumerization &ndash; constantly changing work requiring judgment calls, what we would call a pivot.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Team-based collaboration &ndash; effortless coordination that allows for routine collaboration.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Nonroutine work &ndash; spending time on personal and professional growth. This could look like learning a new skill or tool, like how to pull data from different platforms, or adopting new technology to solve a specific problem that comes up in your daily work.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Nondirected social engagement &ndash; putting effort into trusting and getting to know your team. Social engagement greatly impacts team collaboration, as well.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Tech positive &ndash; a desire to solve problems with new technology, being willing to accept the changes a new tool brings to the organization.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Work anywhere &ndash; The ability to work, well, anywhere.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
For employees, the Griffith University Library created <a href="https://griffithunilibrary.github.io/digital-dexterity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a self-assessment tool</a> to analyze your skills with different aspects of digital dexterity and point you towards resources to learn more about what you need to improve upon.&nbsp;
<h2>How to develop digital dexterity in your organization</h2>
So how can an organization make itself more digitally dextrous today? Here are five steps that are essential to prioritize:&nbsp;
<h3>1. Bring autonomy into your teams</h3>
Autonomy is a contributing factor to employees' work engagement and satisfaction. But in the distributed-work context, autonomy can also result in disengagement if workers are consistently left to their own devices.&nbsp;&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s crucial to encourage the freedom to be creative in any digital dexterity program through supported and structured opportunities. In other words, employees should have the freedom to explore and experiment while simultaneously being supported.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s this process of &ldquo;collaborative autonomy&rdquo; that can help define a company&rsquo;s collective vision. But it also enables employees to understand both their individual and connected role in contributing to that vision. And because teams are aligned through shared goals and are <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/">aware of what they need to do and what others&rsquo; roles are too</a>, they can deliver business value at a brisker pace.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Read more: <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/autonomy-and-employee-engagement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank" style="background-color: #eccafa;">Autonomy is the key to employee engagement</a>
<h3>2. Diversity as a driver</h3>
Cross-pollination of teams from different areas, experience, function, and geography is crucial in constantly innovating new perspectives, filling in skills gaps, and updating skills.&nbsp;
Collaborating across teams in this way is also a key factor for quick and informed decision-making.
But diversity needs to be in all areas of the organization, from teams to onboarding support and learning tools.
In this latter area, it&rsquo;s important to keep in mind that employees will differ in how they like learning and receiving information. Some may prefer slide-shares or videos, while others may process details better when verbally led through them <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurelfarrer/2020/12/10/the-art-of-asynchronous-optimizing-efficiency-in-remote-teams/?sh=5de1bd7c747c" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">step-by-step</a>.&nbsp;
Ensuring that the company's digital adoption tools are in all formats is a not-to-be-forgotten part of the diversity process.
<h3>3. Failure is key</h3>
Companies that put all the focus on success are missing the learning opportunities of failure.&nbsp;
In environments where teams from different areas and experience levels regularly share information, those encouraged to communicate past mistakes and missteps to look for solution-based alternatives are quicker to adapt and innovate effective course corrections.&nbsp;
Examining failure helps organizations get real about existing digital practices and processes. But it also encourages the kind of confident, creative, and lateral thinking needed in the development of digital dexterity.&nbsp;
<h3>4. Shock and awe</h3>
Digital dexterity cannot be aced in the classroom. The best way for employees to understand how digital initiatives work across a company is through hands-on experience.&nbsp;
<a href="https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/the-future-of-wfh--owning-what-we-don-t-know0">Dropbox</a> said it best:
"Work from home is not merely office work transposed to a new location. It&rsquo;s a new skill &mdash; a new human technology &mdash; that we&rsquo;re learning in fits and starts. Like all technologies, first we emulate what came before."&nbsp;
The forced shift to work is perhaps the best example of your company showcasing its digital dexterity. Some companies adapted better than others, likely because of existing remote workers or technologies they had already adopted. Others had to adopt new technologies at the speed of light to keep up. For all of us, it was a shock and forced entire companies to think and act on their feet.&nbsp;
Exposing workers to the shock and awe of digital initiatives used in different areas of the organization encourages them to understand how different parts of the business connect and interact.&nbsp;&nbsp;
The more effortless this exposure is, the more likely employees are to engage with information and expertise across the organization. Doing so then enables them to develop key competencies needed for digital dexterity such as adaptability and willingness to learn. Another related spill-over is that by accruing accurate data and contacts, employees begin building resilience to risk, uncertainty, and setbacks &mdash; all valuable assets in today&rsquo;s climate.&nbsp;
<h3>5. Take it to the top</h3>
Of course, employees are not the only key stakeholders in a company&rsquo;s digital dexterity program. Ensuring senior managers understand the importance of digital dexterity and can scale in this area is vital.&nbsp;
To that end, they must lead by example, modeling digital dexterous behavior such as collaborative interaction and adaptability, and encouraging digitally-friendly workplace designs and processes.&nbsp;
That also means C-suite staff will need support in the form of resources, tools, and training.&nbsp;
Yet this kind of investment in an organization&rsquo;s leadership has a powerful drip-down effect on the company. For not only will digitally dexterous senior staff be more inclined to advocate for the processes and operations needed to drive digital transformations, but Gartner finds that while only 16% of leaders are classed with high digital dexterity, employees of these leaders are 2.4 times more likely to share the same qualities.
<h2>Why digital dexterity matters</h2>
Digitally dexterous employees tend to use technology as a tool for competitive advantage. They look for solutions that are customer-centric and are in-step with <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=digital-dexterity&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow">advancing digital technologies.</a>&nbsp;
Research shows companies that invest significantly in technology and adapt to fast-changing trends typically outperform competitors in critical areas such as innovation and customer satisfaction. However, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/putting-trust-back-into-teamwork/">according to new research from Qatalog</a>, 34% say their employer has either not invested, or has not adequately invested, in the tools and policies needed to support remote or flexible work.&nbsp;
On the flip side, organizations that rely on legacy systems or old ways of working tend to find themselves falling behind to such an extent that their focus is fixed on catching up instead of charging onwards.&nbsp;
But investing in technology is only a good idea if employees are properly prepared and willing to adopt new digital practices. If they&rsquo;re not, organizations are wasting their investment as well as the opportunity to help digital dexterity thrive.&nbsp;&nbsp;
For example, the <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zoom-microsoft-cloud-usage-are-rocketing-during-coronavirus-pandemic-new-data-show-2020-03-30">scale and speed</a> with which digital collaboration tools were deployed during the COVID-19 crisis didn&rsquo;t automatically align with an equally high success rate in using these tools. Rather, companies&rsquo; mad dash to download as much <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-become-a-fully-remote-high-performance-team/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=digital-dexterity&amp;utm_content=post">remote-work</a> tech as possible points to the fact that they were caught off-guard with the pandemic&rsquo;s challenges.&nbsp;
This resulted not just in an uneven adoption of remote-work technologies, but inefficient use of them, too. For many employees working from home for the first time, the pressure to adapt quickly to new technology came without the <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/human-capital/Remote-Collaboration-COVID-19.pdf">supportive infrastructure</a> to ensure their continuing <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/category/productivity/">well-being and productivity</a>.&nbsp;
But it&rsquo;s that infrastructure, which includes strategic and technical support, open communication across traditional boundaries, and nurturing greater autonomy alongside team-based ways of working, that&rsquo;s at the core of digital dexterity.&nbsp;
Organizations that fostered those traits within 2020&rsquo;s remote and distributed workplace shift most effectively managed the sudden shift to work-from-home operating models. They&rsquo;re also the businesses best placed to optimize <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/jim-kalbach-mural-interview/">remote work as a strategic model in 2021</a>. Why? Because they&rsquo;ve already cultivated the conditions needed to produce organized, agile, and advantageous digital transformations.
<h2>The future of successful companies is digital dexterity</h2>
Digital dexterity has been and will continue to be the measurement that distinguishes successful businesses from those that fail. It&rsquo;s not enough anymore for companies to be future-ready. The future&rsquo;s already here.

Digital dexterity means being adaptable to new and upcoming technologies. Here are five ways to prioritize digital dexterity in your org.

What is digital dexterity? | Qatalog blog

Digital dexterity has been and will continue to be the measurement that distinguishes successful businesses from those that fail.

What is digital dexterity and why does it matter?

<ul>
<li>A crisis of trust is opening up within the modern workplace as a chronic lack of visibility leads 2 in 3 workers (66%) to question the actions of colleagues and leaders.</li>
<li>Qatalog&rsquo;s survey of 2,000 knowledge workers from the UK and US reveals that 63% of workers find it harder to build trust with each other when working remotely.</li>
<li>Despite the popularity of remote and flexible work, the study found that it erodes empathy within the workplace and creates new challenges for leaders to navigate as they plan for the future.</li>
</ul>
London, November 17, 2021: Digital work hub <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow">Qatalog</a> today publishes a survey of 2,000 knowledge workers which uncovers a crisis of trust within the modern workplace, fuelled by a chronic lack of visibility within companies.&nbsp;
<h2>A fragmented workplace characterized by a lack of visibility</h2>
The study found that remote work is feeding a chronic visibility problem within the modern workplace. When working remotely, two-thirds (66%) of respondents reported that they lack visibility of what colleagues are working on and how it fits into the bigger picture.&nbsp;
This is creating blindspots and silos right across the modern organization, on everything from customer feedback to marketing campaigns. It undermines confidence that colleagues and managers are working on the right things, consistently hitting their goals, and can be relied upon. It&rsquo;s no wonder that 63% say it's harder to build trust with their colleagues in a remote environment.&nbsp;
After nearly two years of remote work, 40% say they still find it hard to manage work across distributed teams. This may be due to complacency and underinvestment on the part of employers. About a third (34%) say their employer has either not invested, or has not adequately invested, in the tools and policies needed to support remote or flexible work.&nbsp;
Either way, this lack of visibility means that good work is often going unrecognized. Less than a third (28%) of the workforce feel that their positive contributions at work are regularly recognized, and one in ten (10%) say that their positive contributions are ignored altogether.&nbsp;
These visibility challenges also impact career progression: 47% of workers believe it's easier to get promoted if you spend more time in the office.
<blockquote>
Tariq Rauf, founder and CEO of Qatalog, says: &ldquo;Employees feel valued when they know how their work fits into the bigger picture and are given the space to work on their own terms. That&rsquo;s hard when the workplace is so fragmented and visibility is so poor. To fix this, employers must be intentional about helping teams work with a shared perspective even when they&rsquo;re not in the room together.&rdquo;
</blockquote>
<h2>The emerging crisis of trust</h2>
The findings also show that, in this fragmented working environment, workers' faith in their leaders and colleagues is eroding.
Employees are suspicious about the motivations of employers that want to bring them back into the office. Although only 2% of those surveyed feel positive about the effects of returning to the office, 37% attribute a return to their bosses&rsquo; interests.&nbsp;
Although 60% of workers say that they are more productive while working remotely, only 30% believe their bosses are more productive when working this way. When people suspect their leaders are taking the foot off the gas and are not being held accountable, it erodes trust within the team.
The lack of trust isn&rsquo;t just felt between employees and their leaders. 63% of workers believe it's harder to build trust with their colleagues in a remote environment.&nbsp;
Empathy is also eroding in the remote and flexible working world, with suspicion and frustration creeping in its place. If a colleague is slow to respond to a message when working remotely, 34% say they get more frustrated than they would do in person. Worse, 10% say they&rsquo;re more suspicious of colleagues that take sick leave when they&rsquo;re working remotely.
<blockquote>
Rauf adds: &ldquo;The modern workplace is putting pressure on our ability to empathize. You used to be able to walk into the office, talk to people to get their perspective, and absorb everything going on around you. Now, it&rsquo;s the opposite: the workplace is highly fragmented, people are working in the dark, and it&rsquo;s hard to put yourself in others&rsquo; shoes. In this environment, it&rsquo;s tricky to build a strong connection with colleagues and feel engaged with work.&rdquo;&nbsp;
</blockquote>
<h2>Flexible working is here to stay</h2>
Despite the growing trust crisis, flexibility looks like it's here to stay, with employees willing to tolerate the downsides because of the advantages it brings.&nbsp;
Nearly half (47%) of employees prefer working from home full-time, while 48% prefer working flexibly, sometimes at home and sometimes in person. 75%, meanwhile, want the flexibility to completely or partly work to their own schedule. The feeling is so strong that 73% of employees believe that remote and flexible work are key to a company&rsquo;s ability to compete in the war for talent.
<h2>A looming confrontation&nbsp;</h2>
The survey data also points to a potential confrontation brewing between workers and leaders on pay, benefits, and access to flexibility.&nbsp;
Any companies considering cutting salaries for remote workers based on their location could face a striking backlash. More than 90% think it&rsquo;s unfair to cut the wages of remote workers based on their location, while 90% of workers say they will quit their jobs if salaries are cut based on proximity to the office.
And that&rsquo;s not all. With the cost of living increasing, 93% of workers plan to make some sort of change in their professional lives. From asking for a pay rise (29%) to working from home more often (17%) or quitting their job for something else (17%), workers will demand change if their employers don&rsquo;t offer it - something for management teams to be mindful of as they plan for 2022.
<blockquote>
Rauf adds: &ldquo;The Great Resignation is a huge danger for every business today &mdash; the balance of power is shifting away from companies to employees. Building a culture of trust and flexibility has never been more critical to keeping people engaged in this new world of work.&rdquo;&nbsp;
</blockquote>

Qatalog survey of 2,000 knowledge workers uncovers a crisis of trust within the modern workplace. Read more in the press release.

Workplace trust crisis press release | Qatalog

We published a survey of 2,000 knowledge workers which uncovers a crisis of trust within the modern workplace.

Qatalog releases data on trust gap at work

Cue the opening credits and intro music because the battle between remote and office work continues. Hybrid hasn&rsquo;t been the solve-all solution we were hoping for. And as workers remain scattered between offices, co-working spaces, homes, and coffee shops, our research reveals how distributed work is eroding trust and visibility for knowledge workers everywhere.&nbsp;
<h2>What are my colleagues up to and can I trust them?</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-trust-crisis-press-release/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog conducted a study of 2,000 knowledge workers</a> in the US and UK and found that when working remotely, two-thirds (66%) of survey respondents reported that they lack visibility of what their colleagues and leaders are working on. Less than a third (28%) of the workforce feel that their positive contributions at work are regularly recognized, and one in ten say that their positive contributions are ignored altogether.&nbsp;
The negative impacts of silos are easy to spot. For one, they inhibit sharing and collaborating across teams. With hybrid workplaces, any issues with visibility can make work very challenging.&nbsp;
And perhaps we just haven&rsquo;t discovered the right kind of infrastructure to support transparency in a hybrid org. After nearly two years of remote work, 40% say they still find it hard to manage work across distributed teams. About a third (34%) say their employer has either not invested, or has not adequately invested, in the tools and policies needed to support remote or flexible work.&nbsp;
Trust and visibility impact the workplace by allowing your employees and coworkers to collaborate effectively. It&rsquo;s hard to imagine a workplace without them, yet so many of us are operating in silos because we don&rsquo;t have the infrastructure to give us the visibility we need to better trust one another.&nbsp;
Visibility is critical for employees to trust each other. Otherwise, how do they know they can be relied upon and are working on the right things? Without it, you are left with a culture of suspicion and mistrust.&nbsp;
<h2>Who can I trust?&nbsp;</h2>
Mix that with a lack of trust, and you&rsquo;ve created a work environment that eliminates most of what keeps workers happy and productive.&nbsp;
The strongest argument for going back to the office is that having in-person relationships with your coworkers improves relationships. Trust gained through in-person interactions is highly valuable to the workplace because it gives you a well-rounded view of who they are and how they work. It&rsquo;s no wonder, then, that 63% of workers from our survey believe it's harder to build trust with their colleagues in a remote environment.
The world of work today is vastly different from just a few people in the office, which means we need to rethink how we build trust within our teams.&nbsp;
Yes, building remote relationships is harder. But the majority of knowledge workers (75%) want to remain working with flexibility. So there have to be ways of facilitating visibility and enhancing trust within a distributed workplace that works for everybody. And if this is going to be the new norm, we can&rsquo;t always rely on in-person interactions to inspire team collaboration.
Speaking of everybody, it&rsquo;s also worth commenting on the gap between executives and non-executives in the return-to-office debate. We found that 37% say a full-time return to the office is in the interests of their bosses, but only 2% say it&rsquo;s in their own interests. 37% say a return to the office is in nobody&rsquo;s best interest.
So now we&rsquo;ve presented the problem: knowledge workers are lacking visibility and trust in the workplace but want to remain flexible.&nbsp;
How can you solve this within your own company? If only we had a handy-dandy listicle with actionable ideas for you to implement. Oh wait, here it is!
<h2>Bring trust and visibility back into your hybrid workplace</h2>
<h3>1. Establish a culture of documentation</h3>
If you have a context problem, the first solution is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow">documentation</a>. The second part to this is making sure everything you&rsquo;re documenting is well organized and accessible to your entire organization.&nbsp;
Documentation gives your teams context. That&rsquo;s the information you need to understand how your work fits into the bigger picture. Context is the reason why you initiated the project, how it relates to the team goals, who&rsquo;s working on it, and more.
The best part about documentation is that it&rsquo;s repeatable. Once you&rsquo;ve created a process for documenting your projects and goals, it makes it that much easier to recreate the same process for the next project.&nbsp;
If visibility issues are still happening within a culture of documentation, ask your employees where their frustrations with visibility stem from. Maybe your team is having a hard time accessing specific tools or documents due to permission settings. Maybe the answer is as simple as not knowing who to go to with questions, or not having <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-create-role-clarity-within-your-hybrid-team/">clear role clarity</a> to enforce team structure and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/redistribution-of-credit/">recognition gaps.</a>&nbsp;
<h3>2. Reset your technology</h3>
Let&rsquo;s revisit an earlier statistic.&nbsp;
About a third (34%) say their employer has either not invested, or has not adequately invested, in the tools and policies needed to support remote or flexible work.&nbsp;
This isn&rsquo;t to say that your company hasn&rsquo;t invested in tools. The average company uses <a href="https://www.blissfully.com/blog/saas-statistics/">137 unique Saas apps</a>, which is a 30% increase from 2018. The problem here is that none of these tools were specifically designed to allow for coordination across platforms and teams.&nbsp;
Resetting your technology doesn&rsquo;t mean doing away with your existing tools and moving to ones specifically designed for a hybrid workspace. Those tools won&rsquo;t work for you either unless you have the structure in place to utilize your tools in a way that benefits your entire team.&nbsp;
We like to think of work like an open book test. If your tools aren&rsquo;t allowing your team to go find the answers on their own, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/">you have an issue.</a>
Your virtual tools are just that &mdash; tools. Meaning that you need a place to keep them to minimize disorganization, like a tool box.&nbsp;
That <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/">tool box looks a lot like a connectivity layer</a> that allows you to coordinate team activity.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3>3. Make goals accessible to everyone.&nbsp;</h3>
Professional trust is more than the belief that a team member is reliable; it&rsquo;s a mutual confidence that is earned through a relationship of faith in individual expertise or potential ability being reinforced with consistently-fulfilled expectations.
To build a track record that earns trust, teams need a reliable management structure that confirms your team is working effectively even when you can't see them.&nbsp;
Carefully creating this structure with trust and autonomy in mind is also critical, because nobody likes to be micromanaged. That&rsquo;s why incorporating visible, accessible team and personal goals is so important to the success of your team. Not only will you be able to showcase an individual contributor&rsquo;s work, but you can easily track the progress of every team member.&nbsp;
Working context-first implies that trust and visibility are built into your day-to-day. By providing your team with context, you allow them to operate independently with everything they could need to be productive. Our work hub gives teams a simple way to coordinate work and add context.

Trust and visibility impact the workplace by allowing your employees and coworkers to collaborate effectively. You need both in hybrid model

Putting trust back into teamwork | Qatalog blog

Hybrid hasn’t been the solve-all solution we were hoping for.

Putting trust back into teamwork

Having a flexible working model is key in competing for and retaining talent. And while 47% of employees surveyed reported wanting to work from home full-time, 75% want the ability to decide their own working model.&nbsp;
If I take a step back to think about the most important aspects of distributed work, the list of things that come to mind are documentation, communication, trust, flexibility, and structure. And all of these things should be introduced in your remote onboarding.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li><a href="#settinguponboarding" rel="follow">Setting up a remote onboarding program</a></li>
<li><a href="#stepsofonboarding" rel="follow">Remote onboarding step-by-step</a></li>
<li><a href="#tipsforonboarding" rel="follow">Tips for remote onboarding a new employee</a></li>
<li><a href="#consequences" rel="follow">Consequences of poor onboarding</a></li>
<li><a href="#rightonboarding" rel="follow">Ways to get your onboarding experience right</a></li>
<li><a href="#qatalogonboarding" rel="follow">How Qatalog uses Qatalog for onboarding&nbsp;</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="settinguponboarding">Setting up a remote onboarding program</h2>
Do I really know what it takes to integrate someone into my team &mdash; and into my company and its culture &mdash; when they&rsquo;re working in their own home in another city or country?
Onboarding is incredibly important, especially in the era of the <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/11/6-strategies-to-boost-retention-through-the-great-resignation" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Great Resignation</a> &mdash; where a mass amount of knowledge workers are leaving their jobs to pursue other options. It takes time, money, and resources to search for and interview candidates. All that energy will be spent in vain if your onboarding doesn&rsquo;t set up your new hires with the support they need.&nbsp;
Getting used to a company&rsquo;s culture takes time. I remember it took me about a month to adjust to the async nature of Qatalog, but because of our detailed onboarding I was able to adjust to the learning curve and embrace it. This is why onboarding plays such a critical role in the success of a new hire; if an employee knows what to expect, they are much more likely to be successful.&nbsp;
With a remote onboarding workflow or program, assimilating into company culture becomes a little more complex. You&rsquo;ll need to plan out the three steps of a remote onboarding program to ensure your new hire is supported from the moment they accept the job to the months after they&rsquo;ve started.&nbsp;
<h2 id="stepsofonboarding">Steps of remote onboarding:</h2>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">
<h3>Pre-onboarding</h3>
</li>
</ul>
Remote onboarding doesn&rsquo;t begin with a new hire&rsquo;s day one. Managers should help new employees build excitement about the job from the moment they accept. Pre-onboarding also includes ordering any necessary equipment to send to your new hire. I coordinated with my manager at Qatalog a few weeks prior to joining to organize laptop pickup and order other equipment I needed for my home office.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Another great tip for pre-onboarding is to have other members of the team reach out via email. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/build-better-business-relationships-virtually/" rel="follow">Building connections before day one</a> will have a massive impact on those relationships, and it&rsquo;s always nice to have some familiar faces in a new working environment, especially in a remote setting.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">
<h3>Orientation</h3>
</li>
</ul>
Orientation is where new hires are formally introduced to the team and their supervisors. New hires also receive the documents and information they need to get started at orientation, such as employee handbooks, new employee paperwork, and an intro to the company mission.&nbsp;
Orientation usually takes about a week or two for remote new hires. What could be completed in a few days in an in-person onboarding course becomes super monotonous and, well, boring to do from home. Breaking up &ldquo;formal&rdquo; orientation with get-to-know-you video chats with people across the organization can help to break up that monotony.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">
<h3>30-60-90 plan</h3>
</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/30-60-90-day-plan/">Developing a 30-60-90 day plan</a> with a new employee not only gives them a chance to understand the goals of your team and company more deeply, but it&rsquo;s also a great exercise to see how they collaborate with other team members. Do they ask a lot of questions? Do they prefer to work independently and then present to a manager for feedback? How do they take that feedback?&nbsp;
By developing company-aligned goals, you&rsquo;ll help focus their efforts where they&rsquo;re needed most. Employees will get up to speed on the organization&rsquo;s mission and values and the skills and knowledge required to perform their role.
Onboarding also doesn&rsquo;t stop at orientation. It&rsquo;s important to provide a space for new employees to ask questions and express issues, doubts, and setbacks as they get used to a new company. <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/30-60-90-day-plan/">Establishing check-ins within the first three months of employment</a> is the perfect way to do just that.&nbsp;
<h2 id="tipsforonboarding">Tips for remote onboarding a new employee</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">
<h3>Have new hires introduce themselves to the team</h3>
</li>
</ul>
Of course, any new hire introduction should be initiated by someone on the team - but at Qatalog, we also like to play a round of two truths and a lie so we can get to know our new hires a little better. These are always fun because we allow new hires to take the floor and see more of who they are.&nbsp;
If your company <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-definitive-guide-to-async-communication/">embraces the async model</a>, try a video introduction that you can send to the entire team.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">
<h3>Help new hires build connections</h3>
</li>
</ul>
It can be hard to learn who to go to with what question and find colleagues that double as friends from Zoom meetings alone. Setting up new hires with coffee chats in their first few weeks can help establish connections, sure. But hosting new hire events, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/keeping-virtual-teams-connected/">or team events</a>, deliberately within the first two weeks of an employee&rsquo;s tenure familiarizes them to stakeholders in a stress-free environment.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">
<h3>Gather feedback on the process</h3>
</li>
</ul>
Sending a new hire survey once your onboarding process is complete (some say 6 months is a good benchmark) will help you fill in the gaps and design a perfect onboarding experience. Everyone can benefit from learning where they need to improve.&nbsp;
<h2 id="consequences">Consequences of a poor onboarding experience</h2>
Remote or not, your onboarding experience is vital for establishing social and professional expectations, setting the tone of the company, and empowering new team members to make a positive connection with their colleagues and the organization.
Failing to check those boxes (at a minimum) could result in:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Members struggling to integrate with the team: Leading to low morale, and feelings of abandonment, stress, and anxiety. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Members leaning too heavily on their direct contact: Instead of giving someone the information they need during the onboarding process, new starters are left to discover for themselves. This can use up the bandwidth of their point of contact as they ask questions and get to grips with systems, tools, and processes. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A high churn rate in the medium-term: If team members don&rsquo;t feel any affinity towards their colleagues and your company, they&rsquo;re less likely to be committed to your organization and may pursue other opportunities.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="rightonboarding">Remote team management: 4 ways to get your onboarding experience right</h2>
Okay, so it&rsquo;s easy to get wrong, and poor onboarding can create a bad snowball effect. But we&rsquo;re in the business of making things work. So, let&rsquo;s take a look at what you need to do to get remote teamwork and remote communication right:
<h3>1. Write down a clear onboarding process and set expectations</h3>
Make sure new starters can hit the ground running by writing down a clear and simple pre-templated onboarding process. Host it in one place, include links to documents, an org chart, a team overview, and how-to guides for any productivity tools they need.&nbsp;
You should also set out clear expectations about working processes &mdash; for example, a new designer should know exactly what the product team is currently working on, and who will be depending on them for wireframes in the upcoming weeks and months.
New starters need a clear picture of their duties, and an understanding of their own objectives, team goals, and company values. To bring all this together, you&rsquo;ll benefit from a cross-team shared workspace &mdash; <a href="http://qatalog.com">one connected place where work gets shared.</a>
<h3>2. Track the progress of new joiners throughout the onboarding process</h3>
Team leads and mentors shouldn&rsquo;t simply assign the onboarding process and step away. Instead, this is the time to collaborate with your new hire to get a sense of how they work. Managers should also be able to track progress and intervene to help if needed.&nbsp;
This keeps team leads aware of any bottlenecks and means they can set each individual up for success in the unique way that they need. Everybody is different.
<h3>3. Improve the onboarding process</h3>
Building a remote onboarding process isn&rsquo;t a once-and-done endeavor. You should constantly gather feedback from team members to evaluate, refine, and improve the process.
If you can learn what they find valuable and not-so-valuable, you will improve employee acquisition and retention over the long term.&nbsp;
Aim at refreshing your onboarding process on a quarterly basis &mdash; adapting to feedback quickly may help increase retention in the long run.&nbsp;
<h2 id="qatalogonboarding">How Qatalog uses Qatalog for onboarding</h2>
At Qatalog, we use <a href="https://qatalog.com/workflows/">workflows</a> to build a connected, transparent onboarding experience.&nbsp;
Everything in our onboarding workflows helps new Qataloggers to get set up with all the important information and tools they need. We&rsquo;ve also broken down our onboarding workflows by country since we have different payment structures and taxes for each one.&nbsp;
As each new hire goes through the workflow, the person who assigned it can check in on progress. Employees can also skip steps in the onboarding and return to them later depending on what they want to focus on each day.&nbsp;
<h2>The bottom line for onboarding new remote staff</h2>
It&rsquo;s the job of your onboarding process to immerse the new employee in the company&rsquo;s vision, make valuable connections, and help them feel like they&rsquo;re already part of the team. Even if they&rsquo;re working from their kitchen table a thousand miles away.

Your remote onboarding experience should enable connectivity and trust from day one. Here are some remote onboarding best practices for 2021

How do you onboard new joiners remotely? | Qatalog

Your remote onboarding experience should enable connectivity and trust from day one.

How do you onboard new joiners remotely?

Our Future of Work series was developed so that we could learn from business leaders who have opted-in to the new ways of work. We got to speak with Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote, who encourages companies to fully embrace the differences that a remote working model brings and to implement those differences within your culture.&nbsp;
<h2>Since Remote is remote-first, are there any challenges your team faces that you're also trying to solve for customers?</h2>
We try to <a href="https://remote.grsm.io/hom1qvpiqfsb" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">lead by example on the remote-first practices that make life easier.</a> Asynchronous work is probably the most important thing. We practice a culture of documentation, so we keep everything publicly accessible when possible. That means communicating in public Slack channels instead of in DMs, building documents for new processes and discussions, and pointing to documentation instead of answering questions in messages. The more people lean into the documentation, the easier it is for people across multiple time zones to get the information they need to do their work.
<h2>When did you start working remotely, and what are your favorite parts about it?</h2>
I started working remotely six years ago when I joined GitLab as one of the first employees, a web-based DevOps platform. I helped to grow the company from five to 450 people. The unique thing was that all of us worked remotely across 45 different countries. Yet, after five years of working at <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">GitLab</a>, I couldn&rsquo;t find one platform that could facilitate local laws, benefits, banking, and local payroll. It was hard to hire talented workers remotely on a global scale, and that&rsquo;s why I left to create <a href="https://remote.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Remote</a>. That&rsquo;s exactly the challenge Remote provides a solution for.
Remote work hugely benefits not only the business but also everyone on a personal level. The remote working model means that you are able to hire the best talent despite where a person is based. For the employee, it means having more time to spend at home, less time commuting, and the choice to live anywhere in the world. It means employees no longer have to make a sacrificial choice between their career and their personal development, hobbies, and family
<h2>What "future of work" trends/topics are you following?</h2>
The redistribution of talent is a big one. Our research found that 71% of workers would consider moving to another country if they could do so without sacrificing their career in the process. Remote helps employers continue to employ people when they move to other countries, so we want to ensure businesses understand they need to be ready for more employee relocation.&nbsp;
We also use VR headsets for team bonding and some collaboration. Everyone at Remote receives an Oculus Quest 2. So we&rsquo;re exploring new ways to connect around the world.
<h2>What is the biggest challenge for you or your team right now?&nbsp;</h2>
Some may argue that &ldquo;water cooler conversations&rdquo; are hard to replace when working remotely, but I would say that as long as your company makes a conscious effort to employ methods of social connection and wellbeing, that&rsquo;s not lost at all. In fact, we find that working remotely can improve an employee&rsquo;s wellbeing because they spend less time commuting and less time away from their families, so in fact they tend to be happier at work.
Building strong connections between our team has been a key focus at Remote. Our team actually operates on the fundamental value of kindness. Starting with the initial hiring process, we ensure that each member of our team embodies this virtue, as without kindness at the core, remote workforces suffer. We assume the best of our colleagues and trust them to get their work done and do it well, and we know they do so, because our culture of documentation leads us to catalog our work and communicate constantly.
To foster more connections and collaboration among our teammates, we recently changed our meeting structure to schedule at least one bonding call a day for people in different time zones. We also have one all-hands meeting per week, which alternates between two meeting slots to make it easier for more people to attend. Without the benefits of in-person communication, these initiatives have been essential to upholding our structure as a team, and addressing instinctual, human needs for connection, clarity, and creativity.
<h2>What is your collaboration tool stack?</h2>
It&rsquo;s incredibly important for a business to invest in the tools necessary for teams to be able to work efficiently when remote. At Remote, we make clear recommendations to the team on the tools they should be using, which you can see on our website. These tools help us to connect with clients (Zoom), keep in communication with the team (Slack), collaborate between teams (GitLab, GitHub, Miro, Invision), store all documents and assets (Notion, Dropbox, G-Drive). We even have a tool that runs a weekly watercooler trivia.
<h2>I read this piece on building belonging for women in remote work - how do you think Remote's transparency around a commitment to equality is helping to shape the workplace for women?&nbsp;</h2>
Transparency is important, but action is better. Remote is one of the unfortunately rare companies in tech that employs just as many women as it does men. Our excellent People team is working on several great projects to ensure everyone at Remote feels like they belong here, and that extends to equality in compensation as well, across not only gender but also location. We never fill a position until we have received applications from and interviewed people from a variety of backgrounds. When you commit to doing that from the very beginning of the hiring process, you are able to build an organization where belonging for everyone is possible. But you still have to continue to do the work on transparency and belonging once you hire the people.
<h2>And finally, what does work/life balance mean to you?</h2>
I believe everyone should be able to enjoy a good work-life balance and work for a good salary, no matter where they live. Working remotely made those things possible for me, and now I want to help others enjoy the same benefits.

Building strong connections has been a key focus at Remote, says CEO Job van der Voort.

Future of Work with Remote | Qatalog blog

Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote, saw a missed opportunity to hire workers on a global scale. Now, his company operates on a remote-first basis.

Job van der Voort on building strong connections remotely

Most businesses have one question that comes around frequently &mdash; inspiring growth, progress, and transformation. That question is: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s next?&rdquo;
Just like your team, Qatalog is still growing and learning what our customers want and need. We&rsquo;re frequently asking this question throughout our entire company, but especially within our <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-productive-product-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">product team</a> so we can build <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a work hub</a> that becomes the trusted place where your team shares and coordinates work.
This month, we released a collection of updates that will continue to help you build context around your workday. We&rsquo;ve enhanced some project features to structure timelines and due dates, added a cool new filtering ability, and introduced an integration that was highly requested from just about everyone.&nbsp;
<h2>Company Section</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/bbBzwaV9SLuO7jLG03Ei" alt="undefined" width="836" height="436" />
Know what&rsquo;s happening across your org, like company-wide processes, policies, and important updates. And includes pages &mdash; all must-reads, from you and others, in one place.
<h2>Project timelines</h2>
Projects take time. And <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">different projects take varied amounts of time</a>, energy, bursts of creativity, dedicated sprints, and deliverables that all require unique deadlines. That's why we created timelines, or phases, and brought them into our projects feature. When you create a phase inside of a project, you can see how long it will take and visualize how it builds into the larger project. For each phase, Slack updates can be sent to the team &mdash; eliminating the time-suck of status updates.&nbsp;
Showcasing your work to your team is getting easier within Qatalog, and phases allow employees the opportunity to really shine a spotlight on the steps it takes to get a massive project completed. Plus, these updates work <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-cross-functional-hybrid-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">cross-functionally</a>, ensuring that your entire organization knows where credit is due.&nbsp;
<h2>Improvements in the integration world:</h2>
<h3>You wanted it, we got it</h3>
A Notion integration was by far our most requested integration by customers (and potential ones!). Notion works with Qatalog by allowing teams to connect their already existing project or organization boards and tickets. We support your team's Notion usage and add a coordination layer to ensure that any updates made in Notion are also made in Qatalog &mdash; making your whole team more connected. And who doesn't love a connected team?&nbsp;
<h3>Enhanced Slack experience</h3>
Now, you can connect Slack channels to your goals in addition to your posts and projects. This way, your team can stay in the loop with what you're accomplishing. No need to update them on goal completion or progress in a standup meeting when Qatalog can do that for you.
<h2>What&rsquo;s next 👀</h2>
<h3>Comments for posts</h3>
Coordinate better by adding comments to important updates, so you and your team get the additional context needed.
<h3>Custom filtering for goals and projects</h3>
There&rsquo;s <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a lot of information in a work hub</a>. It&rsquo;s your digital office space that centralizes everything from projects to goals. So wouldn&rsquo;t it be great if you could filter those by due date, owner, or team? Now you can! You can also customize your filters and save them for next time in case you need to keep coming back to the same ones.
<h3>Example goals, workflows, and projects</h3>
Use our examples for inspiration on how to structure things like OKRs, updates, project briefs, etc.
<h2>Keep up to date on everything Qatalog</h2>
For more info on what&rsquo;s coming up next in our product roadmap and a snapshot of our most recent content, <a href="https://qatalog.com/newsletter/">subscribe to our monthly newsletter</a>. It&rsquo;s all vegetarian content (no spam, we promise!).

This month, we released a collection of updates that will continue to help you build context around your workday.

What’s new on Qatalog: October 2021

A roundup of new features and capabilities our team has been working on.

The phenomenon of Zoom fatigue is real. It was real when everyone shifted to working from home, and it's just as real now as we graduate to the in-between of hybrid, remote, and in-person.&nbsp;
A strange new reality has surfaced where employees are having video conferencing while working with others in person. And those who were excited about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/27/return-to-work-in-person-hybrid/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">returning to office camaraderie</a> have been met with a very different experience than they're used to. Among still present COVID-19 concerns, companies are encouraging their employees to hold video calls with their colleagues that occupy the same office. For example, three people on the same call could be in three different conference rooms.&nbsp;
Most of our work time is still being spent in isolation, whether we're in the office or not.&nbsp;
This new situation is just one of the many frustrations that have arisen with the ongoing use of video conferencing. We are all feeling varying levels of exhaustion and burnout from looking at our coworkers, and ourselves, through a screen. <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Stanford researchers</a> back up this sense of Zoom fatigue and offer four possible explanations for it:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Eye contact: There is an excessive amount of highly intense eye contact on Zoom calls because everyone is looking at everyone else, whether they are speaking or not, for the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/meetings-for-remote-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">entire duration of the meeting.</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Seeing yourself: We don&rsquo;t look at ourselves in the mirror during in-person meetings, so it feels unnatural to see that little square profile while Zooming. We may become critical of ourselves and experience heightened self-consciousness.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Reduced mobility: Movement is limited when we are on-screen, and we don't have to walk to a new conference room for our next meeting.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Higher cognitive load: We have to work harder at nonverbal communication on Zoom calls.</li>
</ul>
Video conferencing is still a great tool and has been a work-saver during the pandemic. It has allowed us to leverage virtual interactions to form connections, collaborate, and accelerate productivity. But it doesn&rsquo;t ease the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-run-effective-meetings/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">challenge of meetings</a> and adds its own set of frustrations.&nbsp;
<h2>What apps are doing to our productivity</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">App fatigue</a> is not limited to only video conferencing. Many of our existing tools are improving the way we work in certain areas, but not aligning our teams or providing the connectivity layer distributed teams need.&nbsp;
As a result, our brains are working harder to make up for all the lost context. There have been plenty of studies about productivity levels and working from home, but in this <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2021-56/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">University of Chicago study</a>, productivity decreased while working hours increased. It cited that more people were spending time on coordinating activities, decreasing <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/tools-that-unlock-creativity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">focus and deep work time.</a>
In Qatalog&rsquo;s <a href="https://assets.qatalog.com/language.work/qatalog-2021-workgeist-report.pdf">Workgeist Report</a>, people reported having to interrupt at least two people to find what they need up to five times a day. Even with tools designed to find what we need, 54% of people say that applications can sometimes make it harder to find information. 
<h2>A solution to app fatigue</h2>
Earlier this year, Zoom&rsquo;s CEO <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/09/13/zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-new-hybrid-office-tools/?sh=3fe3b2e75168" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Eric Yuan</a> claimed he was suffering from his own case of Zoom fatigue after having 19 consecutive meetings.
So, the next time you&rsquo;re dreading a day of never-ending Zoom calls, take a page from Yuan&rsquo;s playbook and don&rsquo;t schedule back-to-back meetings. Leave yourself time in between to revive, recap, and reset. One actionable tip we've seen (and implemented at Qatalog) is having at least one "No Meeting Day" a week.&nbsp;
For your other app-related work fatigue, minimize the time spent searching, scouring, and pinging by adopting a work hub. If you use Asana for project management and Google Drive for file creation, integrate both into Qatalog to bring them both into context. Information should be accessible, and once it is, you can bring structure back into your day-to-day.

Zoom fatigue. We've all had it at this point. But Zoom is far from the only tool that is leaving us exhausted and burnt-out.

Tool exhaustion doesn’t stop with Zoom fatigue

Focus is about unlocking our creative potential. Deep work begins when we&rsquo;re immersed in something challenging. And it's often where we master our craft and produce work of real value, the stuff we&rsquo;re proud of that brings us back to the job.&nbsp;&nbsp;
But the typical workplace promotes context-switching and drains this healthy cognitive function.&nbsp;
Context switching happens when you move quickly from one task to the next, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">but it comes as an interruption</a>. This can be person-based, like a co-worker pinging you for an update they need right now, or app-based, where you have to switch from a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project-management tool</a> to a goals spreadsheet in order to get all the information you need.&nbsp;
In a study run by <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog and Cornell University</a>, 45% of survey respondents said context switching makes them less productive, and 43% said it is very tiring to constantly switch between tools and communications channels.&nbsp;
Focus is needed for creativity. And focus looks different for everyone. For me, I like to have my headphones in, window open, and everything on do not disturb. That&rsquo;s when I can truly achieve that &ldquo;flow&rdquo; or deep work state.&nbsp;
At work, I&rsquo;ve been able to communicate this with my team. And as a company, we&rsquo;ve communicated a few working model pillars that enable everyone to find their focus &mdash; starting with flexibility.
<h2>Flexibility is needed for focus</h2>
When each team member is equipped for flexibility, they have the freedom to pursue their focus.&nbsp;
Deep work has become less and less easy to find in the maze of tasks and apps we&rsquo;ve adopted. Because I have the freedom to arrange my workload and schedule in a way that prioritizes my deep work, I don&rsquo;t have to restrict my creativity. And as a designer, that is absolutely necessary to get my job done well.&nbsp;
Focus can be hard to measure. You understand when it cannot be achieved, which looks like an interruption and feels like jogging up a never-ending hill, but it can be hard to showcase the value of focus until a project reaches completion.&nbsp;
However, flexibility is easily measured through <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/autonomy-and-employee-engagement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">team autonomy</a>. In getting to know your team, you&rsquo;ll very quickly understand if you are trusted enough to get your work done autonomously or not.&nbsp;
Granted, to have healthy autonomy you need enough intrinsic motivation to take initiative on your own. You need resources that help you independently analyze, evaluate, and strategize. You must adopt self-management methods that enable you to adapt to changes and manage their impacts. All of this is made easier <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">with a work hub.</a>&nbsp;
<h2>Operate autonomously with trust</h2>
When I was starting out in this industry as a designer at Wise, I had a team and managers that fully encouraged me to build my design skills, but they also taught me how to manage my time in a corporate setting and the importance of saying no.
Becoming a designer for a fast-moving startup can be quite overwhelming. There are a lot of different projects that you&rsquo;re pulled into at once, and everyone wants their deliverables to be ready yesterday. Plus, when you&rsquo;re building a brand, you need to set aside creative time to make sure your brand system stays aligned with company direction and your creatives are growing at the same pace you are. 
At <a href="https://wise.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Wise </a>(previously TransferWise), the work of the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/wisedesign/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">design team</a> was very autonomous. Everyone had the opportunity to collaborate but each project had specific owners who would manage the timeline of deliverables, stakeholders, and establish what success looked like. Wise being a 2000+ person company meant the feedback culture was constant and intense. So I had to learn how to justify my designs and rationale quickly, in order to not be compromising on the quality of the design.&nbsp;
What helped me thrive in this environment was the trust that was given to us on day one. It actually surprised me at first how much ownership I was given, but it allowed me to feel valued and empowered. If you were part of the team, it was understood that you knew how to do good work, and having that sort of trust as a creative is necessary to taking the design risks needed to evolve a growing brand.
When trust is added to the equation, employees have the freedom to speak up, take risks, and fail. And how else is a company supposed to grow?&nbsp;
We talk a lot about trust at Qatalog as well. If you have a fully distributed team working across time zones, you need to trust that your team is supporting you and the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-design-system/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work you&rsquo;re doing.</a> Luckily, I collaborate with a group of people <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/why-we-built-qatalog/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">who care about our product and our mission </a>&mdash; but we also have a <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> to keep everything transparent and accessible.&nbsp;
<h2>Coordinate and cooperate with a work hub</h2>
Not all technology promotes context switching. Yes, software in the typical workplace causes disorganization, interruption, and frustration &mdash; which all cause a drag on our creativity.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve worked with a lot of different apps, project management tools, design files, project briefs, random documents, Google sheets&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;everything under the sun. And as a designer, I find myself uniquely positioned so that I assist every team by working horizontally across them all, meaning I have to be familiar with all of their apps, tools, files, briefs...you get the idea.
Moments of creativity happen when different teams with different perspectives come together. But our disjointed work environment makes it harder for us to work on projects cohesively. A work hub becomes your digital office space that allows teams to share and coordinate work. It takes pressure off of individual employees by making accessibility and accountability the norm. And it leaves room for that perfect deep work time. You know the kind: where everything is going right, the sun is shining, and you haven&rsquo;t been pulled away from your focus.
Qatalog&rsquo;s work hub helps me manage information and the context that surrounds it. It helps keep my work accessible to other teams, and vice versa. That way I&rsquo;m not designing in a silo, or my designs aren&rsquo;t being implemented in a way they aren&rsquo;t supposed to. There are checks and balances built-in with a work hub in a way that allows everyone to coordinate effectively, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-blocks-of-remote-teamwork/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">without endless meetings or messages back and forth.</a>&nbsp;
Everything at work should be linked. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">And with a work hub</a>, everything can be.

Unlocking creativity in the workplace requires focus, trust, and a work hub that enables collaboration. Eliminate context switching and get that deep work done.

Tools that unlock creativity | Qatalog blog

Focus is about unlocking our creative potential. Deep work begins when we’re immersed in something challenging. And it's often where we master our craft and produce work of real value, the stuff we’re proud of that brings us back to the job.

Tools that unlock creativity

People first, corporations second. That's the way companies should be operating nowadays. The new world of work has offered autonomy, flexibility, trust, focus, and belonging to workers everywhere. When companies don't rise to that standard &mdash; they are at risk of falling behind the competition.&nbsp;
I wanted to uncover the truth behind the management, access, sharing, and creation (MASC) of information in a software-enabled workplace where professionals work in distributed teams.
<a href="https://assets.qatalog.com/language.work/qatalog-2021-workgeist-report.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog teamed up with Cornell University</a> to get a better understanding of tacit knowledge in respect to the modern workplace.&nbsp;
They looked at how you use internal knowledge, such as cognitive learning, mental models, and technical skills to make high-quality decisions. The 1000 participants were asked about how they organized information, made it available, and passed it on to generate practical and creative ideas at work.
The three separate surveys revealed that 62% agree there is a reduction in opportunities to collaborate with others with a shift to remote work. And yet, the majority of knowledge workers aren't willing to return to the office and go back to the old methods of collaboration.&nbsp;
Our <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener">slew of software tools</a> that are theoretically supposed to connect us aren&rsquo;t helping. We're drowning in the noise and struggling to find focus in the workplace.&nbsp;
But more than that &mdash; our companies require a mindset shift. And since companies don't have brains, that responsibility falls to our leaders.&nbsp;
<h2>Trust makes flexibility possible</h2>
How does your team perceive trust when it comes to the workplace? It's not just about being reliable. It's about having mutual respect and confidence developed due to faith in each individual's expertise. And that is reinforced with consistently fulfilled expectations.
When you have aligned and managed performance expectations, every member knows their objectives and how they need to achieve them. And they provide support to each other to make that happen.
Enabling complete transparency for your team when they're working together on projects also increases their ability to be flexible and trust each other. If everyone's apps are and shared tools are part of a streamlined <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener">work hub</a>, their workflow is improved.
Empower your team and reduce micromanagement by increasing independent work tasks. What decisions can you make without approval? What can they do without your consent? Demonstrate which tasks have the highest priority. Then let them know which tasks need a supervisor and what they can manage individually.
In a remote environment, the lines between personal and professional lives can become blurred. There is no "buffer zone" of leaving work. It can lead to your team feeling they have no safe space when getting feedback. If employees think you are going above and beyond when it comes to considering them being empathetic and vulnerable, they will respond with more ideas, pose more questions and give more feedback. And in turn, they will feel more valued.
Ask these questions when you are considering the levels of trust in your team:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your team members have confidence in their support of each other's goals?&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do they feel valued enough by their supervisor to ask questions safely and take smart risks?&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Empowering flexibility in your people-first team</h2>
Now that your team has flexibility created through trust, how can you manage this optimally?
A remote work environment needs to be managed with an agreement of expectations. Make sure your team understands the boundaries and implications of your remote work policy schedule, and they have reviewed the agreement.&nbsp;
And yes, while flexibility does have a degree of autonomy and self-management, your team members need the right resources to do this efficiently and effectively. You can provide this through <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a work hub</a> that enables easy access to solutions and answers so they can overcome hurdles independently.
Provide an <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-definitive-guide-to-async-communication/" rel="follow noopener">asynchronous digital infrastructure</a> with your software tools that can be utilized regardless of time or region.
When work location is global, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-digital-office-in-a-hybrid-world/" rel="follow noopener">a recorded communication charter</a> is also integral to the organization. Your cultural standards need to be aligned so your team members are unified and can fulfill expectations, irrespective of time or place.
Ask these questions when you are assessing flexibility for your people first team:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your team members have the autonomy necessary to manage their tasks and schedules?&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Is anyone's productivity dependent on certain people, places, or times?&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Flexibility enables focus</h2>
When your team has focus, it can unlock their true creative potential. But did you know context-switching can drain cognitive function? And this can be very tiring for team members.&nbsp;
In Qatalog&rsquo;s research, 89% of respondents said they believe their company thinks they can find all or most of what they need on the company system.&nbsp;
But in reality, 7 in 10 people (69%) report that finding the information to do their job is time-consuming.&nbsp;
Create a work-life balance that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-employee-experience/" rel="follow noopener">enables your team members to unplug and recharge.</a> And make it clear what is expected of individuals when responding outside of those hours.
Give your team space to create mental energy to participate in creative and innovative processes. While it's great to get good results, too much pressure to deliver can actually be detrimental to performance.&nbsp;
Delegate fairly by using metrics in your project management system to measure assignments.
Ask these questions when you are assessing focus for your people first team:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Are there specific tools or channels that indicate an emergency? (This can be a signal deep work can commence, and you can silence all other channels)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do we ever lose time or concentration looking for specific files or information? If so, are there commonalities between the types of resources that get lost?&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Focus makes belonging possible</h2>
One of the critical aspects of "company culture," which is hard to imitate with a remote workforce, is the lack of proximity from being together in the same space. That sense of belonging and security that you get when interacting with each other physically and personally face to face. But does that mean you are truly unified?
If you have a positive, transparent culture that encourages interaction, praise, and reward, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/keeping-virtual-teams-connected/" rel="follow noopener">proximity in person is not essential.</a>
By regularly encouraging <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/redistribution-of-credit/" rel="follow noopener">public recognition and celebration</a> on a virtual platform, you can recreate that sense of community.
Your remote work environment also allows you to have a greater diversity of individuals and access to ideas, skills, and experiences. And with these different working styles and cultural perspectives, you can increase the capabilities of your team and company.
However, it is essential to note that without stopping by someone's desk to check in on how they are, it can sometimes be challenging to assess how your team members are feeling. But by creating a system of signals and various communication methods, you can empower employees to illustrate how they feel.&nbsp;
Ultimately, you need to unite your team through a common cause to create that sense of belonging. When everyone is working together towards the same goal, their shared experience will make them feel more connected than spending time together in an office environment.
Ask these questions when you are assessing belonging for your people first team:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your team members feel valued and appreciated?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Which tasks, projects, or brainstorming sessions would it be helpful for your team to work on together using interactive screen sharing and video calls</li>
</ul>
<h2>Wrap up: leading people-first</h2>
When your team shares trust, they can embrace a flexible working environment irrespective of whether they are in the same place or working simultaneously. And the flexibility that comes with that means they can arrange their workloads to fit their optimum creativity and productivity.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/autonomy-and-employee-engagement/" rel="follow noopener">Giving your team autonomy</a> doesn't mean they are being left to fend for themselves. Ultimately focus can lead to space for deep work and collaboration.
And when your team is focused and has space to be creative, they feel more unified. Your team will have a sense of belonging, which means they will trust each other to a higher level.
This blog was based on Qatalog&rsquo;s research with Cornell University. You can find the full report, as well as the Modern Work Index <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">here. </a>

Learn how to shift to a people-first way of working using trust, flexibility, and focus in place of legacy working model thinking.

Trust, flexibility, & focus in the workplace | Qatalog

The importance of trust, flexibility, and focus in the workplace

A couple of years into working remotely I realized the most often overlooked challenge remote teams had was poor <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-share-updates-with-your-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">knowledge management</a>. Our team&rsquo;s communication was scrappy, we never knew what a team member was working on unless we asked, and when it came time for project updates, there was a massive amount of information and docs to sort through.&nbsp;
After talking to other remote workers, it hit me: we weren&rsquo;t the only ones dealing with these hurdles.&nbsp;
All teams are built on top of <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/becoming-a-world-class-knowledge-worker/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">shareable information</a>. Most of the time, it's the access to that information that stops teams from aligning and building a replicable documentation structure.&nbsp; Work, team cohesion, and client relationships all play a part in this. But most times, juggling everything can lead to teams feeling disjointed.
Building a remote team involves trust, structure, and accessibility. But each of those pillars should be introduced through the culture, tech stack, and elements that create your organization's foundation.
<h2>Remote teamwork requires more than just shifting to a virtual workspace</h2>
Most remote teamwork efforts were built on top of a single aspect: switching all operations to the virtual office. However, we&rsquo;re beginning to find the cracks in this hasty approach. If we don&rsquo;t specify how remote and hybrid teams need different processes, eventually we&rsquo;ll be stuck in the awkward teenager years of the hybrid/remote transition.&nbsp;
For example, management looks different for remote teams. And <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/07/remote-managers-are-having-trust-issues" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">many managers aren&rsquo;t prepared to lead remote employees long-term</a>. This isn&rsquo;t anyone&rsquo;s fault. Managers don&rsquo;t perfect remote leadership through osmosis, they need training and programming to help them through the transition.
Your regular office practices also won&rsquo;t work for the team members who come from different places and backgrounds. If your company has used the opportunity of remote to hire employees from different parts of the country, or even the world &mdash; you&rsquo;re tapping into new cultures, markets, and types of personalities.&nbsp;
We&rsquo;ve been doing remote for a while now. And still, we&rsquo;re getting so much of it wrong. Here are some concrete tips to build your remote teamwork that won&rsquo;t have your working model collapsing as soon as a problem arises.&nbsp;
<h2>Enhance teamwork with these 4 remote collaboration techniques</h2>
<h3>1. Establish a remote communication charter</h3>
We&rsquo;ve <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-definitive-guide-to-async-communication/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">gone over how companies like Doist and InVision</a> use communication charters that are in use as early as the onboarding stage. These charters provide vital guidelines for defining synchronous vs. async communication. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">You can document</a> your preferred communication methods and rules and later present them to new hires and existing team members alike.
Collaboration can&rsquo;t exist without communication. And for remote teams, having guidelines on when to send emails versus a Slack can help new hires get used to your organization&rsquo;s preferences (they&rsquo;re probably different from wherever that new hire came from).
The <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-digital-office-in-a-hybrid-world/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote communication charter</a> also goes beyond internal collaboration. It outlines how team members can interact on social media, what they can share, and how the organization as a whole communicates with the general public.
<h3>2. Set aside time for team building</h3>
Informal interactions, like asking about someone&rsquo;s day or grabbing lunch over a conference call, builds community. Remotely, it&rsquo;s hard to have these types of conversations without deliberate planning <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/keeping-virtual-teams-connected/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">so don&rsquo;t be afraid to schedule them</a>, or even set goals around talking to team members you are less likely to interact with day-to-day.&nbsp;
Team building plays a pivotal point in helping employees feel like they&rsquo;re a solid part of the team and keeping them with your company for years. After all, the key to building a strong foundation for remote teamwork and ensuring no knowledge is lost is to retain your people.
<h3>3. Adopt a work hub</h3>
Under a work hub, your team can work efficiently and effortlessly.&nbsp;
There are many things a work hub can do for your organization, including packaging your teams, documents, projects, and goals under one connected roof. By structuring your company&rsquo;s information in an accessible way, you can spend less time in meetings, giving internal updates, and updating those spreadsheets hidden away in Google Drive.&nbsp;
You can also:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Align team members on goals throughout the entire lifecycle</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Eliminate manual processes through <a href="https://qatalog.com/workflows/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">workflows</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Find files, messages, and even code snippets across any app you&rsquo;re using</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Connect with the right people by immediately finding out who&rsquo;s in charge of a task and even getting to know more about their talents and hobbies</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Put an end to context switching and keep all documentation under a single dashboard</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Catch up on work after a long break with tagged updates and milestones</li>
</ul>
<h3>4. Prioritize accountability&nbsp;</h3>
No remote worker should ever be left behind. This is a core value all remote teams should strive to achieve on two levels.&nbsp;
First, you&rsquo;re looking to make every person feel welcomed on the team. Isolation and loneliness are common occurrences that can lead to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">people feeling less visible</a> and straying away from your culture as a whole.
From a work perspective, assign clear roles to every employee so they&rsquo;ll take ownership of their KPIs. Team members should also have full control over the projects they&rsquo;re in charge of so they&rsquo;ll feel valued and get a chance to grow professionally. When accountability and visibility of work streams are prioritized, a remote worker is less likely to feel siloed or disconnected from the team.&nbsp;
<h2>The best remote collaboration technique is ultimately still communication</h2>
Effective communication remains the liaison between remote teams. And there&rsquo;s always some extra room for improvements when it comes to how you store information and how easy it is for the team to access it.
A work hub is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">your single source of truth</a> so you can manage all projects while hitting deadlines without the manual effort. However, remember that remote teamwork should be built to become an integrated part of your culture. This way, new employees can always adapt without the hassle of a disjointed workplace &mdash; be it a remote or hybrid one.

Techniques that can take the information overload off your team and ensure remote teamwork efficiency in the long run.

4 building blocks of remote teamwork | Qatalog blog

The 4 building blocks of remote teamwork

Are you ready to hear about a corporate culture no-brainer that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/keeping-virtual-teams-connected/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">transforms team dynamics?</a>
The number one reason <a href="https://www.15five.com/blog/top-10-reasons-employees-leave-jobs-infographic/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">employees leave their jobs</a> is due to dissatisfaction with their bosses. And the number one reason employees are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/here-s-no-1-reason-why-employees-quit-their-jobs-ncna1020031" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">dissatisfied with their bosses</a> is due to lack of recognition. Last but not least, the number one reason employees feel a <a href="https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/bad-boss-index-the-worst-boss-behaviors-according-to-employees-infographic/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">lack of recognition</a> is due to their bosses getting the credit for their own contributions.
It stands to reason then, that we could plug some massive <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-employee-experience/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">holes in employee retention</a> and satisfaction by simply giving credit where credit&rsquo;s due. Pleasant as that sounds, it&rsquo;s an extremely subjective and nearly unenforceable policy. No, we need something fairer, more contagious, and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">easier to document</a>.
It&rsquo;s called Redistribution of Credit, and it&rsquo;s fueled by a simple principle that reminds all employees to give more than they take.
One of society&rsquo;s great problems &mdash; and not just in business &mdash; is the tendency towards <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2019/01/28/dont-be-a-hero-a-new-take-on-teamwork/?sh=ef3444239e1a" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">hero worship</a>. We gravitate toward the idea that one person must be the focal point of any success, especially if that person is already seen as successful. These people accumulate the wealth of credit, and in doing so, gain <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workload-management-snowball-and-the-meteor/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">outsized influence over the organization</a> and its priorities.
To put it another way: your boss may not be actively stealing credit&hellip; we just tend to foist it upon them and let it pile up. The flipside, though, is just as counterproductive: the reason we find ourselves rummaging through piles of resumes to find those junior and mid-level unicorns is that they don&rsquo;t get credit (in media), or are afraid to take credit (in resumes) for their achievements. Across the board, it&rsquo;s a misalignment of influence vs. value.
<h2>How redistribution of credit works</h2>
Redistribution of credit is a habit we develop.&nbsp;
This is what it looks like: when you&rsquo;re being credited for any performance or achievement, redirect that praise by publicly crediting the most-deserving teammate you can think of who isn&rsquo;t you. When that person has the credit bestowed on them, they must seek out another deserving teammate.
The RoC process goes on like this until the recognition subsides, or the last teammate to receive praise sees no reason to pass it on. The rub here is that being the one holding onto the credit in a &ldquo;give more than you take&rdquo; culture is actually a bit embarrassing and unbecoming because everyone else expects that any significant amount of credit will keep moving down through all of its contributors.
<h2>What redistribution of credit does for culture</h2>
Besides reducing turnover and burnout, Redistribution Of Credit typically delivers a few other desirable outcomes &mdash; many of which are absolutely in the boss&rsquo; best interest:
<ol>
<li> Reduces the silo syndrome. As more employees <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-could-be-too-much-of-a-team-player-1532352464" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">take on cross-functional responsibilities</a>, it only makes sense to have a model for recognition that ensures efficiency and harmony.</li>
<li> Improves internal motivation. Praise nurtures pride in ownership, which in turn fuels an employee&rsquo;s internal sense of accountability. Arguably, the mental model here is to give your people so much credit that they feel guilty about it</li>
<li> Raises the bar for competitors. Employees who rarely get their due credit are more readily influenced by external praise; this could be something as simple as hearing from a client or vendor that &ldquo;we could really use someone with your skills.&rdquo; The best way to protect your people from being poached is to make sure they know where they&rsquo;re valued.</li>
<li> Exposes underdeveloped leadership. When someone isn&rsquo;t passing along credit in a &ldquo;give more than you take&rdquo; culture, it shows &mdash; and it&rsquo;s not pretty. What makes it even more blatant is the ease with which <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">documentation culture</a> can enable other employees to circumvent a selfish manager in order to properly praise the subordinates. When paired with 360&deg; reviews, unfit supervisors are quickly exposed here.</li>
<li> Makes management more accessible. Hero managers are increasingly pass&eacute;, thankfully. Part of being a great facilitating leader comes in breaking down the glass ceilings in hierarchical organizations, and RoC embodies this discipline by letting positive messages <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-productive-product-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">mingle among teammates of all seniority levels</a>.</li>
</ol>
Unsurprisingly, what makes Redistribution of Credit relevant now more than ever is the shift towards digital working environments and <a href="https://qatalog.com" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hubs</a>. Spontaneous one-on-one praise, or credit redirected within a closed meeting, is noble in its intent but limited in its amplitude. To form cultural habits, you need RoC to resonate throughout the org. You need others to have an opportunity to pile on and participate. You need the breadcrumbs of credit to live on for posterity. Redistribution of Credit has been a best practice for decades, but the modern distributed workforce is where it flourishes.

Redistributing credit where it belongs improves retention, exposes underdeveloped leadership, and promotes true transparency.

Redistribution of credit | Qatalog blog

Read up on one of the easiest, most contagious, and most rewarding habits in healthy corporate culture — and why it shines in the new age of work hubs.

Give more than you take: what redistribution of credit means for corporate culture

The world of work is dynamic and ever-changing. It's never stagnant, and every company has its own environment and ways of adapting to new employee needs, workplace trends, and shifting working models. 
Staying up to date on new developments is critical to understanding where our work is heading. We&rsquo;ve heard a lot about hybrid, remote, and flexible working models. We&rsquo;ve seen a lot of news about changing technologies, more transparency, and going-back-to-work trends because every new change impacts what we do day-to-day and how we interact with the people around us.&nbsp;
We&rsquo;ve compiled a list of relevant remote and hybrid work statistics in 2021 that we&rsquo;ve returned to over and over again. We hope that these stats allow you to connect with your colleagues, leaders, and customers as we navigate shifting sentiments about staying at home, going to the office, or adopting new tools.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>Remote work statistics 2021</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">30% said they were more productive and engaged working from home. (<a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/key-economic-facts-about-covid-19/">University of Chicago</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">16% of companies globally are fully remote. (<a href="https://resources.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work">Owl Labs</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">73% of employees want flexible remote work options to stay. (<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work">Microsoft</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">57% of British workers want to be able to work from home. (<a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2021/04/13/one-five-want-work-home-full-time-after-pandemic">YouGov</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Women with child-care needs are 32% less likely to leave their job if they can work remotely. (<a href="https://www.catalyst.org/reports/remote-work-burnout-productivity/">Catalyst</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">As of February 2021, 6.9% of Indeed job postings cited remote work as an option, compared with 2.9% in January 2020. (<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-16/remote-work-listings-in-u-s-doubled-in-year-job-site-finds">Indeed</a>)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hybrid work statistics 2021</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/VxPvL5XRQOX5UxyFEtQ0" alt="undefined" />
<ul>
<li>75% of executive leaders believe they are already operating within a culture of flexibility, yet only 57% of employees say that their organizational culture embraces flexible work. (<a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/">Gartner</a>)</li>
<li>66% of leaders say their company is considering redesigning office space for hybrid work. (<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work">Microsoft</a>)</li>
<li>71% of managers were surprised by remote workers&rsquo; productivity. (<a href="https://hoxby.com/blog/covid-19-remote-working-survey-results">Hoxby</a>)</li>
<li>51% of employers support the hybrid work model, while only 5% mention fully remote work as a possibility. (<a href="https://www.apollotechnical.com/hybrid-working-statistics/">Remote work &amp; compensation pulse survey</a>)</li>
<li>Hybrid work models are used by 63% of high-growth companies.&nbsp;</li>
<li>A hybrid model that works for all generations may be a challenge: three in four Gen Zers (74%) want more opportunities to collaborate with colleagues face-to-face, a higher percentage than Gen Xers (66%) and Baby Boomers (68%).</li>
<li>83% of 9,326 workers surveyed say they prefer a hybrid model &mdash; in which they can work remotely at least 25% of the time. (<a href="https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consulting/future-work?c=acn_glb_talentandorganimediarelations_12163686&amp;n=mrl_0521">Accenture</a>)</li>
<li>After COVID-19 92% of people surveyed expect to work from home at least 1 day per week and 80% expected to work at least 3 days from home per week.</li>
<li>Around 42% of leaders believe hybrid working boosts employee wellbeing. (<a href="https://resources.owllabs.com/state-of-hybrid-work/2021/europe">Owl Labs</a>)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Return-to-office statistics</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">71% of executives agree leadership at their organization has expressed a preference for work conditions to return to their prepandemic model; only 50% of employees heard that same message. (<a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/">Gartner)</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">66% of organizations are <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/executives-split-over-timeline-of-return-to-normal/">delaying reopening</a> their offices due to new COVID-19 variants. (<a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/08-31-2021-gartner-hr-poll-finds-two-thirds-of-organizations-are-delaying-workplace-reopening-due-to-new-covid-19-variants">Gartner</a>)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Employee experience statistics 2021</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/kBXBYuhHSQi6qjoAVR64" alt="undefined" />
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Only 41% of employees agree that senior leadership acts in their best interest &mdash; compared to 69% of executives.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Only 47% of employees believe leadership takes their perspective into consideration when making decisions, compared to 75% of executives. (<a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/">Gartner</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">20% of the global workers surveyed said their employer stopped caring about their work-life balance, which left 54% feeling overworked and 39% saying they were downright exhausted. (<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work">Microsoft</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">55% of people in the workforce said they are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months. (<a href="https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/job-seekers-survey-august-2021/">Bankrate</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Over 97% of employers report they won&rsquo;t reduce pay for partially remote employees. However, 21% of employers would adjust their salaries with respect to an employee&rsquo;s contribution and geographical location. (<a href="https://www.salary.com/">Salary.com)</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Workplace tech statistics 2021</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Technology traps knowledge: employees are digging through cloud storage systems, scouring message channels, and cycling through tabs, wasting around 59 minutes per day.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Apps restrict access to knowledge: 54% of people say that applications can sometimes make it harder to find information and 58% of people report that they&rsquo;re not certain all departments use the same online apps.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">49% of people report concerns that important information will get lost and one in two are uncertain the information will reach the intended audience.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">43% of people report spending too much time switching between different online tools and applications, and 48% report making mistakes because they can't keep track of information stored across online tools and apps. (<a href="https://language.work/study/">Language.work</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Only 66% of employees agree they have the technology they need to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/9-tips-for-managing-remote-employees/">effectively work remotely</a>, compared to 80% of executives. (<a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/">Gartner</a>)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Only 38 percent of Europe&rsquo;s SMBs are planning to invest in new tech. (<a href="https://resources.owllabs.com/state-of-hybrid-work/2021/europe">Owl Labs</a>)</li>
</ul>

22 remote and hybrid work statistics that you need to know in 2021.

Remote and hybrid work statistics 2021 | Qatalog

22 remote and hybrid work statistics you need to know.

Remote and hybrid work statistics 2021

There is a place that good ideas go to die. It&rsquo;s on the last slide of a presentation.&nbsp;
This slide is usually titled something like &ldquo;Misc. Ideas.&rdquo; It includes a few random thoughts that were thrown in just in case the big ideas preceding it are met with a thumbs down.
The first time leadership sees out-of-the-box ideas should not be tucked away at the end of a presentation. They belong at the beginning. Ideas won&rsquo;t succeed in reaching the finish line if you don&rsquo;t take the right steps out of the starting gate.&nbsp;
<h2>It&rsquo;s a risky business</h2>
To think out-of-the-box means to explore creative and unusual ideas. The term is thought to have origins in the Nine Dots Puzzle. It was included in the 1914 Cyclopedia of Puzzles and management consultants later used it as a metaphor for the clich&eacute; phrase.
The puzzle was meant to encourage eliminating boundaries. But when we start thinking outside the lines of conventional thinking, there are bound to be risks involved. Consider these pros and cons when bringing ideas that push the envelope to your team:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What impact will this idea have on the business&rsquo;s present and future?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How does it stack up versus the competition?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What does it mean for your own personal success?</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hope is not a strategy</h2>
No matter how unconventional the idea, it still needs to generally fit with an organization&rsquo;s overall objectives, budget, and audience.&nbsp;
This is why <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/project-proposal/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project briefs</a> are so important. A project brief gives you the chance to outline your strategy, dependencies, and deadlines early on.&nbsp;
For any new idea, context and background are crucial for building your justification on why it&rsquo;s worth time and budget spend. Even if your idea doesn&rsquo;t require capital to get off the ground, it will require some sort of attention and dependencies from across your team.&nbsp;
Everyone loves a good story, and storytelling can be a beneficial way to anchor a strategy for brand-new ideas. Start with gathering data. Facts and figures can make people&rsquo;s eyes glaze over, so pull key insights from the data and form them into a story.&nbsp;
Then take the &lsquo;&rsquo;ell me like I&rsquo;m five&rsquo; approach. Break down the strategy into very simple terms that are easy to comprehend. You don&rsquo;t want your stakeholders to get caught up in jargon or complicated wording.&nbsp;
<h2>The early bird is special</h2>
To get buy-in for your creative ideas you must play well with others. This means <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-share-updates-with-your-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">collaborating with stakeholders</a> early on in the process.
If you haven&rsquo;t yet identified the stakeholders for your <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/project-charter/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project idea</a>, you should get up to speed on what they are looking for and what questions they could possibly ask about your strategy.&nbsp;
Everyone likes having their opinion heard and is more willing to support an idea if they feel they have a voice in it. Be open to receiving feedback, even if it&rsquo;s not what you want to hear. Find the right balance between incorporating stakeholders&rsquo; opinions and not letting your original idea get blurred in the process.
<h2>Timing is everything</h2>
Now that you have a strategy formed, it is important to communicate a timeline of when the idea will come to fruition. We live in a world that expects instant results. That Amazon order can be delivered in a few hours. Any movie you want on demand. And every stakeholder wanting to see results generated ASAP.&nbsp;
Err on the cautious side when creating the timeline for your out-of-the-box idea. You want to be realistic and not overpromise and underdeliver. Break down the project scope, build in milestones for deliverables, and establish deadlines.
<h2>Leave a digital paper trail</h2>
Keeping <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">detailed documentation from the start</a> will help to mitigate risks and align expectations. Consider using a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> to keep all your records in one place and encourage ongoing communication.&nbsp;
A work hub gives you a head start in the race to the finish line for your idea. You&rsquo;ll have crucial visibility into all your people, work, and tools. You can search across your files and messages to find exactly what you need at that moment.&nbsp;
The best part is that you&rsquo;ll now have a proven process to revisit again and again for all your future out-of-the-box ideas.

Getting team buy-in on your out-of-the-box ideas involves strategizing and collaborating with stakeholders from the very beginning.

Get support for your out-of-the-box ideas | Qatalog

How to make unconventional ideas come to fruition by strategizing and collaborating from the very beginning.

How to get support for your out-of-the-box ideas

If you've ever been OOO and missed an important meeting, hopefully, you received a recording of that call &mdash; or notes, at the very least. This way, you would have been able to catch up on the content of that meeting without being there in person.
This is a great example of utilizing async tools to catch up on work. But it's also a great example because it showcases that we have the tools at our disposal to make our meetings async, we just have to apply them.
Scheduling real-time meetings for remote teams can be tricky, which is one reason why many remote teams are converting to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-definitive-guide-to-async-communication/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">asynchronous communication</a>. Asynchronous communication is any communication where there&rsquo;s a lag between when the message is sent, and when it&rsquo;s replied to.
Apply this concept to remote meetings, and you get discussions that don&rsquo;t take place in real-time. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-run-effective-meetings/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Async meetings by</a><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-run-effective-meetings/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">pass the small talk and schedule conflicts</a>, skipping right to addressing the meeting topic.
Seems like quite an easy concept, but for the majority of us who are used to having that instant feedback, it can be tough to switch gears. However, I've found that async updates in the form of audio or video recordings are massively helpful since I don't have to schedule my work time around meetings. Instead, I can start my day the way I like and end it by listening to feedback, updates, or calls I needed to catch up on.&nbsp;
<h2>Best practices for remote team meetings:</h2>
<h3>One-on-ones</h3>
To make one-on-ones async, you can talk through your agenda in a video recording, using technology like <a href="https://vimeo.com/" rel="follow">Vimeo</a> or <a href="https://www.loom.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Loom</a>. These videos are especially useful considering they can be revisited. Viewers don&rsquo;t have to worry about taking notes and remembering the details of the meeting, as they&rsquo;ll always have the video to look back on. Additionally, the person recording the video can show their screen, which can help clarify assignments or projects.
Understanding the makeup of your 1:1 will help to determine when they can be synchronous and when you can get away with adopting an async rhythm. For example, in my one-on-ones with a previous manager, we would dedicate our last 1:1 of every month to professional development and feedback. These were extremely helpful for my own growth at the company, but I like to receive written or documented feedback so that I can return to it later. If this meeting had been moved async, I would have much preferred the format and it would have been one less meeting to add to the day's schedule.&nbsp;
The majority of my one-on-ones have remained synchronous. For me, it's helpful to have bi-weekly sync checks in order to correspond in real-time and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. I've been using <a href="https://www.meetwithspot.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Spot</a> to chat with my clients while enjoying the outdoors, but of course Zoom, Slack, and regular calls work just as well.&nbsp;
<h3>Standups</h3>
My team's standups were async long before the word became part of everyone's vocabulary. We used Slack bots to automate questions for the team on Wednesday mornings. These questions helped to prompt what we spoke about in later meetings, but were a great way to bypass that check-in sync time that has the potential to become repetitive and unproductive. These questions looked like:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What did you do yesterday?&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What will you do today?&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Any obstacles in your way?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Anything else to bring up to the team?</li>
</ul>
With async meetings, it&rsquo;s always a good idea to provide a time frame during which you expect answers. For my team's standups, we always sent in our answers around mid-morning. Granted, this would look different for teams that occupy various time zones.&nbsp;
A real-time standup meeting involves getting everyone together to update on a specific project or general team happenings. I tend to think that standups are the most meetingy of the meetings, meaning I'm always grateful when they're moved to an async model because these are the chats that really could have been an email.&nbsp;
 Hopefully, if a synchronous standup meeting ends up on your calendar, it comes with an agenda or a discussion order that prompts participation and productivity. Some other tips for sync standups are:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li>Find the right cadence for these status updates. Odds are, you don't need a standup with your entire team every day, maybe even every week. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Especially if your documentation skills are top-notch.</a>&nbsp;</li>
<li>Determine clear meeting leadership. This could also be a rotating order so that everyone has a chance to show off those leadership skills. Plus, it's good to have someone to go to if you have a question about the agenda or discussion topics. This leads us to &mdash;</li>
<li>Have an agenda. Have a clear agenda that ensures your team knows why this meeting is happening, why it's important, and why it's not an email.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h3>Status and project updates</h3>
A <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/project-summary/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project status update</a> includes information about a specific project across departments. These can sit on their own or be wrapped into standups or other meetings. The goal here is to determine blockers, action items, and give status updates where they're needed. If this is a cross-functional meeting (and most of them are), time can also be spent adding context and background information to inform everyone on timelines.
Here are topics that come up within project updates:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li>Status</li>
<li>Schedule</li>
<li>Action items</li>
<li>Budget</li>
<li>Blockers</li>
<li>Scope issues</li>
</ul>
To give the most relevant information during project updates, you need to know who you're talking to. You can break this down by thinking about your meeting attendees, what they already know, and what they need to know. Focusing on the need-to-know is crucial here.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-share-updates-with-your-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">This is why context is so important for project meetings.</a> Of course you know everything about what you're working on, but not all of that information is necessary for stakeholders to help you make a decision or take action.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">With a work hub</a>, context is woven into the structure of your projects from the very beginning. You can notify your team members about updates through notifications or threads, and continually update your status and goals on an ongoing basis, without having to find space on everyone's calendars.&nbsp;
<h3>Company all-hands</h3>
To hold an asynchronous all-hands meeting, have your presenters record short videos. Your employees will then watch the videos and either ask their questions in a specified location, or in a scheduled synchronous meeting intended only for questions and answers.&nbsp;
Synchronous all-hands meetings have their purpose, but they&rsquo;re hard to pull off virtually. They involve getting the whole crew together for one meeting, which is super hard to schedule. Additionally, virtual meetings typically result in less engagement than in-person meetings, rendering face-to-face time pointless.&nbsp;
<h2>Moving meetings async</h2>
Async meetings are the ideal solution for remote teams seeking flexibility across time zones. The <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/autonomy-and-employee-engagement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">freedom of asynchronous communication empowers employees</a>, allowing them to get their work done in a way that works best for them.&nbsp;
Of course, synchronous communication still has its place in the workplace. Certain situations call for face-to-face conversations (like catching up with employees, brainstorming new ideas, and problem-solving), but balancing async meetings with synchronous check-ins can help your team establish autonomy and get into the deep work zone.&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow">Using a work hub</a> to add a layer of transparency <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/" rel="follow">to your documentation</a> and daily tasks aids in this process by giving your employees the ability to view their expectations, project details, and more at their leisure.

Scheduling real-time meetings for remote teams can be tricky, which is one reason why many remote teams are converting to async meetings.

Meetings for remote teams | Qatalog blog

Scheduling real-time meetings for remote teams can be tricky, which is one reason why many remote teams are converting to an async majority.

Everything you need to know about meetings for remote teams

I&rsquo;ve run operations at Qatalog for two years now and have seen it grow from a few people huddled around a shared office space to over 35 people across 9 countries. In the midst of that growth, I&rsquo;ve had a lot of ideas about how to keep distributed and virtual teams connected and centered around a culture that supports them.&nbsp;
There are a few things that make distributed teams a complicated thing to connect. Firstly, depending on where your company is based &mdash; there are the timezones. It&rsquo;s always somebody&rsquo;s morning, which is lunchtime in another country, and early dinner somewhere else.&nbsp;
Secondly, providers. It&rsquo;s great to send a package home for the team to do an activity together. However, providers are different in different countries, and despite all the planning in the world,&nbsp; you never know if they will arrive on time (or at all!).
Thirdly, finding the balance of asynchronous and synchronous events. During lockdowns and almost all of 2020, we spent a lot of time online and in zoom calls. Zoom is great for seeing everyone on one screen. However, too much time on video calls can be exhausting.
I compare great employee programming with having happy customers. If you want to find out what works for them, you talk to them. You get to know what they expect and want out of company culture. Here are five ways to keep your virtual teams connected:
<h2>1. Adopt tools that enable transparent collaboration</h2>
Trust is difficult. We&rsquo;ve seen this again and again <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">through statistics</a> and differing sentiments between leaders and employees, remote and in-person employees, product and marketing teams, and so on.&nbsp;
Enabling your team to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">collaborate transparently</a> and have visibility into everyone&rsquo;s day-to-day can catalyze teamwork. If your team works well together and has all the tools that enable them to avoid siloes, they are much more likely to get along and enjoy working together.&nbsp;
Building belonging with a <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> empowers employees and enables them to thrive.&nbsp;
<h2>2. Develop team charters</h2>
Team charters are like a manual for how your team operates with your company&rsquo;s mission, goals, and values in mind.&nbsp;
In Qatalog&rsquo;s marketing team charter, the team spells out tenets that they work by, including &ldquo;inspire action&rdquo; and &ldquo;hop off the bandwagon.&rdquo;&nbsp;
You can begin your own team charter by looking at the roles of your team and specifying who is in charge of what workstream. Then you can zoom out on those workstreams and plan out how they can potentially impact team and company goals for the coming quarters or year.&nbsp;
For growing teams, it can be especially helpful to plan out how you see your team expanding in the future.&nbsp;
<h2>3. Plan regular team events</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/xz659DIMTIG7DotECTpm" alt="undefined" />
For me, the most important thing is to see people smiling, talking, and enjoying themselves. We&rsquo;ve done lots of different events: happy hours, master classes, game nights, team breakfast/lunch. Out of all those options, it&rsquo;s drawing games like Pictionary that are the crowd favorite. They always end up with people laughing and joking together, which is always good team building.
<h3>Ideas for virtual team events:</h3>
<ul>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Game time! <a href="http://wordrawapp.com/online_generator.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Pictionary</a> or other drawing games are always a hit, and we also love <a href="https://codenames.game/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Codenames</a>.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Happy hour. Happy hours are a great way to celebrate team milestones. You can also send <a href="https://www.shakerandspoon.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">cocktail kits</a> to your employees or have a <a href="https://www.cocktailcourier.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">specific recipe</a> for everyone to try making together.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Masterclasses. Does someone on your team have the perfect shakshuka recipe? Or someone who knows about origami? Host a masterclass for them to teach the team their expertise. Or, try an <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/s/experiences?af=&amp;c=.pi0.pk113255333253_481540564225_c_303480525523&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwsZKJBhC0ARIsAJ96n3US5KyAV08eN7HFoKzwk7waGx1ACkZ1RMg_bGorAQffYL6LXjT3lbYaAvbEEALw_wcB" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Airbnb virtual experience</a>.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Coffee time. Setting up the <a href="https://slack.com/apps/A11MJ51SR-donut" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Donut app</a> in Slack is a great way for team members to get to know each other. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Team meals. Every two weeks we order food (or send Doordash gift cards) so the team can have breakfast, lunch, or dinner together &mdash; depending on the timezone!</li>
</ul>
</ul>
Even an hour-long gaming event requires planning ahead. Outside of scheduling so the majority can attend, you want to think about event frequency to ensure you aren&rsquo;t being too repetitive.&nbsp;
For the times we&rsquo;ve ordered cocktails for the team to engage in a happy hour, shipment takes about two weeks. For things like this, beginning an events calendar and planning everything out at least a month in advance is a good cadence to get into when you&rsquo;re starting out.&nbsp;
You&rsquo;d also need to take into account that not everyone likes being in the limelight &mdash; some people may just want to join and listen in. And you&rsquo;d need to provide a possibility of meeting up in smaller groups where they may feel more comfortable. That&rsquo;s why set up Donut coffee meetups that give people the possibility to meet in a more relaxed setting without an agenda.&nbsp;
<h2>4. Set aside budget for moments of delight</h2>
Investing in small moments of delight for your team goes a long way. The team is the most valuable asset a company has. Having a team that is diverse, happy in their roles, has fun working, and knows each other &mdash; that's a great cocktail for success.&nbsp;
Having worked as an office manager for many years, I do feel 2020 introduced me to a totally new way of running an office. Sometimes I feel like I am working for a logistics company and my essential tools have become a scale, measuring tape, sending plastic envelopes, customs envelopes and documents, pen, and sellotape.&nbsp;
Every penny we&rsquo;ve spent on swag has been worth it. We recently ordered sweatshirts for the team and people have already started wearing them.&nbsp;
<h2>5. Prioritize team health and mental breaks</h2>
A healthy team is a happy team. If you have leadership that focuses on productivity above all else, it&rsquo;s likely your team will start to see and mirror that.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s important to offer your team benefits such as PTO and ample vacation time so they feel the freedom to take time off when needed. Vacation policies should be well documented and available, so employees can easily access this information. Additionally, mental health benefits have been increasingly popular for companies to offer employees. Here at Qatalog, we offer <a href="https://www.talkspace.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Talkspace</a> to every employee.&nbsp;
Thinking about team health should be a daily thing, not just mentioned every quarter as a reminder to take vacation time. Try taking walking meetings with your team to prioritize time outside and away from your desk, or other fun activities that put an emphasis on your team as human beings, not just worker bees.&nbsp;
<h2>Team building benefits everyone</h2>
The benefits of team building are visible almost immediately. Cultivating a healthy culture with your teammates improves communication, productivity, boosts morale, improves retention, and so on. So add that calendar invite, or simply start polling your team to see what virtual events they&rsquo;d be interested in participating in.

Virtual employee programming helps to connect your team and benefits everything from productivity to culture. Here are some of our tips.

5 ways to keep virtual teams connected | Qatalog blog

The tools, virtual events, budget, and practices your team needs to stay connected.

5 ways to keep virtual teams connected

In-person retros are becoming, well, retro. Like an old-school flip phone, they have become a thing of the past as teams prioritize distributed work.
You&rsquo;ve been doing retrospectives with your team for a long time now. You know they are effective but what you may not realize is that you can&rsquo;t just plunk the same retro into today&rsquo;s modern workplace and expect the same results. Otherwise, virtual retrospectives become boring. You can start to forget the importance of retrospectives and the purpose behind them. Distributed teams need an approach to remote retrospectives that mixes the old with the new.
In practice, this looks like utilizing all the tools at your disposal: video conferencing, agenda-setting, incorporating games to have some fun in what can sometimes be a tense setting, and dedicated time for reflection.&nbsp;
<h2>What is a remote retrospective?</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/yvILwwyeRs8EFh4Hi1pT" />
A retrospective is based on agile methodology. It typically happens at the end of a sprint and offers an opportunity for a team to reflect on how things went. This evaluation is sometimes referred to as a sprint retrospective and is often used by scrum teams.&nbsp;
Think of the remote retrospective as the 2.0 version for today&rsquo;s modern workplace. It&rsquo;s taking all the things you do as part of your in-person retrospective and pivoting it to a distributed team. This process isn&rsquo;t always seamless, but it is worth the effort to continue to keep your team engaged in their work.&nbsp;
According to <a href="https://buffer.com/2021-state-of-remote-work">Buffer&rsquo;s 2021 State of Remote Work</a>, 41% said the way they collaborate and communicate has changed since they started working remotely. Holding regular remote retrospectives helps to solve any communication and collaboration challenges and reinforces a distributed team&rsquo;s productivity and performance.
<h2>Tips for running a remote retrospective meeting</h2>
The goal of a retrospective is for a team to review a project and pinpoint what worked and didn&rsquo;t work, look for areas of improvement, and create a list of action items. It&rsquo;s not enough to just discuss. The real value lies in taking the steps to do better and enact future change.&nbsp;
For a remote or virtual retro to work you need high levels of participation. Sometimes, these meetings aren't structured in a way that enables everyone to raise their hand. Here, the defaults for in-person meeting interactions don't work. Your team isn't in the same room anymore.&nbsp;
Here are some tips for effectively encouraging retrospective participation:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Meet face-to-face: Video is still the best tool to run any sync meetings. And since the retrospective format is usually pretty thought out and agendas are set ahead of time, you can ensure that this meeting is a priority for everyone involved.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Form breakouts: For larger teams, breakout sessions work best for &lsquo;stop-start-continue&rsquo; types of discussions. Groups then share findings with the larger team.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Use a retrospective tool: At Qatalog, the marketing team uses <a href="https://www.parabol.co/">Parabol</a> to guide our sprint retrospectives.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Rotate the schedule: Especially for global teams, change the meeting time to each participant&rsquo;s time zone. You can also record the meeting and share it on your <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/">work hub</a> for all to view.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Randomize responses: If there is an issue where everyone should voice their perspective, try randomizing the speaking or commenting order. This way, everyone gets dedicated time and it isn't just the same two people leading the conversation.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Establish team trust and respect</h2>
A remote retrospective should be a safe virtual space where your team can comfortably vocalize their opinions. Retrospectives can quickly become heated and lead to hurt feelings and lower team morale. This is especially true for remote retrospectives when distributed teams are already feeling disconnected and isolated.
Set a respectful and positive tone for your meeting and others will pick up on that and do the same. Here are some ways to accomplish this:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Greet by name: Make a point to welcome each team member to the meeting and ask how they are doing. This creates a courteous environment from the start and makes them feel seen and heard.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Discuss retrospectives respectfully: Guide your team to interact appropriately and criticize gently. Add elements of positive reinforcement such as a fun ice breaker question or an award for a job well done.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ask your team to prepare talking points: Promote inclusivity and make everyone part of the conversation by asking each of them to contribute their thoughts on the project.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Allow for anonymity: Conduct anonymous polls or ask for feedback submissions ahead of time.</li>
</ul>
We hope this article has inspired you to run a retrospective on your remote retrospectives. A retrospective can be a fun space to gather your team, learn, and reiterate your processes when they aren&rsquo;t working. These are meetings that are important to invest sync time in, because turning feedback into actionable change makes for a productive team.

Your team retrospectives have likely been remote for a while now. Make sure you're running your remote meetings with a strategy and trust built behind them.

How to run a remote retrospective | Qatalog blog

Reinforce your team's productivity and performance with remote retrospectives.

How to run a remote retrospective

When your company has an entirely remote workforce, the key to effective online team collaboration is good communication.&nbsp;
You may not be able to have a weekly stand-up meeting where you all gather in the same physical location, but remote management tools have made it easy to update your team and make sure everyone&rsquo;s on the same page.&nbsp;
But are these tools and meetings actually effective?
There&rsquo;s no denying that there are more digital communication channels available to us than ever before. But research shows that our tools are <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">actually hindering our ability to get work done. </a>
People are uncertain whether to post an update in <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-team-instant-messaging-apps-slack-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a messaging channel</a>, over email, or within another software tool (like a project management application). In fact, <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">around half of workers</a> (49%) say they&rsquo;re concerned that the information they post to their company&rsquo;s online apps and communications channels will get lost in a sea of updates.
Not to mention that we're all tired of synchronous video meetings at this point, so we need to have an async option that provides visibility into our project context.&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/H3tysZjQS6yv0p4CfM4r" alt="undefined" />
So, in a world of synchronous and asynchronous communication channels &mdash; emails, Slack threads, Zoom calls, WhatsApp groups, and more &mdash; let&rsquo;s unpack the tangled web of options for today&rsquo;s remote teams, and look at how a work hub can eliminate the noise that comes with <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/team-updates/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">sharing updates.</a>&nbsp;
<h2>Why are your team updates getting lost?</h2>
The answer is simple: Noise and mistakes.&nbsp;
When trying to access information on their company&rsquo;s online tools, <a href="https://assets.qatalog.com/language.work/qatalog-2021-workgeist-report.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">56% of people said they found themselves</a> needing to ask more than one person for help. This is what causes the unnecessary Slack pings and pointless Zoom calls. On average, people report that the mistakes they make are the result of difficulties accessing information on their company's online tools.
With the myriad communication options available through workspace apps, we&rsquo;re no longer dependent on email (only) to share team updates. Email might still get used for the most &ldquo;official&rdquo; communications, but for a quick project progress report, you can turn to a team messaging app like Slack or Microsoft Teams.&nbsp;
Using these apps, you can set up message threads for different teams and topics. For example, your design team can share a project status update about the latest Facebook Ads campaign on one channel, while another channel is dedicated to onboarding new engineers.
The problem is that these threads tend to have a rapid turnover and essential information can easily get lost. Moreover, the ease of communication they provide can lead to a bombardment of messages that will challenge the attention spans of your team members. Imagine that you went on a lunch break and returned to find 200 messages across 3 channels. How do you know which one to read? Where should you start from?
Providing information to employees should be easier than this. Instead of choosing one of the many ways to keep employees in the loop, or choosing all of them and creating a myriad of notifications and distractions, there should be a centralized work nucleus that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">distributes information to everyone.</a>
<h2>Downsides of having multiple communication channels</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Communication blind-spots: When an update is only shared in a certain channel, it may not reach the whole team. If your developers are focused on GitHub or JIRA but you only post your updates in Slack, some team members might not get the update in time or overlook it completely.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Chaotic message threads: If your company has a culture of exchanging a high volume of messages, important updates get lost in the various thread streams. One study found that employees at large companies are sending over <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18511575/productivity-slack-google-microsoft-facebook">200 Slack messages</a> per week on average&mdash;but even 1,000 in a single day is &ldquo;not an exception&rdquo;.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Dysfunctional cross-functional teams: As a cross-functional team, you&rsquo;re reliant on information sharing between different departments. If key updates get siloed in separate messaging threads it&rsquo;s a challenge for team leads to gather reports and funnel them back up the chain.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Coordination within a global workforce: Further communication complexity arises when you&rsquo;re working with a global team, transcending different languages and time zones. You can&rsquo;t expect a team member on the west coast of the US to see and respond to an update at the same time as someone in Singapore or Hong Kong.
</li>
</ul>
All of these communication problems come at a cost &mdash; not just to the patience or morale of your team (though these are factors that shouldn&rsquo;t be overlooked), but to the operational efficiency and sustainability of your business.
The costs of poorly managed communication include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Lack of transparency: Missed updates can lead to certain team members or departments being left out of the loop, resulting in both loss of trust and loss of focus&mdash;if some departments aren&rsquo;t working to the stated goals of the company.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Communication overload: <a href="https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/a-2-year-stanford-study-shows-astonishing-productivity-boost-of-working-from-home.html">Multiple studies have shown</a> that remote workers are more productive than on-site workers, but this productivity is severely compromised if employees are constantly barraged with messages that they&rsquo;re expected to respond to immediately.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Wasted time: Poorly-timed or misdirected communications mean that information often has to be sent out on multiple occasions before everyone gets the message. This is an inefficient use of time that also results in frustration for team members who must respond to multiple information requests.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Missed learning opportunities: If project reports aren&rsquo;t getting through, chances are that team members won&rsquo;t be able to learn from what went right or wrong during the previous cycle. Mistakes will be repeated, most likely at a financial cost to the business.
</li>
</ul>
<h2>How to keep your team informed</h2>
Do we truly understand how to work async?<a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> 71% of remote workers say</a> that their organization does a good job balancing asynchronous and synchronous work. But this statement is in conflict with some other responses: 70% of organizations default to tools (video, chat, and phone).
Nearly half (48%) of teams would call a meeting before communicating asynchronously. Only 10% default to a visual collaboration tool, while 19% rely on project and task management tools.
So, maybe we don't know how to share information effectively in a hybrid workplace. These tools we've adopted don't fix our communication balance, they just try to patch the existing holes with more avenues for sharing information. A quick fix, but not one that gets to the root of our issue.&nbsp;
<h3>Here are some ways to keep your team in the loop:&nbsp;</h3>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Put messages into context, connected to the right people, teams, and projects. This makes sure it reaches the stakeholders who need to hear it. Just make sure you&rsquo;re reaching them on the right channels&mdash;Slack and emails at least.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Make every keyword in each message searchable. The more communication tools you have, the harder this might become.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Label each message to ensure it gets the right level of attention. For example, as an announcement, a blocker, or a milestone. Getting the right visibility is key for information sharing.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
Cascade information sharing automatically on the right channels and in the right context. Imagine if you could write a project update and share it automatically on the related Slack channel and in the inbox of every project member&mdash;without all the copy and pasting, and definitely without arranging an hour-long video call.
</li>
</ol>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow">A virtual workspace such as Qatalog</a> can integrate your messaging apps so updates are shared in the relevant places, and help you achieve all the points above.
You might use other tactics, such as reducing the volume of messages through processes and rules, scheduling synchronous communication (e.g. video calls) only with an agenda, or using data to determine what is being read and which info your teams are searching for. There might be a better way.
<h4><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">&rarr; What is a work hub?</a></h4>
<h2>Async updates, in-sync employees</h2>
So when you share updates with your team, make it count. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-team-instant-messaging-apps-slack-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Cut down on the noise</a> in your communications and deliver messages exactly when and where they will support &mdash; not challenge &mdash; your team&rsquo;s productivity.

Why are your team updates getting lost? How to share information effectively. Read more in Qatalog Collaboration blog series.

How do you keep your team updated? | Qatalog

When your company has an entirely remote workforce, the key to effective online team collaboration is good communication.

How do you share updates with your team?

This Future of Work Q&amp;A is an exciting one, because we reached out to Allison Whalen, co-Founder and CEO of Parentaly. <a href="http://www.parentaly.com" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Parentaly</a> works with employers to help them optimize their parental leave and early working parenthood policies and programs. Allison works with organizations to level the playing field and has seen a lot of future of work topics come up over and over again with her clients.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3>What is the biggest challenge for organizations you work with as it relates to parental leave, and how are they overcoming it?</h3>
 It&rsquo;s now abundantly clear that companies that want to attract the best talent need to offer more paid parental leave. As a result, many companies have recently increased their paid parental leave from eight or 12 weeks to 16+ weeks. This is wonderful and it&rsquo;s absolutely the way of the future.
But when companies only increase the number of weeks of parental leave &ndash; without providing the support to make the execution of this policy a success &ndash; they suffer major unintended consequences.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Teams and managers struggle to meet their goals in the absence of a key employee. Teammates are overburdened, managers don&rsquo;t know how to navigate the situation, and business results suffer. Worst of all, when the employee returns from parental leave they feel lost and unsupported &ndash; and often quit or suffer career stagnation as a result.
There are many ways to overcome this challenge and build a program to support employees taking parental leave. Solutions include manager training, process guidance, checklists, coverage planning frameworks, career coaching, budget to give spot bonuses to the coverage team or bring in a contractor, a formalized return program that includes re-training and networking, and thoughtful processes around career progression, promotion, and performance reviews in the context of parental leave.
The good news is we have seen that with the right support, parental leave can actually be a positive inflection point for an employee&rsquo;s career. They get to step back and really evaluate their goals and rethink their approach to work in a way that gives them greater energy and commitment going forward.&nbsp;
<h3>How have you seen organizations optimize for distributed/hybrid work? </h3>
The employees who go through our programs (new parents planning for &ndash; or returning from &ndash; parental leave) almost universally love working from home and feel that it has been an &ldquo;equalizer&rdquo; of sorts. They no longer must make a choice between rushing home to see their baby or going to an after-hours event. It&rsquo;s an easier transition especially for breastfeeding mothers to have more privacy at home. Therefore, the conversations we&rsquo;re having now with the employers is how do we make sure that when companies move to a hybrid environment there is still the opportunity for new parents to work from home for a period of time, if not forever?&nbsp; 
<h3>What &ldquo;future of work&rdquo; topics are you paying close attention to? </h3>
There are a few things that I&rsquo;m closely watching and that come up quite a bit with our clients:&nbsp;&nbsp;
<ol>
<li style="list-style-type: none;">
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="2">Moving from full-time work to part-time work, but not letting that impact career progression: how can we ensure employees are able to reduce their hours but still be considered for high priority and intellectually challenging work? How can we ensure the option remains enticing for them to return to full-time work down the road if they choose to do so?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="2">Prevalence of contractors: people starting one-person consulting entities as another way to optimize the part-time or flexible scheduling lifestyle, taking a portfolio approach to your career</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="2">Embracing unconventional work hours: this is so helpful to so many working parents</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="2">Increased frequency of leave of absences: to take care of loved ones, take a sabbatical, etc.</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>What are some practices companies should leave behind? </h3>
First, we need a national paid family leave policy in the US. It&rsquo;s shocking that this does not exist today, and that the vast majority of women not only don&rsquo;t get paid leave but also can legally be fired for having a child. Second, companies need to stop just offering women extended paid parental leave and instead start offering this leave to women and men. Only offering leave to women is not at all reflective of how modern dual-income households operate.
<h3>In what ways will work change a year from now?</h3>
We have all seen the data about the number of people &ndash; specifically mothers &ndash; leaving the workforce over the last 18 months. We actually believe the trend will continue if not accelerate of parents leaving large corporations to pursue entrepreneurship or consulting or other more flexible, independent ways of working. There used to be bigger barriers to starting your own business, but so much has changed that makes it easier for people to do so. And what we see, especially among women, is that not only do they increase their flexibility in working independently, they often increase their compensation and their overall engagement and passion for their work.
Given this trend &mdash; employers are going to have to work even harder to attract and retain top talent.
<h3>What does work-life balance mean to you? </h3>
I prefer to think of it as &ldquo;work-life sway&rdquo; because that&rsquo;s exactly how it feels. As a founder, it&rsquo;s difficult (maybe impossible?) to truly turn off the wheels in my head. I am always thinking about my business. But that&rsquo;s also fun for me. So the main thing that I protect is time with my family, and I have very strict boundaries. For example &ndash; I almost never work on weekends unless it&rsquo;s nap time, and I never work between 5pm-8pm. But still, work and life never truly feel balanced but instead, I sway more in one or the other direction over time, and I think that&rsquo;s fine.&nbsp;

This Future of Work Q&A features Allison Whalen, Co-Founder and CEO at Parentaly. We spoke about the importance of supporting employees through benefits, including parental leave.

Allison Whalen from Parentaly | Qatalog blog

"It’s now abundantly clear that companies that want to attract the best talent need to offer more paid parental leave."

Allison Whalen on building programs that support employees

In my last job, I was a regional marketing manager for a public software company. I was working closely with teams across five time zones &mdash;&nbsp;London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, New York, and San Francisco.
In my first week of onboarding, I had about 20 one-to-one Zoom calls, and five one-to-many intro presentations. To access basic data and set up tools to do my job, I had to file multiple tickets for the infamous &mdash; but ever so kind &mdash; IT support team. It took me about three weeks to get started with actual work. It was a draining start.
The level of <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/company-culture-and-documentation-culture/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">organization and documentation</a> didn't improve from there. There were no written goals, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">files were scattered around</a>, and communication relied on synchronous meetings and noisy Slack threads. I was on the same team as a company veteran who knew how things really worked &mdash; who did what, where to find things, and who to talk to &mdash; so I was eventually able to find my footing.&nbsp;
Were it not for him, I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;d have done. And we&rsquo;re talking about a technology stock that has grown more than 5x in 2020 since IPO.&nbsp;
I was lucky, but most people aren&rsquo;t. And after working in both public and seed-to-series B startups for the last five years, I learned that mine was not an isolated case, but rather the standard.
<h2>Knowledge worker productivity challenges</h2>
<h4>Very few knowledge workers actually know how to work productively, share knowledge, and communicate effectively in their organization, regardless of their role or company size. Knowledge workers also face many productivity challenges in their day-to-day if documentation is not prioritized.&nbsp;</h4>
This year, the seismic shift to remote work made one thing even clearer &mdash;&nbsp;working remotely requires you to know <a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">who does what</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">where to find things</a>, and who to talk to. If I need a five-minute chat just to find out 'who&rsquo;s on this project' in a 500-person org, that adds up to a lot of time lost.&nbsp;
At scale, it&rsquo;s easy to see how these issues can snowball into missed opportunities to build a competitive advantage. Trying to find information takes the average knowledge worker 59 minutes per day, and <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">seven out of 10 workers</a> report finding the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-isnt-working-press-release/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">information they need to do their job is time-consuming.</a>
<h4>In 2021, setting and maintaining high standards for productivity, collaboration, and knowledge management won&rsquo;t be a luxury anymore. It will separate the next generation of market leaders from the rest.</h4>
Trouble is, best practices for productivity and collaboration are rarely taught within formal training, or proactively shared internally. They become 'hidden' routines that aren&rsquo;t recognized by management or woven into company culture.
There are a handful of best practices for productivity that are commonly overlooked. The most important one is documentation.&nbsp;
<h2>Document to build clarity, confidence, and conviction</h2>
<a href="https://hbr.org/2017/03/great-companies-obsess-over-productivity-not-efficiency" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Productivity is about doing more with the same</a>. Productivity is the reason why small, tight-knit teams can attract top-tier capital and talent to build things that solve problems at scale, and why they do it faster than others. It can be measured with <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-new-metrics-of-corporate-performance-profit-per-employee" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">profit or revenue per employee</a>.
As good talent becomes scarcer than good capital, productivity becomes even more important. And since it says a lot about the quality of the knowledge created, and how <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-employee-of-selected-tech-companies/">organizations</a> manage it through hiring, training, and talent retention, productivity is a strong proxy of a company&rsquo;s overall performance.
How do you build productivity into your company? In my experience, it all starts with clarity. And the easiest way to make things clear is to write them down.
Documentation is the cornerstone of knowledge creation and the reason why documents, spreadsheets, and slides are the lifeblood of knowledge workers. It&rsquo;s not a coincidence that in 2020, <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-g-suite-now-has-2-billion-users/#:~:text=Google's%20office%20productivity%20suite%2C%20G,users%20of%20products%20beyond%20Gmail.">over 2 billion</a> people are using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides every month. That&rsquo;s 25% of the world population. And a staggering <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/10/28/microsoft-teams-reaches-115-million-dau-plus-a-new-daily-collaboration-minutes-metric-for-microsoft-365/#:~:text=October%2028%2C%202020-,Microsoft%20Teams%20reaches%20115%20million%20DAU%E2%80%94plus%2C%20a%20new%20daily,minutes%20metric%20for%20Microsoft%20365">115 million</a> are on Microsoft Office every day.
When you document your thoughts, the actions you need to take become clearer, and you make better decisions. On a practical level, there are a few things you can do to embed this ritual in your company operations and culture.
<h2>Build your docs, tasks, and updates with scalable templates</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Templates are a launchpad for creativity</a>, not a constraint.&nbsp;
Templates make it easy for people to get started and get inspired, but the expectations should be higher than 'filling in the blanks'. As you raise your work standard, your templates will need refreshes and upgrades.&nbsp;
How do you get started with templates?
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Identify the core use cases of knowledge creation. Think long-form documents for project plans, project updates, and team processes (e.g. processes for hiring, team weeklies, or new product feature documentation), or tickets for project management tasks (e.g. bug filing, tasks, and to-dos).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Craft your template structure. Create a consistent and scalable format for them (e.g. introduction, main points, conclusion). <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-Thinking/dp/0273710516">There&rsquo;s a whole science behind this</a> that works across every type &mdash; and it&rsquo;s unbelievable how well it builds confidence and drives convictions with your team.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Use <a href="https://www.ultraedit.com/company/blog/community/what-is-markdown-why-use-it.html">markdown format</a> (e.g. titles, sub-titles, etc.). Formatting your docs helps you emphasize and clarify key parts of your message, and makes it easy for others to skim or read through what you put together. Your colleagues will thank you for respecting their time and attention.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Brand your templates (e.g. add your company font and logo on the headers). Branding will provide the stamp that 'this is how things are done here. Docs that don&rsquo;t contain any branding are automatically not 'up to the standards'.</li>
</ul>
The best documentation tools for modern teams (like <a href="https://almanac.io/home">Almanac</a>, <a href="https://www.notion.so/Notion-Template-Gallery-181e961aeb5c4ee6915307c0dfd5156d">Notion</a>, <a href="https://help.clubhouse.io/hc/en-us/articles/360016736311-Story-Templates-Overview">Clubhouse</a>, <a href="https://pitch.com/blog/presentation-templates-for-modern-teams">Pitch</a>, and <a href="https://coda.io/gallery">Coda</a>) have built-in template features &mdash; whether you&rsquo;re writing docs, tickets, or slides. We've also built templates for things like <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/project-summary/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project summaries</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/okr-examples/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">OKRs</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/30-60-90-day-plan/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">and onboarding plans</a>.&nbsp;
In my last job, if I&rsquo;d had templates to follow for my onboarding, goal setting, and document creation, it probably would have taken me one week to start doing actual work instead of three.
<h2>Prioritizing knowledge worker productivity</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Following the shift to remote work, high standards of collaboration and knowledge management will be what separates the next generation of market leaders from the rest.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Very few knowledge workers truly know how to work productively and communicate effectively in the workplace, because these best practices are usually hidden routines not proactively shared.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Productive knowledge management starts with documentation, which drives clarity and conviction &mdash;&nbsp;and is the reason why documents, spreadsheets, and slides are the lifeblood of knowledge workers.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Structuring your docs, tasks, and updates with scalable templates is the easiest way to get started with documentation and setting higher productivity standards in your team and company.</li>
</ul>

How to set standards for productivity & collaboration in your company.

Becoming a world-class knowledge worker | Qatalog

Becoming a world-class knowledge worker

When we think of documentation as a form of communication, it&rsquo;s hard to find fault in any company whose culture leans more toward informal and synchronous comms instead. Seemingly, these are all just <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-definitive-guide-to-async-communication/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">communication approaches</a>, and to each their own as far as corporate culture is concerned.
This all sounds reasonable on the surface, yet it glazes over a fatal flaw in our assumption: documentation&rsquo;s core value is not communication, but rather, commitment. Once we acknowledge the nuance of this definition, its impact on corporate culture becomes inescapable.
Documentation commits the expectations, boundaries, and consequences of teamwork, so that hire number 500 can have the same perspective as hire number five. It commits the actions taken up to a certain point, so we can blaze new trails or retrace our steps. It commits the values that motivate decisions and rewards, so hierarchies don&rsquo;t trump transparency.
The commitment distinction is crucial because it takes accountability for the fact that communication will always happen, regardless of documentation. Some of a company&rsquo;s most influential mantras may echo through the halls as ancient, anonymous gossip &mdash; a hallmark of toxic corporate culture.
&ldquo;No one gets 5s in their evaluations here.&rdquo; Is that true? Is it only true in some departments? Was it perhaps previously true, under different management? If it&rsquo;s still true, why? Who said that? What happens if someone gets a 5? Is it safe to ask these questions?
Notice how the problem with this information isn&rsquo;t that it hasn&rsquo;t been communicated, but that it&rsquo;s absolved of any accountability. That&rsquo;s a bug in corporate culture, not a subjective trait &mdash; and it places an immense burden on top-down leadership structures to be hands-on across the business, which is why it&rsquo;s both the easiest model to fall into at seed stage and the hardest to scale at growth stage. 
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/78v7Bj8eTga1I1YVHGVl" alt="undefined" />
<h2>Documentation Culture In Practice</h2>
If all this sounds like rhetorical theory, let&rsquo;s look at it through a real-world lens to gain a more practical perspective:
Salaries are among the most oddly opaque aspects of corporate culture: the mother of all secrets, despite the fact that they are calculated using a trove of shared data. Buffer famously commits to a documentation culture here by <a href="https://buffer.com/resources/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">publicizing their salary policy</a> &mdash; not just what the jobs pay and what variables go into the compensation formula, but what <a href="https://buffer.com/salaries" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">each of their current employees makes</a>, and why the company values its people in this way.
Quick note: documenting the &ldquo;why&rdquo; is deceptively attractive from a leadership standpoint; later in the article, we&rsquo;ll come to understand what makes Buffer&rsquo;s documented &ldquo;why&rdquo; so much more valuable than a typical employer&rsquo;s &ldquo;why.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ve mentioned values a few times now, and so often a lack of shared values is emblematic of a toxic corporate culture. GitLab commits the entirety of <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">its company values</a> to public record and doubles down by publicizing the company&rsquo;s <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/company/okrs/">quarterly objectives</a> as well. The largest investor and the smallest customer both know what GitLab values.
Stripe made headlines years ago for taking documentation culture to a meta-level, with <a href="https://stripe.com/blog/scaling-email-transparency" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">email transparency</a>. Most of the company&rsquo;s documented communication over email is committed to company-wide distribution lists, as a repository any employee can access at any time (if this sounds like a precursor to Slack, that&rsquo;s no accident &mdash; best practices often end up <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/next-gen-collaboration-tools/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">building new collaboration tools</a>). It&rsquo;s a testament to the transparency of the company that every email is held accountable for what it says.
Be sure to notice a recurring theme here: <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">documentation culture</a> builds well-aligned teams, sure &hellip; but it also attracts well-aligned people, which is often referred to as &ldquo;cultural fit.&rdquo; Commitment that everyone can see (especially those who don&rsquo;t work for the company yet) is arguably the fastest shortcut to a curated pipeline of prospective talent. And, given the recent explosion of remote and hybrid working arrangements, hiring might be one of the hairiest topics in corporate culture today. Using that context as an example, let&rsquo;s consider a mental model for understanding documentation culture: the &ldquo;P&rdquo; Progression.
<h2>The &ldquo;P&rdquo; progression</h2>
Perception, Policy, Principle, Proof. Each subsequent &ldquo;P&rdquo; level helps to commit accountability to the level prior. Here&rsquo;s what that might look like at four companies sharing a similar cultural perspective on hiring, but operating at different levels of documentation culture:
Level 1: Perception. Some have heard that the C-suite only wants to hire on-site workers. There&rsquo;s nothing in the handbook about it. A few hiring managers have brought on remote workers, though it&rsquo;s unclear whether those were exceptional roles, or if the managers had to deal with any consequences &hellip; but generally, everyone seems to be advising each other that we only hire on-site employees.
Level 2: Policy. A team lead sent out an email stating, "Our department only hires for on-site roles." The statement can also be found in public-facing job descriptions. No one has heard much about why we have the policy, or how flexible it might be in the future, but at least we know the boundaries around hiring by location.
Level 3: Principle. An executive published a blog post talking about the &ldquo;why&rdquo; behind the policy of only hiring on-site. They&rsquo;ve said the policy strikes them as the most effective way to collaborate and helps build camaraderie across departments since everyone is local and easy to gather for cross-functional events.
It&rsquo;s not clear what internal evidence or external data this exec is using to validate their position, but it&rsquo;s certainly clear what their mindset is, and how it will shape our company. Further, it seems that if any of us disagreed with these principles, we&rsquo;d know who to confront about them.
Level 4: Proof. On the public-facing company wiki, or documented in the organization&rsquo;s <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a>, there&rsquo;s a lengthy message from the CEO about the principles forming their policy to hire on-site workers exclusively. Most of those principles are accompanied by tangible proof &mdash; whether it&rsquo;s an employee survey, or a series of industry studies &mdash; which are said to serve as the basis for their policy decision.
At the end of the post, the CEO states, &ldquo;We are always open to changing this policy in the face of contradicting evidence, such as next quarter&rsquo;s employee survey, or newly-emerging research, or collaboration innovations. Below is a table of proof points, open for all to update as new evidence presents itself. Our stakeholder for this policy is the Head of HR, and any employee with an interest in challenging the policy can schedule time with them during office hours.&rdquo;
With the rare exception of people who thrive in toxic environments, or people who erroneously conflate a shared bias with a healthy environment, the vast majority of us would likely prefer to work for the company operating at Level 4 here &mdash; even though all four companies appear to have similar cultural perspectives on hiring.
That&rsquo;s because commitment is its own cultural currency. The more commitment an employer pays forward, the more they get in return from their employees. And in our business relationships, the easiest way to mine that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/raise-your-work-standards/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">commitment is through documentation</a>.

Your company culture depends on your documentation culture, and here's why.

Documentation and corporate culture | Qatalog Blog

Building an attractive corporate culture may seem like a wild challenge to tackle but it turns out, you can get pretty far simply by writing stuff down.

The hottest trend in corporate culture is documentation

I was laid off from my job a few years ago. Suddenly, I went from long, stressful workdays to a very free schedule. There was no structure, or a to-do list, or much of anything to even think about except what my next meal would be. I was no longer busy, but I was also no longer productive.
<h2>Busy, productive, and chocolate</h2>
There was a lot of binge-watching going on during those unemployed weeks. I watched old TV shows including that classic I Love Lucy episode with the comical scene where Lucy and Ethel work at a candy factory. They are tasked with wrapping every chocolate that comes by on the conveyor belt assembly line. All is well until the belt starts to speed up and forces them to hilariously stuff the chocolates in their mouths and shirts as they are unable to keep up the pace.
This memorable segment illustrates the main difference between being busy or productive at work. Being productive is having something to show for your efforts, like a wrapped chocolate. Whereas being busy typifies being overwhelmed, frantic, and sometimes getting chocolate on your face. Work can feel like the conveyor belt where we are constantly challenged to keep up with it all but have minimal results for maximum hustle.
<h2>Working smart, not hard</h2>
Being busy is often tied up with our identity in the workplace. It can make us feel important and needed. With remote work, business is not often seen visually in the way it is in an office environment. No one is seeing us eating lunch at our desk, but they are seeing if we can produce that report on time. This is because the modern workplace is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/autonomy-and-employee-engagement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">focused on outcomes,</a> not the hours of work we put in.
The key to achieving productivity is to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/flexible-working-models/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">be smart about the way we work</a>. It is still putting in the hours but making those hours count for something. This involves self-discipline to stay focused and not multi-task. At the end of the workday, productive people are generally less burned out and have more satisfaction with their jobs because they used their time wisely and benefited from being less busy.
<h2>Exchanging old mindsets for new habits</h2>
It takes time to switch from being a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/raise-your-work-standards/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">busy person to a productive person</a>. It starts with a shift in our mindset and then a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/over-reliance-on-spreadsheets/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">change in our actions</a>. It won&rsquo;t happen overnight, and we may falter at times, but eventually, we will see the advantages of transforming our ways.&nbsp;
Try these tactics for becoming more productive:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DO schedule time for focused work: Headphones on may be the signal in the office not to be interrupted. Remote workers should block off calendars and set &ldquo;do not disturb&rdquo; on messaging apps to concentrate on complicated projects.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DO use a work hub: <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A work hub</a> makes it possible for knowledge workers to be productive. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Tools and teams are connected</a> in one digital space so they can find things quickly and collaborate effectively.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DON&rsquo;T get distracted: Turn off your phone, change the settings on desktop notifications, and close your office door. Ignore the dishes in the sink and the laundry in the dryer.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DON&rsquo;T skip lunch: Taking regular breaks helps to refresh and recharge you. Pick non-screen-related activities such as going for a walk outside or listening to relaxing music.</li>
</ul>
When asked &ldquo;how are you?&rdquo; our auto-reply tends to be &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been so busy&rdquo; with a roll of the eyes. Think about the day when you can proudly change that answer. Being productive, not busy, is the key to wrapping chocolates or anything else that comes your way on the conveyor belt of work life.

What is the difference between being busy and being productive? It has a lot with working smarter, not harder.

The difference between busy and productive people | Qatalog

Learning how to work smarter, not harder, to be more productive and less busy.

The difference between busy and productive people

Everything you need to know about async, or asynchronous, communication - including its benefits, examples of async communication, and more

The definitive guide to async communication | Qatalog

Asynchronous communication offers the ideal framework for remote teams who’re looking to engage team members across time zones, build consensus continuously, and empower team members to work with flexibility.

The definitive guide to asynchronous communication

If overseeing the impact of remote work on your organization falls on the shoulders of your remote and hybrid workers, you need a more sustainable solution that makes room for growth, testing, and implementation. That could look like <a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow">adopting a work hub</a> that&nbsp;transforms your company to an async majority with transparency built into every function, or, it could look like hiring a Head of Remote.&nbsp;
Realistically, to manage and measure workplace flexibility for all employees, it&rsquo;s best to consider both options.&nbsp;
The &ldquo;Head of Remote&rdquo; role is relatively new to job boards and is still picking up as remote work continues to increase in popularity.
One of the first people to hold this position is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/darren-murph-gitlab-interview/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Darren Murph</a> of Gitlab.&nbsp;
&ldquo;[Working remote] has a cascading ripple effect through the entire organization,&rdquo; Murph said in an <a href="https://digiday.com/media/youre-never-putting-this-remote-genie-back-in-the-bottle-how-gitlabs-head-of-remote-darren-murph-spends-his-day/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">interview with Digiday</a>. &ldquo;The head of remote exists to make sure that none of those re-architecting decisions are looked at in a silo or in a vacuum.&rdquo;
<h2>What does a head of remote do?</h2>
There are a number of different names for the Head of Remote position. It&rsquo;s also known as: Director of Remote Work, VP of Remote Work, or Chief Remote Officer.
Why is this role necessary? In the <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2021 Gartner Hybrid Work Employee Survey</a>, there was a repeated chasm between executive and employee sentiment about the state of remote and hybrid work. Including:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">75% of executive leaders believe they are already operating within a culture of flexibility, yet only 57% of employees agree.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">66% of employees say they have the technology they need to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/9-tips-for-managing-remote-employees/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">effectively work remotely</a>, compared to 80% of executives.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Executives are more likely to feel trusted when it comes to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/you-can-create-employee-connections-without-more-meetings/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">working from home</a>.</li>
</ul>
There&rsquo;s a larger issue to uncover about the lack of trust between leadership and employees, and we can&rsquo;t blame it all on the proliferation of remote work. But perhaps there are things we aren&rsquo;t getting right. After all, companies are made up of humans, and we all make mistakes.
Adopting a leadership role that mends the relationship between remote employees and leadership can help to uncover the practices that aren&rsquo;t serving your culture. A Head of Remote helps to eliminate that lone island feeling and brings employees together with real strategies that serve the rest of your hybrid workforce as well.&nbsp;
There are two key areas in which your Head of Remote can make this happen:
<h3>Internal advocacy</h3>
The primary responsibility of this role is to ensure every employee within the workforce, wherever they are located, is receiving equitable treatment.&nbsp;
There are a lot of concerns about unfair advantages given to in-person employees in a hybrid model where some are remote. For all intents and purposes, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/business/dealbook/remote-work-bias.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">these are anecdotal concerns</a> that are not backed by research. The proven chasm that does exist is the <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-is-work-really-like-today-leaders-and-employees-see-things-differently/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">discrepancy of sentiment</a> between employees and executives. This means that while remote employees don&rsquo;t need to worry about falling behind their in-person counterparts, they are concerned about things like flexibility, equipment, and collective action.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.unleashgroup.io/2021/08/04/remotes-ceo-job-van-der-voort-on-the-hiring-from-anywhere-trend/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Job van der Voort</a>, CEO of Remote, says &ldquo;the Head of Remote must account for all the permutations of remote work, which can include people in multiple time zones and people with different lifestyles.&rdquo; It allows for an advocate that eases those discrepancy concerns and allows for better communication between remote employees and leadership.&nbsp;
<h3>External advocacy</h3>
Hiring new leadership roles that empower employees with more flexibility and provides transparency between workers and leadership is cause for celebration. Remote leadership can position the company within <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/category/future-of-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">future of work discussions</a>. They can assist with promoting or selling products that demonstrate the organization is a remote work innovator.&nbsp;
In this instance, they can share the success story of remote working. Or, they can share the failures and what they&rsquo;ve learned in trying to fix them. In this example, the role is more aligned with Marketing, Human Resources, and Sales.
For external advocacy to be genuine, it has to come from someone who has experience with remote work. Because this is a new role, there are no right answers on where to pull this talent from.&nbsp;
According to Gustavo G&oacute;mez, CEO at process automation provider <a href="https://www.bizagi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Bizagi</a>, the ideal candidate for this role is strategic, semi-technical, and highly collaborative.
<a href="https://www.reworked.co/leadership/is-now-the-time-to-invest-in-a-head-of-remote-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">He says</a>: &ldquo;While the people side of the challenge very much sits with HR, the ability to drive change in technology and operations is key, and that may not be a significant skill set within HR teams today.&rdquo;
Darren Murph gave even more insight into the parameters of the role in an interview with <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/11/13/embracing-remote-work-meet-the-oracles.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">CNBC</a>.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It became clear that a dedicated leader would create greater intentionality and acceleration, and now that role is mainstream.&rdquo;
<h3>What a Head of Remote doesn&rsquo;t do</h3>
According to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurelfarrer/2021/06/24/does-your-company-need-a-head-of-remote/?sh=3284dc9314bf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote work strategist Laurel Farrer</a>, there are incorrect assumptions about what this role entails:
&ldquo;A common misconception is that the Head of Remote is responsible for an organization&rsquo;s entire process of adopting remote work, from building the foundations, setting the policy terms, constructing a digital infrastructure, and maintaining the remote workforce and operations.&rdquo;
A Head of Remote should not be the sole person responsible for structural aspects or creating your remote work process. It is more about maintaining the environment and connectivity of your team.&nbsp;
Before searching for remote leadership, establish whether you are in the construction or maintenance phase of rolling out a hybrid or remote work plan.&nbsp;
What we would consider to be constructing a remote work program:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Leadership is not fully participating in remote working, or are still considering the model.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Handbooks and policies have yet to cover remote work best practices.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Processes are considered the same whether in or out of the office.</li>
</ul>
Companies maintaining a remote work program:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">You already have remote learning and development programs in place so your team can develop skills to bolster success.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Culture is no longer location-centric. Your team feels connected and included wherever they are based.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Your work processes revolve around virtual support and bringing onboard strategic talent irrespective of location.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The longevity of a remote-focused leadership role</h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
most people have no idea how big remote work was before the pandemic they're going to be shocked by how big it will be by 2025
&mdash; Chris Herd (@chris_herd) <a href="https://twitter.com/chris_herd/status/1425855035062300673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2021</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"></blockquote>

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There is no doubt that remote work will only continue to grow from here.&nbsp;
<a href="https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/work-at-home-after-covid-19-our-forecast" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">25 &ndash; 30% of the workforce</a> will be working from home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.
And if your company is transitioning to remote, having a leader to assist the transition ensures there is an active push toward async-friendly practices that lend themselves to hybrid working.&nbsp;
According to a Gartner survey of 317 CFOs and finance leaders, <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">three-quarters</a> will move at least 5% of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions.
As the world of remote continues to evolve, it&rsquo;s important to keep your organization&rsquo;s objectives at the forefront. However, your workplace model needs some support to keep your business at the top of its game.&nbsp;
<h2>Adopting a work hub and hiring a Head of Remote</h2>
Having a <a href="https://qatalog.com" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> means you have a flexible workspace offering an &ldquo;office when needed&rdquo; service.
A <a href="https://qatalog.com" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> provides a virtual workspace where your team can congregate. Integrated with your Head of Remote, you have the perfect balance of team and support.
And if you don&rsquo;t have the headcount for a Head of Remote, a work hub can provide similar assistance to your team by making all your work, files, and procedures transparent and accessible to everyone.

Remote workers need a leader. Here's everything you need to know about the Head of Remote role.

Hiring a Head of Remote | Qatalog blog

What does a Head of Remote do everyday?

A great product team&hellip;
Is cross-functional. Listens and innovates for the customer. Empowers other teams to leave feedback.&nbsp;
Maybe you have engineers who come from massive organizations, perhaps you have a small team of customer-focused individuals who are new to building a product. Whatever the makeup of your product team is, there are several different aspects you need to consider to guarantee it grows successfully.
What do we know about product teams? The best ones are customer-obsessed. They speak with the voice of the user. It becomes central to every decision at every stage. They don&rsquo;t look at who the customer is now. They consider who they will become. They focus on testing to know exactly how the user is interacting with the product and where friction points exist.&nbsp;
According to Dan Olsen, author of The <a href="https://leanproductplaybook.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Lean Product Playbook</a>: &ldquo;Less than 5% of product teams actually define their value proposition. Everyone is just too busy focused on the day-to-day that no one has time to take a step back and think longer term.&rdquo;
<h2>Empower your product team with a cohesive vision&nbsp;</h2>
An empowered product team should be seen as a source of intelligence and insight within an organization. They make information, statuses, and roadmaps accessible to everyone.&nbsp;
According to Marty Cagan from <a href="https://svpg.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">SVPG</a>, an empowered product team is one that truly owns its product.&nbsp;
One actionable change you can make to empower your product team is to tie success metrics with business goals. This can include increasing the number of subscriptions and decreasing your churn rate.
<h3>Keep everything transparent across the organization</h3>
When a product team works cross-functionally, there are three main lanes of status updates that inform communication:
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/UTjceRRui8MjIREXyjAJ" alt="undefined" />
Where we&rsquo;ve been &ndash; providing consistent metrics and showing how the product is functioning, in addition, it also includes quantitative analysis and how the product is progressing towards the goal.
Where we are &ndash; how are the current capabilities stack up against the rest of the market.
Where we&rsquo;re going &ndash; developing a roadmap to show how the product is moving forward to help the company achieve its goal.&nbsp;
If all of these areas are covered frequently, you&rsquo;re creating more value in the team and encouraging future collaboration and cooperation.&nbsp;
<h3>Stay focused on the organization&rsquo;s goals</h3>
When each team has a strong understanding of the organization&rsquo;s objectives, product team included, they can function at full throttle. They are responsible for product management, user experience, and product analytics. And that can be a lot.&nbsp;
This is why <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-big-picture-thinking-can-inspire-innovative-teamwork/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">big-picture goals</a> are so important. Getting your team involved in accountability toward these goals also improves cross-functional dependencies. If developers can&rsquo;t get away with making product changes in silos, customer support won&rsquo;t have to answer questions that are being changed without warning.
In a transparent, trusting environment, everyone has a voice. Feedback is encouraged and necessary to build the best product possible. We've come to understand that effective product teams check their egos at the door. And they are happy to listen to ideas over and over again.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>Increasing visibility across product development teams</h2>
<a href="https://www.wakefieldresearch.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">58%</a> of employees say finding documents while working from home is an issue. And in Qatalog&rsquo;s Workgeist report, 54% of people say that applications can sometimes make it harder to find information&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s possible that because of this information and tool overload, your team feels a lack of productivity, confidence, and opportunity.
Setting up a digital work hub allows the team to access information exactly when they need it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3>Software release process and goals</h3>
It&rsquo;s not an easy task to work out which developer performance metrics are the most important. KPIs for software development projects include driving revenue, customer satisfaction, and market speed.
Product teams need to focus on both speed and quality. Misstep on one of the two, and you&rsquo;ll have issues to step in and fix later. Of course, understanding where something needs to be fixed before you make a change is also critical here, bringing us right back to the importance of transparency and feedback.&nbsp;&nbsp;
How product teams measure the release process:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Quality / defects</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Team velocity</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Open / close rates</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Work in progress</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Communication index</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Demonstration rating</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Uptime</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Commit to deploy</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Cycle time</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Burndown</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Products delivered on budget and on time</li>
</ul>
Speeding up the software release process can enable new levels of productivity.
You can do this by critically analyzing the current state of your release management. Look at the pros and cons. Try doing a walk-through with key individuals involved in the process. Continuously optimize your delivery infrastructure. This includes everything that needs to be in place so that users can deploy the software without friction points.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Having a regular release cycle can also create an opportunity to discuss any further testing. Your users will also know when to expect things to change.
Finally, make sure your release infrastructure is established early. This is your obligation to your customer. It says the software you&rsquo;ve created is excellent and easily accessible.
<h2>Building a hybrid product team&nbsp;</h2>
There are a number of essential qualities you need to incorporate into a hybrid product team.
According to the <a href="https://cmoe.com/blog/team-leadership-why-effective-team-communication-is-so-important/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Center of Management and Organization Effectiveness</a>:&nbsp;
&nbsp;&ldquo;All effective teams need to understand the importance of group communication because it&rsquo;s crucial to their success. Effective communication within a team will build a common purpose among team members that will allow them to reach their goals.&rdquo;
&nbsp;A strong culture reinforces effective communication. Things like making sure job descriptions are clear and outlining role responsibilities will start new hires on the right path to transparency and accountability. Likewise, there should be a team charter that defines everyone else&rsquo;s role, expectations, and outcomes.&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/tips-for-growing-a-product-management-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Product Management expert and author Roman Pilcher</a> says many companies make the mistake of growing their team in one go: &ldquo;While there are always good reasons for this approach, it creates strain for the organization and the individuals. The quick addition of new product people can be overwhelming and lead to a prolonged period of slow and inconsistent decision-making and low productivity.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Instead, he suggests looking at growing incrementally, because you can better understand if the hiring process is effective, and see how much support new hires need to get started.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Once your team is assembled, you need to be aware of their distractions &mdash; and get rid of them.&nbsp;
<h3>Keep your product team connected with a work hub</h3>
From hiring and onboarding processes to eliminating context switching and enabling deep work, a work hub challenges the idea of a basic intranet by integrating the people, tools, and processes your tech team needs &mdash; plus the ones from marketing, design, and sales too.&nbsp;
Going back to the release process: all the steps of a regular release cycle can be implemented in a repeatable, discoverable workflow inside a work hub. You can then connect your goals and set reminders on when to update them. And if these processes live in multiple apps, you can connect Jira, GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub, and the other tools your teams use under one search.

Product team organization and structure matter, especially when your goals are set toward growth. Product teams should be collaborative ...

Structuring your product team | Qatalog blog

A great product team… Is cross-functional. Listens and innovates for the customer. Empowers other teams to leave feedback.

How to build a powerful product team structure

I remember in the mid-2000s when I took a vacation from work, I emailed a project status to the team, set up my automatic responder, said goodbye, and that was it. That shout farewell was the last communication I had with my workplace for a week.&nbsp;
Now if you look at today&rsquo;s working world, vacation time has become something entirely different. That&rsquo;s coming from the lack of traveling in the past year, the proliferation of hybrid and remote work, increased benefits (like PTO), and the rise and fall of hustle culture to mass resignations.&nbsp;
Let&rsquo;s start with the obvious: our work and home lives have become blurred. So has our vacation and work time. We&rsquo;ve been on a permanent staycation, but now it&rsquo;s time to check out and check in to what time off looks like in a post-pandemic world.&nbsp;
<h2>Employees have a surplus of vacation time post-pandemic</h2>
In 2020, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/31/this-is-what-happens-to-all-those-vacation-days-that-never-got-used.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">92% of Americans canceled</a>, postponed, or didn&rsquo;t book a vacation due to the pandemic.&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/uk50oYjYSIik8rpGqtLG" alt="undefined" />
So we had a lot of vacation days piling up. Some companies had policies in place to carry over underutilized vacation. Others, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/business/economy/vacation-days.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Cond&eacute; Nast and Bank of America</a>, changed their use-it-or-lose-it vacation policies to accommodate employees and the inability to physically go on vacation.&nbsp;
Now that vaccination rates are on the rise, there seems to be a push to get workers to use those backlog of days and take needed vacation time. It looks as though this is especially true in the technology industry, where companies such as Google and Cloudera are finding ways to ensure their teams take time off (rest time = better productivity).&nbsp;
<h2>What vacation time looks like for the distributed worker</h2>
The future of business travel remains a looming question as countries reopen for travelers. We&rsquo;re sure to see a rise in post-pandemic vacations, with a newfound ability to balance work with leisure time thanks to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/get-hybrid-in-order/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote and hybrid models</a>.
This can be both positive and negative. For one, the ability to take longer family vacations and balance work with play is an appealing one for many reasons: extra time with family and friends, better deals for more extended stays, you get the gist. However, that completely turned-off vacation mindset is necessary for recharging and reducing burnout.&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.axios.com/covid-workcation-rise-pandemic-e4d50e83-2233-4fd8-90dc-03ee4a00e7ac.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">74% of Americans</a> who are working from home said they&rsquo;d consider taking a workcation &mdash; going on a vacation, but working while there. When a distributed worker goes on a workcation, there seems to be little difference between opening a laptop at a hotel desk versus at the kitchen table (side note: your editor is currently doing just that!).&nbsp;
Hotels are adding conveniences to attract these new workcationers. &ldquo;Work From Hyatt&rdquo; is one of such packages promoting staying plugged-in while enjoying a quasi-vacation. These offerings include WiFi, IT, and personal assistant teams &mdash; plus the known benefits of staying at a hotel. So when the workday has finished, you can leave your lounge/office chair for a dip in the pool.&nbsp;
The proliferation of workplace software, remote/hybrid working models, the pandemic, and our always-on-duty work culture has resulted in our ability to consistently balance work life with home life. These workcations are a continuation of that dynamic, but one that focuses on <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/becoming-a-world-class-knowledge-worker/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">benefits to the knowledge worker</a> rather than encroaching on home, family, and relaxation time that needs to happen for the average person to enjoy returning to work every day.&nbsp;
In its most flattering light, this balance is a win for knowledge workers because it presents the opportunity for us to take our work where we want. But it&rsquo;s also important to establish the difference between a workcation and a true vacation so your employer and coworkers know what to expect from your time off/away/still-online-but-from-a-new-location.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>What employers should expect moving forward</h2>
There is no longer a one-size-fits-all approach to vacation time. Employers will have to adapt their policies to meet the needs of their workforce. That may mean giving employees a nudge to log off and use their surplus days or a gentle reminder of the importance of a mental break to avoid burnout.
Here are some ways to encourage employees to take vacation time:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Bring back TGIF Summer Fridays usually entail taking the entire day off or leaving early on Fridays between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The concept isn&rsquo;t new, but it is getting renewed consideration by companies this summer. <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-06-06-more-than-half-of-organizations-are-offering--summer-" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">55%</a><a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-06-06-more-than-half-of-organizations-are-offering--summer-" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;of businesses</a> in North America offer Summer Fridays, which increase productivity, loyalty, and employee retention.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Start at the top Kristen Hayward, Head of People at email company Superhuman said, "<a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-companies-want-people-to-take-vacation-time-now-and-how-managers-are-encouraging-them-to-do-it/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a company's actual vacation policy</a> is the everyday behavior that people see." Company culture impacts employees&rsquo; willingness to take a vacation. For example, a manager who checks in every hour from vacation may make team members feel they have to do the same. Encourage your executives to take an unplugged break and have them spread the word about it.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Pay to play It may sound a bit absurd, but some companies are giving employees a vacation bonus as part of their benefits. Buffer, Evernote, and Veracode give employees $1,000 to use on their vacations. Buffer even adds an extra $500 for each family member. And it works. <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/get_employees_to_actually_take_vacation/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">80%</a> of Buffer&rsquo;s workers collected their bonuses compared to just 36% who took a vacation in the year prior.</li>
</ul>
The concept of &ldquo;fair&rdquo; vacation policies is nuanced for every organization, depending on your size, work culture, and existing policies. For <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-digital-office-in-a-hybrid-world/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">hybrid companies</a> with employees worldwide, there are also cultural differences surrounding vacation time and the importance of taking a break. Whether your vacation policy is flexible or fixed, you should be connecting with your employees to ensure they feel the policy is fair and enables them to take time off. After this last year, we all need it.&nbsp;

Employees have a surplus of vacation time post-pandemic. We discuss new "workcation" trends and how companies can encourage time off.

Navigating the new journey to vacation time | Qatalog

An unplugged vacation is more of a reality yet few are using their surplus time.

Navigating the new journey to vacation time

In our Future of Work series, we speak with influential business leaders to learn about new ways of work. We spoke with Jennifer Leary, Head of Revenue Enablement at the French insurtech unicorn Shift Technology, about her onboarding experience during the pandemic and how organizational culture impacts everyone's day-to-day.&nbsp;
<h2>How would you describe the organizational culture at Shift?&nbsp;</h2>
Shift is based in Paris and in my general observation &mdash; albeit early having been there just shy of one year &mdash; is that there is a slightly different culture around remote work than in the US, particularly in high-growth or tech companies. More urgency to get back to the office and less familiarity with remote work and hybrid schedules has been more of the norm at HQ versus in other parts of the world, particularly in the US. As of today, we are planning to have a hybrid structure moving forward and that seems to be working well.&nbsp;
<h2>You joined Shift during the pandemic, how was your onboarding experience?&nbsp;</h2>
Excellent. I intentionally joined a company where I would be &ldquo;the remote office&rdquo; (I am in Boston) and wasn&rsquo;t sure what to expect. Having run onboarding myself in the past, I was super impressed to see the international FedEx arrive (on time) with Shift swag (mug, notebook, etc.), my laptop with instructions, and a schedule for Shift Academy &mdash; our corporate onboarding scheduled for the following week. All for an org that at the time has fewer than 300 employees and a tiny HR staff.&nbsp;
<h2>What are some of the biggest friction points in working across remote teams?</h2>
I would say the number one experience that is challenging to replicate in remote teams is the interpersonal exchanges that happen outside of regularly scheduled meetings: hallway chats, grabbing coffee, walking to your car/public transit &mdash; for that matter running into someone during public transit to or from the office. Even in business interactions, this is where some of the best personal connections are made and problems are solved. No matter how many Zoom cocktail hours an organization sponsors, I&rsquo;ve yet to see it replicate this same experience. And in my work in start-ups, an effort to schedule a coffee break in between meetings is tough given the typical workload and meeting schedule.&nbsp;
<h2>What "future of work" topics are you paying close attention to?&nbsp;</h2>
Return to office, flexible schedules (aka the four-day workweek), data on productivity pre/post-pandemic, and real estate and commercial construction (where and for who). As managers and employees, we&rsquo;re in a unique time where the job market, particularly in the US, is very strong and candidates have choices. Remote work and flexibility on location are considered key competitive differentiators so organizations need to be prudent when making decisions around work preferences, carefully weighing the pros and cons for the employee and what makes the most financial sense for the business.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s really interesting being part of the leadership team at Shift where different countries present and support different work styles. Having direct reports in both France and the US during this unique time in history is providing me with the opportunity to observe cultural needs when it comes to working styles and that will have an overall positive impact on how I think about teams and organizational management in the future.&nbsp;
<h2>How do you think companies can set themselves up for success?&nbsp;</h2>
Have the right teams, process, tools, and content to support hybrid teams. One without the others results in a suboptimal experience for the employee and the organization overall. Invest in the best tools that integrate into your core systems to keep your tech spend manageable, and have the right people to run point on those tools. Make sure to drive effective content and programming that results in high adoption, efficiency, and ultimately higher return on investment.
<h2>What is the biggest learning that has come out of remote work for your teams? Personally?</h2>
I&rsquo;m amazed at the relationships I have formed with my team and colleagues at a personal level without ever having actually met them in person. I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re hearing this from a lot of your interviewees, but it really amazes me how the power of the human spirit really can overcome adversity, and how a rising tide really does lift all boats! There is a lot that goes into that of course, but in general, my two huge appreciations during this time have been the power and resilience of people to connect and work together towards a goal, and the incredible speed and ingenuity behind the technology catalyzing hybrid work.&nbsp;
<h2>What do you think work will look like a year from now?&nbsp;</h2>
I think it depends on where you are globally and what your role is. I think in the end, fully remote organizations will have advantages/disadvantages (e.g. risk of overworking/burnout) as well but it will be interesting to see how things shift and the results that organizations face if we move to remote and/or hybrid environments as standardization of work. I think we will see more of what we have seen during the pandemic &mdash; preference for remote/hybrid work options and employers promoting it as a benefit to recruit and retain top talent.&nbsp;
<h2>What tools has your team used to increase collaboration and streamline distributed communication?</h2>
Slack, Google Workspace, HighSpot, Brainshark, Zoom, MSFT Teams&nbsp;
<h2>What does work-life balance mean to you?</h2>
Work-life balance means I am invested in both my professional and personal priorities and understand when one is out of balance and take action to self-correct. I personally don&rsquo;t think that is on the employer but on the employee and their personal outlook, position in life, etc. to set the right boundaries and stick to them. I&rsquo;ve been fortunate always in my career to work for organizations that have respected requests for unique working models, for both myself and the teams that I have managed. At the end of the day, good hires are producing, driving impact, and getting results. How, where, and when they do it is secondary.

Jen Leary on the organizational culture of Shift and the ingredients that make up a successful hybrid model.

Jen Leary on hybrid team success | Qatalog blog

Jen Leary on remote friction points

&ldquo;Out of sight out of mind&rdquo; is a phrase that entirely negates the benefits of remote work, yet we see it time and time again in arguments <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/building-a-cross-functional-hybrid-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">concerning hybrid and remote models</a>.&nbsp;
I think in the global shift to remote work, possibly the opposite was the case. On a personal level, I dove into my work because it was an activity that was available to me when everything else went into lockdown. As a collective, knowledge workers have proved just how well they can operate &ldquo;out of sight,&rdquo; with the U.S. workforce seeing a reported <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/yes-working-from-home-makes-you-more-productive-study-finds" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">5% increase in productivity</a>.
This trend proves something we&rsquo;ve known to be true for a while now &ndash; working in a traditional office setting is now the legacy model of work. For managers, this means embracing the cultural shift, trusting your team, and allowing employees to work during hours that make sense for them.&nbsp;
In other words, for a modern organization to thrive, its managers need to embrace employee autonomy at work.&nbsp;
<h2>Ditch strict supervision and rigid schedules</h2>
<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autonomy" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Autonomy,</a>&nbsp;by definition, refers to the ability to govern oneself. Autonomy in the workplace does not mean employees do whatever they want, all the time, with no supervision &ndash; it means trusting employees to meet their responsibilities in a way in which they&rsquo;re most productive.&nbsp;
Sure, this could mean you&rsquo;ll see they&rsquo;re away on Slack for a couple of hours on Monday morning, but it also means you might not see their active status while they are working later on Monday night &ndash; less tired, more focused, and producing higher quality deliverables for your company since they&rsquo;re alert and distraction-free.&nbsp;
In other words, you will see the results of employee autonomy in the work that they produce.&nbsp;
Empowering employees with autonomy boils down to one reality: if employees are getting their work done, it really doesn&rsquo;t matter when, how, or where they do it.&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/IV9w9tqfRz2kND7w3Yfg" alt="undefined" />
Employee monitoring or work from home monitoring softwares that track your employees&rsquo; minute-to-minute activities directly contradicts the trust remote organizations need to build into their culture.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, work is often associated with a rigidity that doesn&rsquo;t apply to the way many people do their jobs anymore, resulting in a rise of employee monitoring software. Not everyone needs to work 8-5, Monday-Friday (and they don&rsquo;t need to do so from the same office, either).&nbsp;
The solution? Don&rsquo;t rush to conclusions or worriedly message employees if their peak productivity hours don&rsquo;t fit into the traditional schedule. Simply let their work speak for itself. If there are clear patterns of slacking off or misalignment, that&rsquo;s the time to course-correct. However, as a manager, it&rsquo;s your job to set up your employees for success &ndash; and in 2021, that responsibility has been amended to include &ldquo;wherever they might be working from.&rdquo;
<h3>Autonomy and asynchronous work go hand in hand&nbsp;</h3>
Nearly <a href="https://hrexecutive.com/requiring-employees-to-return-to-the-office-get-ready-for-them-to-quit/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">three out of five workers</a> would consider quitting their jobs if it meant returning to the office full-time. However, 35% of employees still want to go to the office at least some of the time, which has only strengthened <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/15/eat-a-banana-get-off-twitter-how-to-be-more-productive-at-work" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the new standard of asynchronous communication while working.</a>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/Bx5Jx96PRNqzGrcCLjX2" alt="undefined" />
And keep in mind &ndash; successful businesses have been communicating asynchronously for more than a hundred years. At an international company with offices around the globe, employees have to rely on their peers and fellow teams located around the world to complete the tasks for which they&rsquo;re responsible to help the organization thrive.&nbsp;
Autonomous, asynchronous teams also display soft skills like discipline and accountability, and most of all, intrinsic motivation. Without the looming physical presence of their superiors, employees now operate with motivation from a place of passion and interest. These are all traits we ask our employees to possess, and in order to work asynchronously, they must display that sense of job autonomy.&nbsp;
<h3>Bringing trust into the picture</h3>
No organization can function without trust. Employees trust their company&rsquo;s leaders for a sense of purpose and direction. In turn, employees are trusted to hit their goals and bring a passionate, innovative approach to work. Organizations with high levels of trust provide <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">3x the total return to shareholders</a> than those with low trust.&nbsp;
Autonomous teams might use a <a href="https://qatalog.com/projects/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project tracker</a> and hold individuals accountable for updating their progress and providing resources for the team, for example.&nbsp;
<h3>Empower employees to take control</h3>
Your employees want to grow, and autonomy allows them to flex the muscles they need to do so. Autonomy helps employees master resourcefulness, time management, and goal setting for the projects they&rsquo;re most interested in. Granting them autonomy is giving them free rein to help the company grow in the way they best see fit &ndash; and in doing so, fuel their own professional growth.&nbsp;
To help empower employees in this way, consider adopting a <a href="https://qatalog.com/work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a> that connects workers with the information and resources they need to operate autonomously. Features like the dynamic <a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/">directory</a> outline who&rsquo;s responsible for what, which allows an inquisitive worker to reach out, connect with team members, and run with an idea.
<h2>Using autonomy as a driver for employee engagement</h2>
Employees who have autonomy don&rsquo;t sit idly by as the workday progresses. Autonomous employees are self-driven and manager-resourced to work in a way that&rsquo;s best for everyone &ndash; and that&rsquo;s a huge boost for employee engagement. In fact, multiple studies show there&rsquo;s a clear connection between these two ideas.&nbsp;
<h3>Autonomy and job satisfaction research</h3>
One of the most noteworthy pieces of research on autonomy and job satisfaction was conducted at the University of Birmingham, which found that there is indeed <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170424215501.htm" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a connection between job satisfaction and workplace autonomy</a>. A Gallup poll focused on the same topic aimed to quantify how much job dissatisfaction stemming from a lack of autonomy can cost an organization, which ended up being as high as <a href="https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/162953/tackle-employees-stagnating-engagement.aspx" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">$550 billion in lost productivity annually</a>.&nbsp;
Now, these studies are a bit dated. But newer research backs up these findings as well. In a <a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog study</a> designed to understand what&rsquo;s driving burn-out, the problem was broken down into two levels: knowledge and trust. To build a track record that builds trust, teams need a reliable management structure to confirm the power of autonomy. This means teams need visibility into each other&rsquo;s productivity and results in addition to feeling valued enough to share ideas and feedback.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s clear that workplace autonomy is a data-backed way to increase worker productivity, happiness, and engagement. By providing employees with the resources they need to pursue their preferred working styles, you&rsquo;ll be increasing the likelihood of high-quality outputs, strong retention rates, and more productivity &ndash; all from the comfort of your home, beach, office, caf&eacute;, or wherever you&rsquo;ll thrive.&nbsp;

Employee autonomy is proven to lead to higher job satisfaction and employee retention rates – so, how can hybrid employees stay autonomous?

Autonomy is the key to employee engagement | Qatalog

Employee autonomy is proven to lead to higher job satisfaction and employee retention rates – so, how can an organization better empower its workforce?

Autonomy is the key to employee engagement

I&rsquo;ve been a <a href="https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this">How I Built This</a> listener for years. Hearing founders talk about the stories behind their companies has always been inspiring to me. It humanizes the challenges of bringing a business to life, the varied perspectives of why people start a company in the first place, and all the complications, wins, and experiences it comes with.&nbsp;
I started thinking about what a How I Built This episode would look like featuring Qatalog. We&rsquo;re early in our journey and our story is ramping up. It might begin with Tariq mentioning this pain point that&rsquo;s followed him from Wise to Amazon, or maybe a funny anecdote that Guy Raz chuckles at before leading into another question.&nbsp;
At Qatalog, we&rsquo;re just getting started. So instead of focusing on how we&rsquo;re building this, I thought it would be fun to shine more light on why &mdash; featuring many of the people that make it happen. 
<h3>Kaitlin Ashley, Head of Program Management</h3>
Remember open book tests?&nbsp; I remember feeling pretty confident going into an open book test, and how could I not? I had everything I needed to find the right answers: I had the information (available whenever I wanted it), context (this section comes before this section in this chapter), and multiple, accessible guides to help me find what I was looking for quickly (table of contents, index, glossary, bibliography).
Now imagine you have to take an open book test, but you only have access to a few chapters. All the other chapters live with other people, some you&rsquo;ve met before, others you haven&rsquo;t, and most of these people are not in the same room as you. Good luck finding what chapters you&rsquo;re missing and who has them, because the table of contents has also been split out amongst other people, and they&rsquo;re busy doing their own tests. Oh yeah, and don&rsquo;t forget &mdash; the book keeps adding new chapters and updating old ones.
Sounds ridiculous, right?
That second scenario is the reality of modern work: we&rsquo;re all trying to do our best in an environment where access to the information, context, and guides we need to do our work effectively are difficult to find and branched across tens, hundreds, or thousands of people.
We believe we should no longer accept this frustrating, messy, and frankly, unacceptable status quo. That&rsquo;s why we built Qatalog: to provide the transparency, tools, and contextual collaboration teams need to not only locate and understand their company&rsquo;s histories, but also create better teams, products, and processes moving forward.
<h3>Matteo Tittarelli, Growth Ops Lead</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/YycDGMgjRpKdw9JpOzIm" alt="undefined" />
I&rsquo;m building Qatalog to make work more inclusive of people&rsquo;s unique talents. Since I&rsquo;ve started working, I&rsquo;ve learned how meetings and processes have become control measures designed to standardize how people should work. We&rsquo;re trading uniqueness &mdash;&nbsp;which drives creativity, innovation, and progress &mdash;&nbsp;with draining logistics and &ldquo;quality&rdquo; controls, which diminish people&rsquo;s personalities and trust in each other. COVID made this even more critical. I&rsquo;ve overheard my partner being called out in meetings just to be asked where a file is or how to access a tool, and I know she isn&rsquo;t the only one.&nbsp;
Modern work culture must be more inclusive of people&rsquo;s differences, whether that&rsquo;s using different tools, preferring more or fewer meetings, working during the day or at night, from the office or from the beach. Work in 2021 needs a renewed culture that revolves around flexibility, trust, and transparency. I&rsquo;m building Qatalog to foster this new culture, and help people shine through their unique, new way of working.
<h3>Lewis Clark, Head of Communications</h3>
Prior to Qatalog, I spent six years at Stripe where I saw first-hand the challenges of scale. Just over a hundred employees became 4,000+, thousands of users turned into millions, and billions of dollars in volume turned into hundreds of billions. Products would launch at a blistering pace, whole countries would light up in quick succession, and new teams would spin up out of nowhere. It became challenging to keep up and figure out how decisions were being made. While Stripe&rsquo;s <a href="https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">email transparency</a> and <a href="https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Stripe Home</a> gave some clarity into what was happening, it seemed incompatible with the mish-mash of tools in use, from Slack to Confluence to Jira. To put it simply, things became chaotic.&nbsp;
This first-hand experience with a business going through intense scaling challenges, coupled with a realization in the pandemic that work was going through a period of historic, structural change, made me think that there&rsquo;s an opportunity to build something new. That&rsquo;s how I got to Qatalog.
<h3>Tom Hillman, Head of Performance Marketing</h3>
As someone who&rsquo;s experienced the problems of working in a 2000+ person team at Wise during the early days of the pandemic, I recognize all the pain points Qatalog can solve. Since switching to a remote-first, distributed team at Qatalog and getting to use the product daily, I&rsquo;ve not only been able to avoid all the context switching pitfalls &mdash; it&rsquo;s actively shaped the way I work. I&rsquo;m no longer lost in Slack looking for important updates, or spending draining hours on Zoom for updates; I can share vital information with my team based around the world, and they&rsquo;ll see it and any connected projects or goals whenever they&rsquo;re ready.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m building Qatalog because I want other people to share the freedom and flexibility in this way of working, meaning the time I get back from searching for files or skipping between browser tabs can be spent on more important things, like pasta making, and dog walking. 
<h3>Leo Mendoza, Director of Engineering</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/9Ip9uB0mThmum1lB83Xh" alt="undefined" width="595" height="313" />
I&rsquo;m building Qatalog so I can spend more time with my family. Building a world-class remote work hub means I can work from home and not worry about missing a status update in my inbox or looking at the wrong doc in our shared drives. I&rsquo;m building a platform that makes sure I&rsquo;ve got the most up-to-date spreadsheet, slide deck, or diagram in one place without ever needing to ask around. I often missed my daughter&rsquo;s bedtime for a &ldquo;quick&rdquo; 15 minute EOD check-in, which was never quick. Now, I&rsquo;m never conflicted between tuck-ins and check-ins and I want everyone to have the same work/life balance.
<h3>Marta Kutt, Operations Manager</h3>
I am looking forward to more companies using Qatalog and seeing the impact it can have. I really can&rsquo;t imagine working without it anymore &mdash; it makes my life in operations so much easier as often I have many projects and workflows happening at the same time. If only I had used it 5 years ago &mdash; all the valuable knowledge that we could have saved!&nbsp;
<a href="https://bit.ly/3rxK5LW" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/Aw2P8jrrRjeGl9mtvfxD" alt="undefined" /></a>

The people behind Qatalog, and why we're building a new infrastructure for modern work.

Why we built Qatalog | Qatalog blog

Why we're building a new infrastructure for modern work, from the people behind your work hub.

Why we built this

Work is frustrating. We&rsquo;ve all felt a productivity lag, seen <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-business-process-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">disorganized processes</a> and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">lost files</a>, been inconvenienced over information overload or inefficiency, experienced an imbalance in <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">communication styles</a> &mdash; the list goes on.&nbsp;
Our disconnect with work didn&rsquo;t appear because of the pandemic, but rather results from a culmination of the tools, processes, and habits we adopted for in-person office work that could not be scaled without a major culture shift.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s frustrating. <a href="https://time.com/6051955/work-after-covid-19/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">And unsustainable</a>. Which is why we need to do something better.&nbsp;
<iframe width="560" height="314" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MlWoAWpLpns" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<h2>The challenges of work today</h2>
Let's talk about information overload. There will be more data created <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">in the next four years</a> than ever before. To make sense of all this information, we adopted a series of tools for organization, collaboration, and everything else we do day-to-day.&nbsp;
The problem is that in creating and adopting an array of tools to manage our information, we've left it up to the knowledge worker to continually work between them. This leads to feeling scattered, lost, disjointed, even chaotic.&nbsp;
We&rsquo;re <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow">doing more work than we bargained for</a> because our tools aren&rsquo;t working the way we need them to. Maybe at one point, they did, but today&rsquo;s working environment is completely different and disconnect is at an all-time high.&nbsp;
Qatalog recently released a report with Cornell University that found people are spending <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">59 minutes a day</a> looking for information lost within the very applications designed to make work easy. For 44% of workers, siloed digital tools are making it hard to know whether work is being duplicated, and 48% say they&rsquo;re making mistakes simply because they can&rsquo;t keep track of everything going on across their digital workplace.&nbsp;
Asana &mdash;<a href="https://asana.com/apps/qatalog" rel="follow"> a Qatalog integration partner </a>&mdash; found similar results in their <a href="https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2021 Anatomy of Work Index</a>. They discovered that, on average, employees switch between 10 applications 25 times a day. This leads to fragmented communication, reduced efficiency, and duplicated work.&nbsp;
Our digital environment is noisy and distracting. That&rsquo;s not the way we want to describe the way we work. We want to bring transparency, automate this flow of knowledge, and enable teams to scale effectively.&nbsp;
Additionally, relationships between employers and employees are shifting, and without that transparency and trust, employees are more likely to find a workplace that aligns with their needs. It&rsquo;s the employee&rsquo;s market, and <a href="https://time.com/6082503/bosses-shape-future-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">surveys suggest about 40% of U.S. workers</a> are open to switching jobs in the coming months.
<h2>What exactly is a work hub?</h2>
We&rsquo;ve defined work hub to mean a place where the highest performing teams bring their people, work, and tools together to see the big picture and make quality decisions.&nbsp;
A work hub is a digital space where you can organize, collaborate, communicate, and get work done. It consolidates your existing company tools, processes, and goals to break silos and keep your team aligned, without extra meetings or constant pings &mdash; allowing your organization to move toward an async-friendly model.&nbsp;
A work hub isn&rsquo;t another tool, it&rsquo;s a framework that makes sense of scattered information in one place.&nbsp;
See how work could be used by <a href="https://qatalog.com/for/marketing/" rel="follow">marketing</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/for/product-management-engineering/" rel="follow">product and engineerin</a>g, <a href="https://qatalog.com/for/business-operations/" rel="follow">business operations</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/for/sales/" rel="follow">sales</a> and <a href="https://qatalog.com/for/people-operations-hr/" rel="follow">people ops teams</a>.&nbsp;
<h2>How a work hub works</h2>
A work hub eliminates fragmentation and creates a shared perspective. It offers a cohesive digital workspace that connects teams, centralizes projects, promotes discoverability and accessibility, and so much more. How is this achieved? After talking to hundreds of companies faced with the challenges of adapting to modern work, we identified six key ingredients of a work hub.
<h3>Build belonging with a directory</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/R2rxSBRcSQW7l1Uern13" alt="undefined" width="638" height="382" />
Hybrid, remote, and distributed working models are here to stay. As a remote employee myself, I&rsquo;ve only met one of my co-workers in-person, and the others I&rsquo;ve introduced myself to through video conferencing and messages.&nbsp;
However, this doesn&rsquo;t mean a remote or hybrid environment should be any less connected than one where employees work in an office. And it certainly shouldn&rsquo;t diminish the opportunity to see what everyone is working toward.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">With a cohesive directory,</a> you get more than employee profiles &mdash; you get to see who is on what team, team members&rsquo; projects, and the goals they&rsquo;re accomplishing. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/employee-directory-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">You can build belonging</a> within your team by showing what you do and who you are, stay updated on individual or team workflows, and see real-time activity. Much like you would in an office, but on your own schedule and in a much shorter timeframe.
<h3>Align on goals</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/4j984O0Tim7gf4tM1BBw" alt="undefined" width="643" height="385" />
The best way to unify your distributed teams is by making goals clear, discoverable, and accessible to everyone.&nbsp;
Let&rsquo;s say it again for the people in the back: if you want to eliminate silos completely, you have to adopt processes that are visible to everyone. And a critical step that most teams and organizations miss is setting visible goals.&nbsp;
Within <a href="https://qatalog.com/goals/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog&rsquo;s goals</a>, you can set OKRs for your team, your project, and yourself. You can set reminders to update your goals, and attach them to projects within Qatalog or other apps you&rsquo;re using to manage projects. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-hub-vs-performance-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">It&rsquo;s all visible and eliminates the need to context-switch</a> between where your work gets done, your project management tool, and that goals spreadsheet that&rsquo;s bound to get lost next quarter.&nbsp;
<h3>Search across your tools</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/vkOibKJR2GlljiHo9Zkq" alt="undefined" width="655" height="392" />
Most of our productivity tools today have search functionality. Without it, an organization would remain consistently chaotic with no end in sight. Think 2000s style intranet folders, where information is bound to become a jungle.&nbsp;
Imagine if you could connect your tools under one search function. In Qatalog, you can search for anything &mdash; a Google doc, Slack message, or line of code in GitHub &mdash; right from your dashboard.
<h3>Centralize projects</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/OJfsWqVR1q3RkvewYcAA" alt="undefined" width="653" height="391" />
Project documentation is one of the most important aspects of your day-to-day working environment. If your projects aren&rsquo;t organized with relevant resources or don&rsquo;t include all the necessary context it can be easy to get lost.&nbsp;
A work hub provides a global view of all your projects, regardless of what tools they live in. That information can be brought into other workflows, goals, shared between teams, and posted about. No need to switch between tabs. It&rsquo;s a fresh chance to connect the dots.
<h3>See what&rsquo;s important in posts</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/pzl1hsnRjyhFs5NYkI9Z" alt="undefined" width="660" height="395" />
If remote work is the future, asynchronous communication is what will help us get there.&nbsp;
And here&rsquo;s the catch: even if your organization isn&rsquo;t remote, relying on asynchronous communication is what&rsquo;s going to keep your company competitive in the marketplace. Because async isn&rsquo;t only good for producing results, it allows your employees to remain free and lead more fulfilled lives.&nbsp;
With work hub posts, you get the right information to the right people, so everyone can discover what&rsquo;s going on. It&rsquo;s easier than scrolling through endless Slack messages or emails to get the information you need &mdash; and much easier than sitting in Zoom status meetings all day &mdash; and acts as a collective, collaborative work newsfeed.&nbsp;
Distributing information is no longer a spray-and-pray effort of blasting updates with the hope that the right people will pay attention. Qatalog makes sure your posts won&rsquo;t get lost in the ether by providing read receipts so you have a view of who read what.
<h3>Automate processes with workflows</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/gRK8QehSbGF8dDTBJVYw" alt="undefined" width="666" height="399" />
Your processes are your company&rsquo;s longest-living legacies. And most of the time, they aren&rsquo;t easy to duplicate or share with the entire organization. That onboarding structure that lives within a million Google Drive files? What if you could automate a new hire&rsquo;s onboarding through a connected workflow?&nbsp;
Creating a workflow in Qatalog is an easy, streamlined process that allows you to add all the steps you need completed and integrate the tools necessary to do so. So easy, your grandpa could navigate it (and Matteo&rsquo;s already did!).&nbsp;
<h2>The future of work</h2>
<a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Study</a> after <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1007914455/as-the-pandemic-recedes-millions-of-workers-are-saying-i-quit" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">study</a> after <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/08/is-it-time-to-let-employees-work-from-anywhere" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">study</a> has shown that employees are ready for change. We need a new way of working that we couldn&rsquo;t have anticipated, or even imagined, just a few years ago.&nbsp;
What we do know is that our current methods aren&rsquo;t working. Our reliance on old productivity habits isn&rsquo;t making room for the future of work. Plus, our tools don&rsquo;t work in concert with each other, and we don&rsquo;t really know how to work in concert with them either.
A work hub addresses those foundational issues head-on, harnessing the latest research behind modern work to design an entirely new class of software. It breaks down the elements of modern work and reassembles them from the ground up so you don&rsquo;t have to.&nbsp;
Read more to discover how a work hub beats out or works together with:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A company wiki</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Project management software</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-hub-vs-performance-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Performance management software</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-team-instant-messaging-apps-slack-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Instant messaging apps</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/employee-directory-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Static employee directories</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-business-process-management-software/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Process management software</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/intranet-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Company-wide intranet</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Workplace search tools</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">...and more</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="https://bit.ly/3rxK5LW" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/Aw2P8jrrRjeGl9mtvfxD" alt="Email signature banner-4 (1).png" /></a>

A work hub eliminates fragmentation and creates a shared perspective. It allows you to connect different apps and build a digital workspace.

What is a work hub? | Qatalog Blog

Everything you need to know about Qatalog's work hub.

What is a work hub?

When employees with different backgrounds and skills come together to work on the same project, they form what&rsquo;s known as a cross-functional team. Cross-functional teams unite those in different areas of expertise to work toward a shared goal.&nbsp;
Quite common in the workplace, modern cross-functional teams are facing different types of challenges as they collaborate in a hybrid or remote fashion.&nbsp;
Countless companies are ditching the legacy work model and shifting to a remote-friendly or hybrid model, putting pressure on developing async methods to build these cross-functional teams.&nbsp;
In this article, we&rsquo;ll walk through the makings of a stand-out cross-functional team, what their role is in a hybrid workspace, and the best tips for how to build a cross-functional team at your company.&nbsp;
<h3>What does a cross-functional team look like?</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/jIQS6duJTjSdXetlK5wx" alt="undefined" />
A cross-functional team brings in members of different teams/departments to achieve a shared goal. It emphasizes broad collaboration in the ideation process.&nbsp;
For example, let&rsquo;s say a new opportunity is presented to your company to pursue &mdash; maybe it&rsquo;s entering a new market or territory, or developing a new product for your product suite.&nbsp;
In a project of this size, the work shouldn&rsquo;t be left to one individual &mdash; or even one sole department. For these initiatives, you would probably need:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Finance employees to plan out the project&rsquo;s budget</li>
<li aria-level="1">Marketers to come up with a strategy for branding and positioning</li>
<li aria-level="1">Salespeople to develop a territory management plan</li>
<li aria-level="1">Human resources professionals to think through a hiring and employee engagement strategy to support new demand</li>
<li aria-level="1">Product experts to think through what should be created in order to capitalize on market demand</li>
</ul>
This diversity of both thought and backgrounds helps break the mold, challenge groupthink, and reach a consensus that is more likely to be successful when implemented. The differing viewpoints allow new challenges and opportunities to be confronted that otherwise might have been ignored or otherwise left unaddressed.
We&rsquo;ve all heard the statement that &ldquo;diverse teams perform better than non-diverse teams,&rdquo; but Gartner specifically found that employee performance was <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/diversity-and-inclusion-build-high-performance-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">12% higher</a> on diverse teams than non-diverse teams. In particular, Gartner&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/webinars/3984478/covid-19-shatters-deeply-held-work-culture-beliefs" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Bruce Robertson</a> encourages companies to &ldquo;Look for &lsquo;cognitive&rsquo; diversity, which is mixing people together with different thinking styles, habits, and perspectives.&rdquo;
<h2>Why are cross-functional teams important for hybrid?</h2>
When we take a step back, remote and hybrid teams might be the best suited for cross-functional work if we take diversity into account. When workers have complete flexibility to determine how work works best for them, they can bring more to the table. Plus, remote work offers more equitable environments and more geographically diverse hiring pools.
The first step to creating a cross-functional organization within a hybrid model is to establish trust with your team. Enabling a supportive environment by encouraging risks, mistakes, and opinions improves the well-being of your company. And with all those qualities in a workplace, it&rsquo;s hard not to grow.&nbsp;
Companies need to set up these cross-functional task forces for success not just in terms of the final deliverable, but with the resources, processes, and trust the team needs to fulfill their purpose.
<h2>Building your cross-functional team</h2>
Now that you&rsquo;re clear on what a cross-functional team is and why it&rsquo;s important, let&rsquo;s walk through the steps of building one in a hybrid organization.&nbsp;
<h3>1. Begin with clarity &amp; transparency</h3>
When a cross-functional team comes together, its members should be aligned with a common purpose and a common understanding of that purpose. Otherwise, the team could quickly find themselves at odds with one another <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-create-role-clarity-within-your-hybrid-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">or lacking role clarity.&nbsp;</a>
Specifically, the team should be informed about the expectations of this collaboration, such as deadlines and deliverables. Any existing resources should also be shared with the team, like a memo on the project&rsquo;s background and purpose.&nbsp;
This level of clarity and transparency should also be maintained for the entire time of collaboration. The team might rely on a shared <a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/">directory</a> to eliminate silos and document role responsibilities for everyone on the task force,&nbsp;
<h3>2. Keep goals aligned</h3>
Goals should be clearly established from the get-go for everyone to know the project&rsquo;s primary goal, secondary goal(s), and measurements of success.&nbsp;
Teams can use the <a href="https://medium.com/@IliyanaStareva/how-to-use-the-darci-framework-in-project-management-694f756680fa" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">DARCI model</a> to rally the team around the person most responsible for each sub-goal, as well as utilizing <a href="https://qatalog.com/goals/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">goal tracking software</a> to share progress to the cross-functional team at large.&nbsp;
<h3>3. Embrace employee autonomy</h3>
It&rsquo;s important to remember that everyone on a cross-functional team has their own specialty &mdash; that&rsquo;s why they were appointed to the team in the first place. For managers, this means embracing employee autonomy, understanding the importance of knowing your employees and their abilities, and trusting them to do the work for which they were hired. Otherwise, you&rsquo;ll risk micromanaging them, which is a leading reason why employees quit their jobs.
For individual contributors, it means living up to your potential as an employee. In a cross-functional group, you might be the only one representing your department, so embracing your autonomy is imperative to the team&rsquo;s success.&nbsp;
<h3>4. Lead with empathy</h3>
Finally, a great cross-functional team needs great leadership. Cross-functional collaboration requires a leader who &mdash; outlined above &mdash; respects employee autonomy, keeps the team&rsquo;s goals aligned, and communicates with transparency.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-new-normal-is-dead/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Normalcy no longer exists</a>. There is no getting to the finish line, work has become flexible and will remain so until employees feel it&rsquo;s no longer working. Leaders who remain adaptable and empathetic to these changes will gain the respect of employees who know their best interests are in mind.&nbsp;
<h2>Let&rsquo;s put our people first</h2>
The best practice of putting employees first in a job has not undergone a paradigm shift, even though our working models have. Since cross-functional teams are usually formed to tackle new ground, it&rsquo;s important to be patient and transparent with employees when building a cross-functional remote team.&nbsp;
When given the tools they need to trust each other, members of a cross-functional team will be able to collaborate seamlessly and produce high-quality deliverables &mdash; in any setting.

Cross-functional teams are assembled to complete high-impact work, but a hybrid approach to work can add another layer to the process.

4 keys to build cross-functional hybrid teams | Qatalog

4 keys to building a cross-functional hybrid team

We were all forced into this new way of working. Now with a full year under our belt, we&rsquo;ve collectively learned what it means to operate in a fully distributed, and now hybrid, working model.
We have seen the benefits of working from home, the positive impact on employee well-being and flexibility. But we&rsquo;ve also exposed the cracks in how we work with each other, how we support remote employees, the tools we use, and their impact on productivity.
Qatalog recently partnered with Cornell University&rsquo;s Ellis Idea Lab to survey around 3000 workers across the US and the UK who are familiar with remote work. Then we put together a panel of hybrid experts &mdash; Lila Millsap (InVision), Laurell Farrer (Distribute), Chase Warrington (Doist), and myself &mdash; to discuss the results.&nbsp;
You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0xJfiPSG8s" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">watch the discussion here</a>, or read through this recap:&nbsp;
<h2>We&rsquo;re missing the critical components of a healthy workplace</h2>
We saw an explosion in tools focused on enhancing our productivity and engagement. With all that attention on remaining productive, we&rsquo;ve been neglecting trust, flexibility, focus, and belonging.&nbsp;
In a remote world, you need to have trust. 32% of people surveyed reported that their company was not investing in programs that help build relationships. When we change the dynamics of how we work, we need to change the way we support employees in this environment.
<h3>Takeaways from our experts on trust in the workplace:&nbsp;</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">To instill and maintain trust, you need a level of transparency about what is happening across your organization. It also helps to make goals, files, and projects accessible to everyone to enable flexibility for today&rsquo;s employees.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">We felt a collective trepidation as companies were forced to move to remote models, and because of this, we have to be a lot more intentional about how we connect and build relationships with our colleagues.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Emotional intelligence is a skill that is highly valuable in a remote environment. Advocating for yourself, sharing when practices/procedures aren&rsquo;t working for you helps the whole company move forward.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Trust needs to be part of the core values of your company. Focus on outcomes, not daily tasks. Focus on transparency.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h3>Flexibility and communication go hand in hand:</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Communication standards are the core to your success. At Doist, you&rsquo;ll never see communication that expects an immediate response. That&rsquo;s because they&rsquo;re prioritizing a healthy async workplace. These standards and expectations are also built into onboarding since transitioning into a new remote environment involves getting used to new communication norms.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">We have to be aware of how we work and collaborate with others, especially in a remote environment. Knowing your communication and working preferences and communicating them will go a long way.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Leadership should set expectations in the interview process and be transparent about what type of behaviors are going to be successful within your working environment.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Build a communication charter that focuses on specific methods of communication, not many many many tools.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h3>Deep work can only get done when we prioritize asynchronous ways of working:</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Build in the time and space to focus. We know about the concept of deep work, and remote can actually increase distractions and impact focus negatively. Calendar holds work well for designating that &ldquo;deep work&rdquo; time away from distractions.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The more that we can use tools to set expectations, and people have an opportunity to report on that success, helps us determine when deep work is getting done which in turn impacts trust between coworkers.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h3>Remote culture is still culture:</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Culture may be the single hardest thing to maintain in remote, and arguably, the most important. But who decided that culture happens around the water cooler? Your culture adds should be unique to your company - so pay attention to your employees.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
RIGHT??! "Who came up with the idea that culture happens around the water cooler?" <a href="https://twitter.com/dcwarrington?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dcwarrington</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/doist?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@doist</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/qatalog?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@qatalog</a> roundtable on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hybridwork?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#hybridwork</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/remotework?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#remotework</a> <a href="https://t.co/gd9J2343kV">pic.twitter.com/gd9J2343kV</a>
&mdash; Leah Taylor 💃🏼 (@leahtaylor) <a href="https://twitter.com/leahtaylor/status/1415351256583872520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Culture is built into the little moments. And all of the things listed above, when done correctly, will showcase your dedication to a people-focused culture.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>

And what&rsquo;s a good webinar without those few golden-nugget quotes? We&rsquo;ll probably be coming back to these for a while:&nbsp;

<h4 style="text-align: center;">&ldquo;Work is something that we do, not somewhere we go.&rdquo;&nbsp;</h4>
Laurel Farrer

<h4 style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;&ldquo;Culture is built into the little moments&rdquo;&nbsp;</h4>
Lila Millsap

<h4 style="text-align: center;">&ldquo;Trust can sound abstract, I don&rsquo;t know any remote company that thrives that doesn&rsquo;t focus on trust.&rdquo;&nbsp;</h4>
Chase Warrington

Again, a huge thanks to our panelists and viewers for making our first webinar such a fantastic learning experience. We&rsquo;re already thinking about what to chat about in our next webinar, so keep your feedback coming.&nbsp;

We spoke with Lila Millsap (InVision), Laurell Farrer (Distribute), and Chase Warrington (Doist) about building healthy hybrid habits.

Build your digital office | Qatalog blog

What we learned about building a healthy hybrid workforce in our panel discussion.

Webinar recap: building a digital office in a hybrid world

Have you ever stopped in the middle of the workday and asked yourself why you&rsquo;re doing what you&rsquo;re doing, what your day-to-day will look like a month from now, or how your work is contributing to your company&rsquo;s overall success?
If so, you&rsquo;re likely suffering from uncertain role clarity in your job.&nbsp;
Everyone on a team needs role clarity. Imagine if a basketball team was composed of players who didn&rsquo;t know their roles &ndash; there would be no shared understanding of who&rsquo;s on offense, who&rsquo;s on defense, or what everyone&rsquo;s skills and advantages on the court are. It&rsquo;s no different for a team of marketers, software engineers, or even a company&rsquo;s entire staff.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, the crisis of lacking role clarity has only been exacerbated as workforces move to hybrid models. Despite the many benefits of remote work, <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-07-14-gartner-survey-reveals-82-percent-of-company-leaders-plan-to-allow-employees-to-work-remotely-some-of-the-time" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">29% of business leaders</a> haven&rsquo;t taken measures to track productivity remotely, meaning employees at these organizations could be unclear about how their work is being perceived, how they&rsquo;re contributing to company goals, or what&rsquo;s next for their roles.
However, the hybrid model is here to stay, with <a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/gartner-over-80-of-company-leaders-plan-to-permit-remote-work-after-pande/581744/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">80% of businesses</a> planning to allow at least some remote work in a post-COVID world. This new landscape of work and employee engagement means team leaders will have to go the extra mile to establish and maintain role clarity for their employees. Otherwise, hybrid workforces are at risk of leaving employees without a clear purpose or direction.&nbsp;
<h2>What is role clarity?&nbsp;</h2>
In a professional setting, the meaning of role clarity is a thorough understanding of what is expected of you from your role on a team or in your organization. These expectations can be tasks, deliverables, processes, goals, and KPIs, or even knowledge. Role clarity can be maximized by effective training, documentation, open communication, and adopting a work hub.
The opposite of role clarity &ndash; known as role confusion, uncertainty, or ambiguity &ndash; is the lack of this knowledge. Employees who don&rsquo;t have a sense of role clarity typically are (or feel like they are) less productive than they should be.&nbsp;
<h2>Negative impacts of role confusion</h2>
Without role clarity, you could end up lacking the direction you need to do your job to the best of your ability, leading to confusion, unproductivity, or even a level of unfulfillment that could result in you searching for a new job. In particular, remote or hybrid teams have a unique opportunity to document role scope via asynchronous communication.
<h3>Role and organizational conflict</h3>
A lack of clarity for your own role means others may have a different perception of your role than you do. Conversely, being unclear about others&rsquo; roles means you might expect something from a coworker who doesn&rsquo;t know that she is responsible for that task, even if &mdash; in reality &mdash; she isn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
This role confusion at work serves no other purpose than to create interdepartmental conflict. Role clarity prevents two people or teams from stepping on each other's toes by doing the same work, as well as ensuring no important tasks are left unattended and someone takes responsibility for them.
<h3>Decreased job performance</h3>
Hangups on what to do and how to do it can be a major impediment to workplace productivity. Imagine being told to drive a direct route but not having a map or a GPS &ndash; you may eventually find your way to your destination, but you likely wouldn&rsquo;t do so in the most efficient way possible.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s the same thing at work. Role uncertainty can lead to a state of on-the-job paralysis, where those who are unsure of what to do or how to do it don&rsquo;t put in much effort until they get clarification. It can also lead to workers spending time and energy on tasks that are not within the scope of their role, which simply wastes time and could interfere with another individual&rsquo;s or team&rsquo;s work.&nbsp;
<h3>Work-related stress</h3>
<a href="https://www.gallup.com/analytics/248906/gallup-global-emotions-report-2019.aspx" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">More than half of Americans</a> admit to feeling stressed out daily on the job, with role conflict and role ambiguity among <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740194/pdf/v059p00067.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the main sources of stress</a> and burnout at work.&nbsp;
According to the Mayo Clinic, <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/burnout/art-20046642" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">unclear job expectations</a> and uncertainty &ldquo;about the degree of authority you have&rdquo; or what &ldquo;others expect from you&rdquo; can play a factor in that burnout. Without role clarity, you might have a sense that you&rsquo;re just spinning your wheels, causing you to feel (and potentially be) unproductive.&nbsp;
<h2>How to create role clarity in your hybrid team</h2>
Whether you&rsquo;re a team lead seeking to create more role transparency for your direct reports or an individual contributor hoping to set some direction for yourself, there are proven ways to create more role clarity in a hybrid organization, decrease on-the-job frustration, and maximize productivity.
<h3>Start with role clarity on a team level</h3>
Divide and conquer! When the mission of giving meaning to role clarity seems like a daunting task, the first step is to set role definitions on a team level. It can start with a simple meeting to identify every team member&rsquo;s skills and interests, mapping those to a team goal, and documenting these roles to share with the company at large.&nbsp;
<h3>Advocate for more transparency</h3>
As an individual contributor, it falls on you to manage up by bringing job concerns to your manager. Coming to one-on-ones with direct questions about your role shows your boss how serious you are about role transparency. If you ever feel totally stuck, you can also outline your ideal role on the team and present it to your team manager(s) to see how receptive they are.&nbsp;
These extra steps are necessary in the hybrid workplace.
<h3>Adopt a directory</h3>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/0mAUzn8KSVWyug4UHsRW" alt="undefined" /></a>
For hybrid teams that want to capitalize on the benefits of asynchronous collaboration, it&rsquo;s worth utilizing a <a href="https://qatalog.com/work-hub/" rel="follow noopener">work hub</a> to clearly communicate who is responsible for which tasks and goals.
In particular, a <a href="https://qatalog.com/directory/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">workplace directory</a> accessible to all team members provides optimal visibility into the projects, goals, and tasks that everyone is responsible for. A dynamic directory is an easy fix to role confusion at work &mdash; particularly for hybrid corporations where so many coworkers meet and collaborate virtually.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Related templates: <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/employee-profile/" rel="follow">Employee profile template</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/new-team-member-announcement/" rel="follow">New employee announcement template</a>

Role clarity keeps workers clear on their goals and paves the way for workplace happiness and productivity. Here are three ways to improve it.

Role clarity within your hybrid team | Qatalog blog

How to create role clarity within your hybrid team

Everyone loves free swag. Doesn&rsquo;t matter what it is or what&rsquo;s imprinted on it, just that we don&rsquo;t have to pay for it.
One of my previous jobs was to source branded promotional items for our clients. Somewhere along the line, this turned into gifting the items to our new hires. On their first day, they would arrive to work with a nice little pile of gifts on their desk waiting for them.&nbsp;
First impressions matter. <a href="https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/Pages/Dont-Underestimate-the-Importance-of-Effective-Onboarding.aspx" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">6</a><a href="https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/Pages/Dont-Underestimate-the-Importance-of-Effective-Onboarding.aspx" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">9%</a><a href="https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/Pages/Dont-Underestimate-the-Importance-of-Effective-Onboarding.aspx" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> of employees are</a> more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience great onboarding. It does take a bit more than free swag to sway an employee in your favor long-term, but providing an initial positive introduction can never hurt.
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/lQUg9NiBT8GLlYfBzJY4" alt="undefined" />
Employee experience is a wheel, it doesn&rsquo;t stop on your first day. Once your culture starts rolling, it should be a seamless cycle to integrate others into the workplace, physical or digital, with a sense of trust and belonging.&nbsp;
<h2>Employee experience is getting buzz, but not much definition</h2>
Google &lsquo;employee experience&rsquo; and you&rsquo;ll get results to the moon and back. There is no unanimous definition for what employee experience means. Some say it &ldquo;encapsulates what people encounter and observe over the course of their tenure at an organization,&rdquo; or &ldquo;focused on tracing how employees think and feel during every single touchpoint of their journey.&rdquo;&nbsp;
The reality is, we won&rsquo;t find a universal definition for employee experience because it differs from organization to organization. What is usually agreed upon is that it can be broken down into five stages: recruit, onboard, develop, retain, offboard. These journey milestones vary by length of time depending upon how the experience goes.
Every company has its unique perspective of what <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-argument-for-autonomy/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">employee experience means to them</a>. At Adobe, there&rsquo;s an entire team dedicated to employee experience. Scott Rigby, Head of Digital Transformation, <a href="https://hrmasia.com/at-adobe-employee-experience-is-a-marriage-of-art-and-science/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Adobe Asia Pacific,</a><a href="https://hrmasia.com/at-adobe-employee-experience-is-a-marriage-of-art-and-science/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> said</a>, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a huge amount of investment going into delivering better employee experiences as the way employees engage with organizations today is changing rapidly. Businesses need to adapt very quickly to be able to execute on those experiences and engage employees to get them to participate and be involved in the business, no matter where they&rsquo;re located.&rdquo;&nbsp;
<h2>Why it&rsquo;s important to focus on the employee experience</h2>
Where the employee experience is taking place has shifted. Obviously, the biggest swing has been to a hybrid or distributed workforce.&nbsp;
Perhaps the company that is getting the most headlines in this area lately is Basecamp. Here&rsquo;s what went down at the web software company in case you missed it &hellip;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The CEO prohibited &ldquo;societal and political discussions&rdquo; from the company&rsquo;s internal chat forums.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The decision was met with contention amongst the staff. A lot of contention. Followed by a lot of meetings and apologies and emotional breakdowns.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">About 34% of Basecamp's employees decided to leave the company because of a &ldquo;terrible,&rdquo; &ldquo;horrible,&rdquo; &ldquo;no good,&rdquo; &ldquo;very bad&rdquo; employee experience.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
There is always something we can learn from others&rsquo; failures. And with Basecamp, it was how much the employee experience is intertwined with communication and retention. Studies show a direct correlation between experience and company success. Organizations with solid employee experience can achieve twice the customer satisfaction and innovation and generate<a href="https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/what-is-employee-experience" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> 25%</a> higher profits than those that don&rsquo;t.
<h2>How to measure experience one employee at a time</h2>
So how do you know if your company is on the path to success, or if you have a Basecamp-type situation brewing beneath the surface? The best way to find out is to just ask. Conduct ongoing surveys at each stage of the employee journey. Look at rating websites such as Glassdoor. Talk with employees for direct feedback. Include a feedback workflow into your work hub.
The key is to not just take data and turn it into a pretty-looking report that will gather dust. You must glean insights, look at the pain points, and find solutions. For example, a common issue we see is the lack of an organized virtual workplace. A work hub can help to connect siloed employees and keep your workflow accessible in one place.
The<a href="https://thefutureorganization.com/employee-experience-index/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> Employee Experience Index</a> scored 252 organizations based on seventeen variables across the three environments employees care about most at work: culture, technology, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-makes-a-great-workspace-in-2021/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">and the physical workspace</a>.&nbsp;
The Index found although<a href="https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-the-millions-we-spend-on-employee-engagement-buy-us-so-little." rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> 23%</a> of companies were making strides in all three areas, just 6% were investing heavily in all three and those organizations (Adobe, Accenture, Facebook, Microsoft, and others) saw performance gains. Anecdotally, these top-scoring organizations shared they <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/flexible-workforce-flexible-benefits-packages/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">have happier employees</a>, larger talent pipelines, and greater <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">profitability and productivity.</a>
Qatalog also released a survey as part of its language.work report to help companies see if they&rsquo;ve effectively adopted modern work standards.You can <a href="https://language.work/change-now/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">take that 2-minute quiz here</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>Putting employee experience insights into action</h2>
The creator of the Employee Experience Index is Jacob Morgan. In his book, <a href="https://www.opensourcedworkplace.com/news/the-employee-experience-advantage-jacob-morgan-" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Morgan</a><a href="https://www.opensourcedworkplace.com/news/the-employee-experience-advantage-jacob-morgan-" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> explains</a><a href="https://www.opensourcedworkplace.com/news/the-employee-experience-advantage-jacob-morgan-" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">,</a> &ldquo;One of the things that organizations always get concerned about is cost. This usually happens because of an overemphasis on things such as free gourmet food, designer office spaces, and crazy perks like free dry cleaning, massages, and on-site dog walking. It&rsquo;s true; these things do cost money, but the majority of things that shape the employee experience are free.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Here are some ways you can establish an ideal distributed employee experience with minimal investment. These fall into the three categories we&rsquo;ve discussed: culture, technology, and workspace.&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Create the employee experience at home: Give employees a stipend for home office items. E-commerce company <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-shopify-gives-employees-1000-stipend-to-work-from-home.html">Shopify</a> offers its distributed employees $1,000 to set up their office. Qatalog offers this to new hires as well.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Get the right tools in your company&rsquo;s tech stack: Of course, there&rsquo;s Slack and Zoom, but you also need to look at your existing tools and adapt them. Check with your teams about what their new tech needs may be. Odds are, you&rsquo;ll need a centralized location to make your information and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps/">files discoverable and accessible</a> to your <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/get-hybrid-in-order/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">hybrid team</a>.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Modernize the onboarding experience: Most organizations only offer <a href="https://www.saplinghr.com/10-employee-onboarding-statistics-you-must-know-in-2021">one week</a> of onboarding, leaving new hires feeling discouraged and lacking resources. Companies such as <a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/9-ways-to-manage-remote-teams-and-the-virtual-office-in-2021/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">DocuSign</a> are extending the new hire period to four to six months.</li>
</ul>
While I highly recommend the use of swag (I love it, everyone I know loves it), the modern employee experience is about removing legacy roadblocks and adopting practices that establish a people-first organization. Trust, flexibility, focus, and belonging should all be factors that are included in every worker&rsquo;s day, not just nice-to-haves. And to make that a reality, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/new-way-of-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">centralizing communication and productivity tools has to come first.</a>&nbsp;

Employee experience is the buzzword everyone is talking about but isn’t sure what to do with.

What is employee experience? | Qatalog blog

Back to basics: what is employee experience?

The cleanest argument for returning to an office-first culture of synchronous and spontaneous interaction is so simple, so sensible, that a handful of executives have recently regurgitated it with signature C-suite conviction: &ldquo;93% of communication is nonverbal; that&rsquo;s how much value we lose when we can&rsquo;t interact in-person.&rdquo;
If this is your leader, please come get them. They&rsquo;re drunk on one of the biggest myths in social psychology.
We&rsquo;re going to break down the fallacy of the &ldquo;93% nonverbal communication&rdquo; rule in two acts: why the number is completely irrelevant to the workplace, and why healthy businesses spend significant resources to reduce whatever the actual number is.
<h3>Nope, 93% of communication is not nonverbal</h3>
First, let&rsquo;s get on the same page about &ldquo;nonverbal communication:&rdquo; the spoken word is obviously verbal, but for business purposes, written communication as a proxy for speech would also be considered verbal. So, <a href="https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/chapter/4-2-types-of-nonverbal-communication/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">nonverbal communication encompasses</a>:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">gestures, posture, and body movement</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">facial expressions and eye contact</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">pitch, tone, and timing of words</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">touch and other senses</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">&ldquo;proxemics&rdquo; (i.e., how people use personal space to influence communication)</li>
</ul>
The popular 93% figure originated from a mashing together of two studies conducted by UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian, and you&rsquo;ll be surprised to learn just how irrelevant those studies are to this rule we&rsquo;ve since internalized as a standard of human interaction:
In both studies, lab participants were asked to hear singular words several times (the word in the first study was &ldquo;maybe&rdquo;), and then approximate the speaker&rsquo;s underlying emotional state behind each spoken word. Study #1 analyzed how facial expressions impacted the perception of the emotion, and Study #2 analyzed how tone impacted it.
That&rsquo;s it. That&rsquo;s the research.
Neither of the studies analyzed complete sentences, let alone full speeches or conversations. None of the other nonverbal communication variables were analyzed. In fact, the studies didn&rsquo;t even focus on gleaning anything beyond a rudimentary perception of &ldquo;like vs. dislike.&rdquo; In other words, the studies basically created an artificial environment with a 1:1 ratio of words spoken to emotions interpreted. Nobody functions that way in reality.
<a href="http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Mehrabian himself has since cautioned</a> against taking his research seriously outside of its context, stating, &ldquo;unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.&rdquo;
It goes without saying &mdash; no pun intended &mdash; that your workplace churns out a far more lopsided ratio of explicit-to-implicit communication. Messages, meetings, documents, presentations &hellip; these comms are not only brimming with far more complex words and environments than Mehrabian&rsquo;s studies, but also weighted much more toward objective information like priorities, facts and figures, processes, and schedules. There is simply no significant correlation between the precarious lab findings at UCLA and the constant barrage of complex interactions we experience at work.
Now that we&rsquo;ve dispelled the myth of nonverbal communication, let&rsquo;s squash any semblance of its primitive appeal so leaders can stop fantasizing about <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/remote-work-to-hybrid/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the way communication works</a>, and start investing in the platforms that actually enable productive communication.
<h3>Nonverbal communication is bad for business</h3>
We mentioned the &ldquo;primitive appeal&rdquo; of the 93% number &mdash; what is that, exactly?
For many, and especially for Type A business leaders, it&rsquo;s the exciting notion that you might be able to gain an advantage or otherwise benefit from gathering secret information that wasn&rsquo;t explicitly communicated. It&rsquo;s the allure of reading &ldquo;between the lines&rdquo; to reach the underlying intent (which, to be clear, is not actually correlated to nonverbal communication in that intent can easily be misinterpreted through non-communication or manipulative communication. Just ask <a href="https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the people who study polygraph tests</a>).
Perhaps it comes from our prehistoric interactions with potential predators or mates; who knows? Regardless, it&rsquo;s primitive, and that&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s so detrimental to the civilized social structure of a business.
Your coworkers are not threatening predators. They are a curated, incentivized, and managed group of people who share your goals, and whose trust is supposed to be inherent. It shouldn&rsquo;t be your obligation to interpret whether a coworker means you ill intent or is hiding something &mdash; the confines of your organization should be, by design, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">a safe space to cooperate and collaborate transparently.</a>
Ironically, the distinction between explicit communication and &ldquo;secret&rdquo; information is one of the core arguments in favor of building a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/darren-murph-gitlab-interview/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote-first organization</a>, rather than an office-dependent one:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">It&rsquo;s neither productive nor equitable to have a meeting presenter&rsquo;s information interpreted uniquely by each coworker based on how sharp their nonverbal listening skills are. Everyone should walk out of the meeting with the same knowledge, and documenting it mitigates much of the subjectivity introduced by nonverbal communication.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Managers who give arcane direction and prioritization will often use the crutch of nonverbal communication to escape accountability, continuing to drag down morale and productivity across the org. Barking at employees, leaning over their desks, showing facial expressions of anger or disappointment when challenged &hellip; all of this is done to push their own agendas through <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workload-management-snowball-and-the-meteor/">the paths of least resistance</a> (i.e., the most easily intimidated employees) rather than be held accountable to any shared task management system or priority list where conflicting work exists.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Many employees lack a natural skill set for presentation and persuasion. Of course, that doesn&rsquo;t mean the employees don&rsquo;t have ideas worth listening to. In an office environment, a junior engineer might sit slumped in their chair, looking at their hands while mumbling an objection to leadership&rsquo;s approach &mdash; as a result, their warning falls on deaf ears. In a work hub-enabled environment, they can take the opportunity to present their opinion more convincingly, even with linked material supporting the case, and have that comment stand equally among the rest of their teammates&rsquo; perspectives.</li>
</ul>
An environment where coworkers don&rsquo;t feel <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/kurt-schrader-clubhouse-interview/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">empowered to communicate transparently</a>, or where leaders take advantage to avoid transparency, is simply a toxic environment. Investing in a centralized digital working space like a work hub isn&rsquo;t just good for operational productivity &mdash; it&rsquo;s medicine for a diseased culture eating away at its own trust and alignment. Nonverbal communication is certainly a part of human interaction, but it&rsquo;s not what we want in the workplace.

Nonverbal communication in the workplace shouldn't impact performance so much that it's an argument to ditch the hybrid model.

Nonverbal communication is an expense | Qatalog blog

Speaking truth to the myth of nonverbal communication

Every business and team have their own processes for different business functions.&nbsp;
However, whether or not these processes are effective and allow for cross-team collaboration is another question entirely.&nbsp;
Business prosses management tools like <a href="https://www.process.st/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Process Street</a>, <a href="https://tonkean.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Tonkean</a>, and <a href="https://kissflow.com/process-management/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Kissflow</a> have already helped to streamline complicated processes and automate many repetitive, time-consuming tasks. But many of these tools are a one-stop-shop for processes and cannot connect to where your work actually gets done.&nbsp;
<h2>What is business process management?</h2>
According to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/business-process-management-bpm">Gartner,</a> business process management is a discipline that uses different techniques to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, and optimize business processes. This can involve organization or automation and coordinates information to support the business strategy. BPM is usually aligned with tech or tools that assist with structure, documentation, and repeatability.&nbsp;
<h3>Employing a business process management software</h3>
With so many apps available to automate office work, it can be tempting to just keep adding new integrations. However, you could end up overseeing a Frankenstein&rsquo;s Monster of a workflow; unwieldy, unrefined, and often misunderstood.
If you want to keep the pitchforks at bay, there are a few things you need to know about the challenges of current workflow automation software &mdash; and how a work hub can ride to the rescue.
<h2>One solution: business workflow applications&nbsp;</h2>
While business workflow tools are great for increasing productivity and scaling internal processes, they can often fail to provide a key ingredient for truly prolific, streamlined workflows: context.&nbsp;
If things are happening in the background, and most of your team doesn&rsquo;t know how or why, your people can quickly become disconnected or disillusioned.&nbsp;
<h3>Disconnect between teams</h3>
Workflow automation apps are designed to &ldquo;democratize automation,&rdquo; but they&rsquo;re still mainly used by a small portion of teams (such as back-office ops, like legal or finance), which can result in silos.&nbsp;
Generally, closed processes limit the knowledge and information shared to just a portion of the company. Why? Because these apps sit out of context where teamwork and collaboration actually happens.
<h2>Pain point: processes are outside the context of tools, teams, and projects</h2>
<a href="https://www.process.st/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Process Street</a> has a simple interface that lets you create structured workflows &mdash; but you still need their Zapier integration to link these processes to the right productivity and collaboration tools (e.g. Trello, Asana, Google Sheets).
This might add further costs and complexity, as well as dependencies on third parties in order to make the most out of the tool.&nbsp;
Let's say you make the commitment, spend the extra time finding workarounds to link all the workflows to the right teams and projects, like creating a monster sheet that bookmarks all the workflows of the finance team &mdash; you&rsquo;ve just created more overhead than before, and added another tool on your company stack.
Wouldn&rsquo;t it be great to make an investment in something that eases complexity, give you the right context, and covers more use cases rather than just another tool?
<h2>A work hub vs. business process management software</h2>
Workflows should be a lightweight process that doesn&rsquo;t feel like work about work.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">With a work hub</a>, you can easily document, assign, and track the progress of processes from one place.&nbsp;
<h2>Benefits of a work hub</h2>
<h3>1. Find all your workflows quickly &mdash; from one place</h3>
With a work hub, you don&rsquo;t need to switch to another tool to find and use your shared workflows. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">All your company-wide and team-specific</a> processes and protocols are centralized into one, compelling and structured knowledge-base &mdash; and easily discoverable through a quick search, just like when you&rsquo;re on Google.
This enables substantial cost-savings on buying a dedicated workflow tool, while further streamlining the complexity of your company stack. When all your workflows are in one place, it&rsquo;s easier for the whole team to be aligned on how things are done.
<h3>2. Integrations</h3>
With a work hub, all the workflows interact with your company wiki (Confluence, GitHub), project management (Asana, Trello, Jira), team messaging (Slack, emails), and documentation apps (Google Drive, Dropbox).
With these integrations, you can leverage automated notifications &mdash; <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-team-instant-messaging-apps-slack-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">like posting on a channel, or sending an email</a> &mdash; embeds, and more, without the need for further authentications and integrations.
<h3>3. Put your workflows into context&nbsp;</h3>
Work hubs are more than just a workflow too. They are a full operational layer where workflows interact with people, teams, and projects.
When everything is tightly linked with all the core entities of your organization, you know exactly which person or team owns which workflow and which specific project it relates to.&nbsp;
This helpful context makes shared workflows <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">more accessible and transparent</a> across every level of the organization, meaning more people can find them and use them.
When everyone knows where internal workflows are, the consistency of processes increases, meaning everyone&rsquo;s on the same page on how things are done &mdash; saving time and focus for more creative endeavors.&nbsp;
Imagine workplace finance and legal ops managers aren&rsquo;t the only ones enforcing protocols, but where every level of the organization is aware and follows company-wide processes while building their own team-specific operations. This can really be a powerful way of increasing team alignment, productivity, and collaboration &mdash; especially in a hybrid work setting.
<h2>Why you need a work hub instead of a workflow automation software</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/workflows/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Workflow automation</a> and business process management software certainly have their place, but when it comes to building consistent, scalable team operations that are adopted across the whole company, they might have some challenges.
As an alternative, a work hub lets you build sleek and simple processes without needing to connect a myriad of various apps with different permissions, update cycles, and support levels.&nbsp;
Instead, you get to introduce standardized protocols to really democratize shared processes across your organization, freeing time and energy for more creative endeavors. Because if there&rsquo;s one thing you shouldn&rsquo;t automate, it&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.mindovermachines.com/5-things-not-to-automate/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">creativity</a>.

Business process management sofware should align your teams and provide visibility to cross-functional processes that impact your entire organization.

Work hub vs. Business process management tools | Qatalog

Every business and team have their own processes for different business functions.

Add context to your process management with a work hub

<ul>
<li><a href="#whatisanokr" rel="follow">What is an OKR?</a></li>
<li><a href="#okrplanning" rel="follow">OKR planning with a distributed team</a></li>
<li><a href="#okrwritingtips" rel="follow">OKR writing tips</a></li>
<li><a href="#editingyourokrs" rel="follow">Editing your OKRs</a></li>
</ul>
Let&rsquo;s stop using the metaphor &ldquo;getting your team on the same page.&rdquo;
And while we&rsquo;re at it, let&rsquo;s stop assuming that teams are even using the same work software. According to research by Qatalog and Cornell, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">58% of people report</a> that they&rsquo;re not certain all departments use the same online apps. So how do we get our team on the &ldquo;same page&rdquo; while they&rsquo;re recording goals in different tools?
<a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/okr-examples/" rel="follow noopener">OKRs are a goal framework</a> that a majority of the business world is aware of, but communicating and creating them in an accessible way has always been a challenge.&nbsp;
OKRs aren't just about making and achieving goals. They're about bringing teams together and helping everyone understand the "why" behind their work. And once a team understands the importance of what they're doing, they'll be more focused and motivated to work each day. We just have to get everyone on the same page, sorry, same work hub.&nbsp;
<h2>Everything you need to know about writing OKRs</h2>
If you've written OKRs in the past, you know how important they are to keeping your team focused and motivated. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/goal-setting-for-distributed-teams/" rel="follow noopener">With the recent shift to more distributed teams</a>, you also may have experienced new roadblocks in collaborating on your goals. And if you're new to OKRs, you probably have questions about what they are and why they matter. Whatever your experience level is with OKRs, here's everything you need to know to get started:
<h2 id="whatisanokr">What is an OKR?</h2>
OKR stands for objectives and key results. It's a popular framework for planning and executing goals. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-big-picture-thinking-can-inspire-innovative-teamwork/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Objectives are ambitious, high-level goals.</a> You want your objectives to be achievable but not too easy. Some examples of objectives include:
<ul>
<li>Reach 10,000 new customers by the end of the quarter</li>
<li>Build a program to train a compassionate and effective sales team</li>
<li>Create a better work-life balance for remote employees</li>
</ul>
The key results are the deliverables for each objective. They need to be measurable so you can gauge the progress toward each OKR. For example, if you want key results for the objective "Reach 10,000 new customers by the end of the quarter,&rdquo; you need to think of what measurable actions your team can complete to complete the goal. Example key results are:
<ul>
<li>Source 50,000 new leads by June 14</li>
<li>Start an outreach campaign with a 40% conversion to demo rate by July 20</li>
<li>Convert 50% of those who completed a demo into a sale by the end of the quarter</li>
</ul>
You can create as many OKRs as you like, but most companies aim for two to three objectives per quarter with three to five key results per objective.
<h2 id="okrplanning">OKR planning with a distributed team</h2>
OKRs work best when all team members understand why they're important and how they're contributing. You can get your team on board with OKRs by involving them in the planning.
A work hub can be a great way to connect, share ideas, and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-lead-distributed-teams/" rel="follow noopener">foster community with distributed teams.</a> Using a work hub also allows you to create and assign goals, so everyone knows expectations. Work hubs also allow you and your team to track and measure progress easily.
<h3>Define your objective type</h3>
The first step to writing OKRs is to define your objective type. There are two main types of objectives:
<ul>
<li>Strategic: Strategic objectives tend to focus on long-term goals or big picture goals. They are typically a type of performance goal.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li>Tactical: Tactical goals tend to have a shorter timeline and are the steps or actions needed to reach your strategic objectives.</li>
</ul>
Your strategic and tactical objects should work together. Depending on the size of your company, executive leadership may develop strategic OKRs to guide the company on big-picture goals. Then each team develops tactical OKRs to drive those strategic goals. If you're working with a smaller group, <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/company-business-goals/" rel="follow noopener">the company OKRs</a> may mix strategic and tactical OKRs.
<h3>Look at KPIs to pick the right objective</h3>
One way to begin writing your OKR objectives is to start with KPIs. KPI stands for key performance indicators. They are the specific measurement within your key result used to monitor OKR progress.
If you're stuck on writing an objective, start by identifying the current KPIs you and your team already do. KPIs could be the number of quailed leads in the sales funnel, inventory turnover, number of retained customers, order fulfillment, or website traffic.
Once you and your team identify KPIs, think about why those KPIs are essential? What's the underlying goal? As you start to answer these questions, you should trace your KPIs to an overall company goal or mission. Once you understand what your KPIs are trying to achieve, group your KPIs and write a goal that explains the importance of these KPIs. This goal gives you your objective. From there, you can turn your KPIs into key results by attaching goals.
<h3>Identify the scope of your goal</h3>
The scope of a goal looks at all aspects of the plan. It helps you and your team agree on precisely what needs to happen to achieve your goals. It also gives you space to identify any potential blockers or missing pieces you'll need before you get started. When thinking about the scope of your goals, ask yourself:
<ul>
<li>Are there people outside of this team who need to be informed or consulted to achieve this goal?</li>
<li>If we achieve every KPI listed, will it result in the completion of the objective?</li>
<li>Does the team need additional resources to complete the goal?</li>
</ul>
You can also break down the scope of the goal by identifying what the group needs to do as a whole and what each individual needs to do. Providing both scopes gives everyone an understanding of their specific role and their contributions to the team goal.
<h2 id="okrwritingtips">OKR writing tips</h2>
Whether you're writing OKRs for the first or hundredth time, it's natural to run into challenges. But with the practice, collaboration, and a few OKR writing tips, you'll find ORKs to find an excellent structure for helping you and your team achieve your goals.
<h3>Look at your mission and overall company vision</h3>
Companies develop mission statements to guide all the work that the company does. Team OKRs should align with your company&rsquo;s mission and values. When you're reviewing your OKRs, ask yourself how the OKR is contributing to the company mission. If you're unable to connect how an OKR contributes to the company's overall goals, you may need to revisit that OKR.
<h3>Collaborate with other teams</h3>
Your team OKRs should work with other team goals to propel your company's mission. To make sure all team OKRs are working together, collaborate with other teams. Look for overlap in which both teams are working on the same project. Figure out ways to work together to complete OKRs quicker and more efficiently. If there are overlapping goals, statically think about splitting the work so each team works toward their strengths.
<h3>Define ownership of OKRs</h3>
Once you've outlined the OKRs, define the ownership of each OKR. There should be one person responsible for making sure the OKR gets completed. Defining ownership also keeps the team focused and breaks down responsibilities. And when every team member knows what they're responsible for, team members can hold each other accountable.
<h2 id="editingyourokrs">Wrap up: Editing your OKRs</h2>
Company goals change, and it's okay to revisit your OKRs throughout their lifecycle to make edits. Scheduling async check-ins during the week will create a hybrid-friendly avenue for transparent progress reports, and allows your team to get to updating their goals on their own time.&nbsp;
It's also possible your company pivots what's important for them, and you'll need to revisit your OKRs to keep everyone aligned. We saw this happen a lot in 2020 during the global pandemic. Suddenly business goals and how we all were interacting and working with each other changed, which meant many of us needed to rethink how we achieve our goals.
Whatever the case, if your OKRs are no longer serving a purpose to the company's mission or vision, it's okay to edit them as you go. You want your OKRs to keep teams focused and motivated, so do your best to keep them aspirational and achievable.&nbsp;
Putting your OKRs into a discoverable, transparent format will also help encourage your team to identify progress and roadblocks. Using a work hub, goals and progress updates are visible to everyone in the organization, making it easy to build a cross-functional team.&nbsp;
&rarr; Need a template to get you started? <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/okr-examples/" rel="follow">See our OKR template &amp; examples here.</a>

How to write OKRs in hybrid & distributed teams. Everything you need to know about writing Objectives & Key Results is on this page. →

How to write OKRs | Qatalog blog

OKRs work best when all team members understand why they're important and how they're contributing.

OKRs: It's not about getting everyone on the same page

If you&rsquo;ve ever wondered where the product roadmaps of work hubs, collaboration software, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">and productivity tools come from</a>, look no further than some of your most organized coworkers. The tricks and hacks they implement to optimize communication and collaboration are, unintentionally, the beta tests which often mature into company-wide best practices, which in turn reveal a potential market for features and products.
In short: <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/becoming-a-world-class-knowledge-worker/" rel="follow">effective communication</a> is a user experience, and as your best people outgrow your available tools, they piece together better experiences with whatever they can.
Using a handful of examples below, we can illustrate not only how hacks inform the future of business tools, but why it&rsquo;s crucial for business leaders to be aware of the hacks being used in their own workplace, so that any operational investment in new tools or software actually addresses the current collaboration hurdles.
<h3>Search &amp; information recall</h3>
Few user tasks, if any, launch more new solutions than the task of searching. Before the days of highly discoverable Slack feeds and Gmail inboxes, searching communications tools was technically feasible, but practically infuriating. One solution to this information recall problem was keyword stuffing, and in fact you&rsquo;ll still see co-workers practicing it wherever their tools come up short.
Keyword stuffing is simply adding a pile of useful recall terms to a conversation or document, based on an assumption of how you might search for them in the future:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Find yourself repeatedly hunting down the same slide deck for engineering diagrams? Add an appendix slide stuffed with keywords that provides context to a document otherwise locked out of search due to the visual nature of its content.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Stuck on an email thread vaguely titled &ldquo;Re: yesterday,&rdquo; containing some juicy stakeholder insights about your biggest competitors? Send yourself a reply to that thread with the contents, &ldquo;CI, competitive intel, competition landscape, Competitor X.&rdquo;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Dealing with a spreadsheet full of unstructured data? Add a &ldquo;Notes&rdquo; column where you can plug in whatever keywords make the row easier to recall later on.</li>
</ul>
What&rsquo;s important to note about the keyword stuffing hack isn&rsquo;t just that it motivated office products to build smarter, more reliable search features &mdash; it also emphasized the need for tagging, labeling, and otherwise classifying content. After all, search and classification have a cyclical relationship.
Most collaboration software worth it's salt these days will have tagging or labeling functions, which serve in part to properly locate and classify content. And because labeling information is how we train machine learning, the humble hack of keyword stuffing lives on as next-gen collaboration tools rely on highly-descriptive labeling to automate processes and anticipate information access.
<h3>Meetings</h3>
As a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/virtual-meetings-audio-insights/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">black hole of business intelligence</a> and the most expensive part of the workday, meetings have always been a place where high performers employ creative communication hacks.
We all know about the best practice of providing an agenda in the meeting invite (even if few of us ever make the effort to do so). But you&rsquo;ve probably seen some teammates take it further:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Providing a shared meeting notes doc where the agenda can be read, where invitees can ask questions, and where action items can be documented and assigned.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Transcribing the meeting (if allowed) using a machine-reading service, and dumping that transcription into the appropriate destination so any non-attendees can read or search the discussion in the future.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Enforcing a culture where participants can comfortably leave any meeting once they feel they&rsquo;re no longer contributing or gaining useful information.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Prefacing meeting titles with emojis (e.g. ✍, 💲, 📣) so attendees with packed schedules can be better prepared at a glance.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Offering a simplified or templated response to invitees so that they can do more than just accept or decline the meeting &ndash; let them downvote the meeting with an explanation as to why, or suggest that the meeting is blocked by X dependency, or that it should be nixed in favor of an asynchronous update, etc.</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s rather startling to see just how much ad hoc project management a meeting owner still has to undertake in order to make the best use of their coworkers&rsquo; time. But as we see more advanced, next-gen collaboration tools blend communication spaces, progress is being made towards an environment where teammates get just the right amount of exposure to collaborate &hellip; where two people can record a synchronous discussion, send the recording out to a third who wasn&rsquo;t available, and log the transcript for a fourth who only needed to read a bit of context about an action item they were assigned.
<h3>Participation &amp; accountability</h3>
One of the toughest balancing acts in work is the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">level of information</a> exposure you give and receive. Too little can confuse or misinform accountabilities, while too much can overwhelm users and hurt effective participation. Many collaboration tools try to aid or automate this balance, and it&rsquo;s no surprise these advanced capabilities are inspired by the best practices unicorn employees implement manually:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Maintain a transparent, shareable list of your priorities or workload so stakeholders proposing new work can see what (and who) stands in the way of prioritization.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Give teammates the lightest obligation possible. Start message threads with an indication of the workload it entails (e.g. Review, Decision, Question, FYI) so they can prioritize their tasks as needed.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Set reminders or snooze periods on conversations &mdash; and communicate them &mdash; so your follow-up is timely and nudges don&rsquo;t come across as surprising.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Tag coworkers on the specific sections of a task or document where their participation is needed; avoid forcing them to digest extraneous information just because their role is unclear. If tagging isn&rsquo;t available, bold the coworkers&rsquo; names or add an action item section where participants can see what role they&rsquo;re playing.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Use work hubs to cross-link and cross-reference information between applications, and ensure some macro layer or master document always serves as the source of truth for work that might be splintered or duplicated across multiple applications.</li>
</ul>
Notice how many of these tricks don&rsquo;t simply become individual features of next-gen collaboration tools, but rather that the underlying focus on optimizing exposure drives new user experiences like targeted notifications, activity feeds, and document access history. The continuous optimization of such platforms relies on users to push the current UX to its limits, and then venture forward into experimentation on what a better tool could do. It&rsquo;s a virtuous cycle, as long as you&rsquo;re paying attention to it.
Arguably, the greatest takeaway from watching your best employees work around the limitations of their current tools is the gained understanding of what features you should be looking for in next-gen collaboration tools, and where you should expect immediate performance improvements in your org&rsquo;s communication efficacy once you invest in such tools.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Special thanks to the following experts for contributing some of their best practices to this article: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraund/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Allison Braund-Harris</a> at Hardly, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hallieexall/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Hallie Exall</a> at Remote, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraineklee/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Lorraine Lee</a> at Prezi.

The collaboration workarounds great employees invent to save time, and how those tricks end up influencing the market.

How next-gen collaboration tools emerge | Qatalog blog

How your best people accidentally build next-gen collaboration tools

It&rsquo;s easy to rely on Slack as your only personable tether to your coworkers. But amidst the GIFs and weekend catch-ups, there&rsquo;s actual work and files getting thrown back and forth in different DMs and threads.
In 2016, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-better-than-slack-these-companies-have-some-ideas-11615118401" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote-friendly Doist quit using Slack</a> and opted for an internal message board. CEO Amir Salihefendic cited the instant messaging platform&rsquo;s addictive qualities, the inability to conduct in-depth conversations, and general disorganization as the determining factors for finding a more async-friendly alternative.&nbsp;
Doist is a great company to look at for being ahead of the curve in many aspects. For one, author Cal Newport&rsquo;s notion of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-cal-newport-transcript.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">&ldquo;hyperactive hive mind&rdquo;</a> is catalyzed by constant pings, switching apps, and instant messaging adrenaline &mdash; part of what Doist was looking to find a solution for almost five years ago.&nbsp;
Most of the communication and collaboration issues that plague today&rsquo;s workers existed years ago, and Doist is great proof of that. Now that we&rsquo;re all experiencing more remote-friendly models, these massive gaps in our working habits are becoming rapidly apparent.&nbsp;
<h3>Slack is just one example of app chaos</h3>
Slack launched in 2009. Asana was founded in 2008, and Zoom came in 2011. The productivity and messaging tools most of us are familiar with have populated the market for upwards of ten years.&nbsp;
And whether or not they were founded on the promise of solving for increasing hybrid work needs, that&rsquo;s exactly what they&rsquo;ve been adopted for. For the most part, these tools serve their purpose. They deliver a fantastic user experience for the specific use case they were designed for.&nbsp;
But these days, knowledge workers need tools that work together. They need a solution that doesn&rsquo;t dredge up five more problems when trying to find them. The amount of tools we have now lends a great metaphor for the number of papers I imagine messy desk drawers had before computers were invented.&nbsp;
<h2>The delayed gratification of async work</h2>
Slack isn&rsquo;t productivity&rsquo;s biggest enemy, but the correlation between instant messaging and gratification doesn&rsquo;t mix well with async or remote-friendly working models. A majority of asynchronous communication works because it allows people to get things done in their own time frame, and sometimes in their own time zones. Because of this, there is limited instant validation or gratification.
We&rsquo;ve developed tool fatigue for a lot of reasons. Perhaps one of the most logical reasons is because in our search to find the best applications to speed up/make work more productive, we became more and more used to a wall of notifications and instant gratification.
And I know I&rsquo;m not the only one to continuously shift through tabs or tools to search for comments or feedback. Employees are digging through cloud storage systems, scouring message channels and cycling through tabs, <a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow">wasting around </a><a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow">59 minutes</a><a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow"> per day</a>.
<a href="http://www.language.work/study?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow"><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/BueJevZDTo27dupf3dkg" alt="undefined" /></a>
New research from Qatalog and Cornell University shows that productivity tools are actually killing productivity. Human brains were not wired for a working day of glancing between instant messaging, various documents, project management platforms, and more. <a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">45% say this makes them less productive</a> and 43% say it is tiring to regularly switch between tools and communications channels. &nbsp;
In order to be a people-first hybrid or remote company, your organization and employees have to improve their async literacy. What does this mean exactly? It means prioritizing the procedures that help your teams to collaborate confidently and communicate effectively. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-lead-distributed-teams/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">Improving discoverability and transparency</a> within your company directly <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/get-hybrid-in-order/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">impacts your async literacy,</a> because it puts the power in the hands of employees rather than gatekeeping the information they need.&nbsp;
<h3>Knowledge sharing has never been easy</h3>
54% of people say that applications can make it harder to find information. One in two employees says they&rsquo;re not always certain the information and updates they&rsquo;re posting within their company's apps are reaching their intended audience.
In the age of the knowledge worker, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">sharing information should be organized and specific</a>. Because of our tool portfolios, it&rsquo;s anything but. Accessibility ranges between teams and seniority levels. Having too many apps actually restricts our access to knowledge rather than opening information up to the entire company. What was once an array of tools that opened the working world to the possibility of remote and distributed workers has spiraled into unnecessary friction for employees.&nbsp;
<h3>Clean up your app landscape</h3>
Doist turned to an internal messaging board. Your company could do the same thing, but then you may run into the crux of having yet another solution that solves a singular problem. That&rsquo;s why many companies are shifting to a work hub so they have a connectivity layer for their maze of tools, people, and work. 
This new way of working can allow teams to rise above the instant gratification of the hyperactive hive mind and graduate to a more satisfying level of performance. One where team members are aligned, engaged, and have space for deep work &mdash; and where order trumps chaos.&nbsp;

In the age of the knowledge worker, sharing information should be organized and specific.

Productivity apps are killing productivity | Qatalog

In order to be a people-first hybrid or remote company, your organization and employees have to improve their async literacy.

Are productivity apps killing productivity?

<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Exclusive data from Qatalog and Cornell University&rsquo;s Ellis Ideas Lab reveals that the uncontrolled adoption of digital tools is killing productivity at work.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Employees are wasting an hour every day trying to find information hidden within apps; 6 in 10 of people say it&rsquo;s hard to know what colleagues are doing; 43% say they spend too much time switching between different work apps like Slack and Zoom.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Qatalog today launches the Work isn&rsquo;t Working campaign at <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">https://language.work/</a> to challenge this productivity scam and call for a reset of standards amid the transition to hybrid work.</li>
</ul>
London, June 9, 2021: Digital work hub Qatalog today reveals the findings of a landmark study conducted with researchers at Cornell University into the impact of apps on our working lives. It reveals how productivity software is cheating workers out of time, focus and creativity in a battle for their attention in the new digital workplace.
The research is released as part of Qatalog&rsquo;s Work isn&rsquo;t Working campaign, launched today at <a href="https://language.work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">https://language.work/</a>, to protect people from an onslaught of new workplace technology and the hangover of ineffective pre-pandemic working practices.&nbsp;
&ldquo;We need to call time on the great productivity scam. There&rsquo;s been an explosion in the number of apps we rely on to do our jobs, but the result isn&rsquo;t greater productivity &mdash; it&rsquo;s total chaos,&rdquo; said Tariq Rauf, CEO and founder of Qatalog. &ldquo;No matter their individual merits, each tool is adding to a noisy digital environment that is, quite literally, driving workers to distraction. The more time that we waste on this mess, the less we have for deep thought and meaningful engagement with our colleagues. We deserve better.&rdquo;
<h2>Time to Slack off and Zoom out</h2>
The research found that soaring adoption of workplace apps, from Slack to Zoom, is cheating workers out of time, focus and creativity.&nbsp;
Productivity tools are killing our productivity.&nbsp;
In a typical working day, people are wasting 59 minutes trying to find information across tools like Google Workspace, storage systems like Dropbox and messaging channels like Slack &mdash; <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow">5 hours of wasted time every week</a>. Knowledge is fragmented across too many tools, with 54% of workers saying that this makes it harder to find what they need. &ldquo;Technology is trapping knowledge. In many ways, we&rsquo;ve replaced the commute with mindless busywork trying to find it,&rdquo; says Rauf.
We&rsquo;re working in the dark as tech runs amok.
People are uncertain about what work is being done in other teams&rsquo; apps and communication platforms. The branding team might live in a project management app, while the content team organizes work in an online wiki and the sales team tracks everything in a CRM. 61% of people say it can be hard to figure out what others are working on, while 44% say siloed digital tools make it hard to know whether work is being duplicated.&nbsp;
Confused workers are oversharing, adding to the chaos.&nbsp;
Half of workers (49%) say they&rsquo;re concerned that the information they post to their company&rsquo;s apps will get lost in a sea of updates. This feeds uncertainty about whether crucial information is actually reaching its intended audiences, while 53% of people admit to making updates even when they&rsquo;re not fully necessary, just to cover their bases.&nbsp;
Context switching at work is rife, and our creativity is suffering.
An explosion of apps is fuelling workplace distraction. 43% of workers report spending too much time switching between different digital tools, whether cycling through tabs or digging through messaging channels, and 45% say this context switching makes them less productive. This chaotic work environment makes it harder to work together on creative projects &mdash; nearly two thirds (62%) of people report missing opportunities to collaborate in the modern workplace.&nbsp;
Technology is fuelling a burnout crisis.&nbsp;
The impact of all this? 89% of respondents say their work life is getting worse, <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/02/beyond-burned-out" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">according to HBR</a>. 7 in 10 also say there could be more efficient ways of using technology to get work done, according to the new Qatalog research.
<h2>Qatalog launches Work isn&rsquo;t Working campaign to stop the great productivity scam</h2>
The research conducted with Cornell University&rsquo;s Ellis Lab is released as part of Qatalog&rsquo;s Work isn&rsquo;t Working campaign, which launches today at <a href="https://language.work">https://language.work</a> to help companies redesign their work environments amid huge structural change in how people work.
&ldquo;Fixing our chaotic work practices will take a thoughtful, two-pronged approach, not a half-baked hybrid work plan, or even worse, a command to return to the office full-time,&rdquo; comments Rauf. &ldquo;Firstly, we need to press reset on the technology that underpins our working day so it creates focus, not chaos. We&rsquo;ve been blessed with powerful new tools at work, but fooled into using them in the wrong way &mdash; it&rsquo;s time to fix that. Secondly, we need a mindset shift that breaks from pre-pandemic 9-5 norms and embraces a radically new working culture rooted in trust.&rdquo;&nbsp;
The campaign offers a <a href="https://language.work/change-now/" rel="follow">Modern Work Index</a>, where people can benchmark their own workplace against core principles of trust, flexibility, focus and belonging, find out what needs to be improved, and get practical advice on how to do it.
&ldquo;The old rules no longer apply. The 9 to 5 is dead and so too is the presenteeism that comes with it. Companies are waking up to this and, in a war for talent, are racing to create new working norms rooted in trust, flexibility, focus and belonging,&rdquo; Rauf says.&nbsp;
About the study
The study was conducted in partnership with the Ellis Idea Lab, Cornell University. The academic team specializes in organizations&rsquo; behaviours in the workplace and advised on shaping an objectively rigorous study into how the adoption of digital tools in distributed teams is impacting workplace behaviours. Three separate surveys were completed, each by 1,000 US and UK workers in March 2021. Survey participation was limited to respondents currently working remotely in some capacity.&nbsp;
Press contact: <a href="mailto:qatalog@thisisoutcast.com">qatalog@thisisoutcast.com</a>&nbsp;

Do digital tools make us more or less productive at work? Technology cheats workers out of time, focus and creativity, Qatalog research warns amid sweeping workplace transformation.

Work isn't working | Qatalog

Exclusive data from Qatalog and Cornell University’s Ellis Ideas Lab reveals that the uncontrolled adoption of digital tools is killing productivity at work.

Qatalog launches language.work with Cornell study

While 82% of those surveyed agree remote work is the future, parents are more likely to ensure <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/remote-work-to-hybrid/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=parents-work-from-home&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote work is their </a><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/remote-work-to-hybrid/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=parents-work-from-home&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">immediate</a><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/remote-work-to-hybrid/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=parents-work-from-home&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"> future</a>.
According to the <a href="https://qatalog.com/remote-work-report/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=remote-work-report&amp;utm_term=2021&amp;utm_content=report" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2021 Remote Work Report</a> by <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/darren-murph-gitlab-interview/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=parents-work-from-home&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Qatalog and GitLab</a>, 58.5% of parents said they would consider leaving their co-located company for a remote job vs 46.3% of nonparents. 30% of parents in the US and UK also reported they&rsquo;d search for a new remote job if their current company no longer allowed remote work post-COVID-19 pandemic vs 24% of nonparents.&nbsp;
These findings are consistent with a similar <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/what-working-parents-want-at-work" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">survey</a>, except parents expressed an even higher commitment to remote work: 61% said they&rsquo;d want to work remotely full-time, and 62% said they&rsquo;d quit their job if they couldn&rsquo;t continue working remotely for their current company.&nbsp;
Parents have less to gain from being in-office and more to gain from working remotely from home.
For Ryan Burke, Qatalog CRO and dad of two, the advantages of being in the office &mdash; face time with leadership, developing work friendships, camaraderie &mdash; are more vital to those earlier in their career. Therefore parents, who tend to skew older and presumably have been in the workforce longer, have less to gain from being in the office than nonparents.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I prioritize the time I want to spend with the people who matter most, my family,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I can still make time for social interactions at work, but it does not have to be the driving force for a new job.&rdquo;
Ryan also touched on another important point: the family is easier to prioritize when working at home. Home is where parents see their family, whereas home for nonparents is primarily a place of rest.&nbsp;
<h3>Dads are more likely than moms to change jobs if remote is no longer an option</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/kwSMAIXBSO2WGONc0hcd" alt="undefined" />
The Remote Work Report also showed that dads &mdash; not moms &mdash; were more attached to remote working: 33% of dads in the US and UK would change jobs if their company no longer allowed remote work post-COVID vs. 28% of moms.
The pandemic has given many dads their first opportunity to work remotely and realize what they were missing. Leo Mendoza, Director of Engineering at Qatalog and dad of one, agrees: &ldquo;In my opinion, because of the pandemic, dads have now gotten a taste of what it&rsquo;s like to have a better work/life balance and, in turn, more time with their kid. I can&rsquo;t imagine anyone taking that away &mdash; which is why I&rsquo;d look for a new remote job if we were forced to co-locate.&rdquo;
The women I spoke with had a slightly different explanation for the dad/mom divide: women have already been optimizing their careers around their family, so the impact of remote work is big, but not as big as it is for dads. In her book, Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez outlines that women are more likely to choose jobs close to home vs. men who tend to have more city-suburb commutes.&nbsp;
Many of the moms I spoke to proactively sought remote opportunities prior to the pandemic. One said she felt &ldquo;sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle biases against balancing work and parent life.&rdquo; Another mom pointed out that perhaps the women surveyed felt less strongly about remote work because they were considering quitting or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/07/17/moms-cut-work-hours-four-times-more-than-dads-during-pandemic/?sh=5a8997049cad" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">cutting their hours</a>, like so many women have been forced to do during the pandemic.&nbsp;
<h3>Moving forward: Flexible work policies are the bare minimum and not a panacea</h3>
Although initially met with reluctance, many businesses have realized their employees will continue to work when away from the office. Employees, recognizing their ability to continue to perform outside of an office, are overwhelmingly in favor of staying remote or moving to a hybrid work model. And many employees, not just parents, will quit their jobs if they no longer have the flexibility they&rsquo;ve enjoyed working from home.&nbsp;
That said, providing remote or <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/get-hybrid-in-order/" rel="follow">hybrid work policies</a> will not completely safeguard a company against <a href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/quit-your-job-how-to-resign-after-covid-pandemic" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">post-COVID attrition</a>. A flexible work policy is not a panacea.
In order to truly combat workplace inequities that shape our work lives and career trajectories, companies must supplement flexible work with policies that protect the employee experience. A few examples of this could include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Mandatory maternity leave and mandatory paternity leave</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Clear vacation policies (no more &ldquo;unlimited&rdquo;) where managers are encouraged (required?) to make sure their reports take all their days</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Instituting a maximum number of days you can attend the office per week to avoid <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/03/remote-work-women-office-equity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">in-office bias</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Explicit and accessible job expectations and requirements for promotion</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Scheduling required in-person work at least two weeks in advance and paying for employee travel</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Requiring managers to alert their team well in advance of when they plan to go into the office, so individuals can use this information to determine their own schedules</li>
</ul>
Make no mistake, overhauling company policies to improve upon our current work reality will require a lot of effort, time, trial, and error. But those are not reasons to avoid change. If the last year has taught us anything, it&rsquo;s that we&rsquo;re all a lot more flexible and imaginative than we thought.

While 82% of those surveyed agree remote work is the future, parents are more likely to ensure work from home is their immediate future.

Parents & WFH | Qatalog blog

While 82% of those surveyed agree remote work is the future, parents are more likely to ensure remote work is their immediate future.

Parents are more likely to change jobs if remote is no longer an option

For all the emerging hype around hybrid workforces, the concept itself isn&rsquo;t what&rsquo;s novel &mdash; it&rsquo;s the impending scale of it across teams, departments, and partners that is unparalleled. Of course, that&rsquo;s both the good and bad news.
If you were a thoughtfully process-driven organization before all this, then going hybrid is more or less a matter of scale. But if you&rsquo;ve historically been a people-driven org, the model you&rsquo;ll be scaling is one of burnout and disarray.
A new study <a href="https://qatalog.com/remote-work-report/">co-authored by Qatalog and GitLab</a> reveals that 42% of companies are sleepwalking into unplanned hybrid work models, driving a larger wedge between teammates who were having trouble getting on the same page to begin with. The same report states 50% of coworkers complain they&rsquo;re drowning in tools, and 60% have no clue what their colleagues are working on.
<h3>Good people can only save bad process for so long</h3>
Such results are to be expected from organizations running on a &ldquo;gods &amp; martyrs&rdquo; model: <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workload-management-snowball-and-the-meteor/">executives who are exempt from accountability</a>, and unicorn employees who sacrifice their sanity to act as the glue keeping all the madness together. Unicorn employees cannot be scaled, and attempting to do so eventually produces one of two results: process or burnout.
The office is the natural habitat for people-biased operations, because that&rsquo;s where all the company&rsquo;s best-laid processes and priorities can be skirted to favor whoever&rsquo;s got the authority or personality to manipulate face-to-face interactions. This much has long been obvious to all but the perpetrators of such behavior. What may not be so obvious is how this approach misguides decisions around hybrid work.
Without confronting the inefficiencies of the office, any attempts to extend it into coworking spaces or virtual environments will just perpetuate the same bad habits.
How can off-site coworkers successfully engage when leaders maintain a perspective that the most engaged employees <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ceo-says-workers-who-want-back-into-the-office-are-the-most-engaged-11620837018">are the ones they see in the office</a>?
Why would placemaking be planned any better in a hybrid working model when <a href="https://www.density.io/blog/the-most-important-metric-in-corporate-real-estate">40% of corporate real estate is traditionally vacant</a>?
What are the odds of nurturing objective performance metrics in a virtual-heavy environment when executives won&rsquo;t acknowledge that <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6795352372404117504/">75% of office work is actually virtual work</a>?
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/IiW6PhWSqrGcMf73GQlQ" alt="undefined" />
<h3>Get your house in order</h3>
A hybrid working model, in its simplest definition, is a location-blended workforce. That means the task at hand lies in enhancing the portability of your office so that everyone is on a similar playing field at any given time, whether they&rsquo;re on-site amidst a dozen coworkers, at home alone, or out at a park or pub with a team member. In short, your office must embrace becoming an API of communications, protocols and processes, rather than a homebase of operations.
The closer an organization can get to full portability, the more nimble, resilient and equitable a hybrid working model will be. It&rsquo;s not about taking personal interaction out of the picture though: it&rsquo;s about mitigating the disorder and manipulation created by face-to-face interactions. Success on this front looks like:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">An employee who can see what their day&rsquo;s workload looks like at a glance, and know it won&rsquo;t shift drastically based on the undocumented whims of a supervisor</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A new hire who searches a robust knowledge base for documentation, rather than ask a unicorn employee who then has to ask the SME</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A project lead who can communicate updates and obstacles concisely to the stakeholder group instead of fielding backdoor status requests and priority-shifting orders</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">An coworker who feels comfortable declining a meeting based on the agenda information provided by the meeting&rsquo;s creator</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A management team who can see a department&rsquo;s workload and collectively prioritize newly-conceived work, rather than individually pitching the team lead with conflicting priorities</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">An HR department and a Marketing department who realize that spending some extra content resources on instructional design and mentor coaching can serve both employee and customer audiences</li>
</ul>
Note how these more portable examples solve for interactions both physically and virtually. The location flexibility of a hybrid working model is merely the happy outcome of well-managed processes and platforms.
The future of work promises much in the way of innovation &mdash; piling every shiny new thing on top of a people-biased operating model threatens to cripple an already-precarious organization with confusion and burnout. Instead, build a mindset of processes, platforms, and portability to ensure you&rsquo;re ready to scale. Don&rsquo;t chase the shiny things until you&rsquo;ve appraised the gems you already possess.

The key to hybrid work models is portability, and you don’t get it by burdening your people with every shiny new productivity toy.

Get your hybrid model in order | Qatalog blog

The key to hybrid work models is portability, and you don’t get it by burdening your people with every shiny new productivity toy. Alignment comes first.

Don't get gassed up on hybrid working models just yet

The people you work alongside are one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of your job. Having a solid social support system in any scenario improves wellbeing, work included. According to <a href="https://getlighthouse.com/blog/best-friend-at-work-bff/#:~:text=Gallup%20also%20found%20a%20strong,get%20injured%20on%20the%20job." rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Gallup</a> &mdash; employees are more engaged and produce better work if they have an office best friend.
Meeting that office best friend is much more challenging without everyday, mundane interactions. Most of us are accustomed to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-makes-a-great-workspace-in-2021/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=better-business-relationships&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">in-person interactions with coworkers,</a> and building work relationships through a screen can feel off-putting. And for those of us who were onboarded during the pandemic, we&rsquo;ve had to meet our peers for the first time via computer screens and instant messages.
It&rsquo;s hard to bring your entire self to work, and it&rsquo;s even harder to bring your whole self to the fifth video conference you&rsquo;ve had today. To usher in a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-new-normal-is-dead/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=better-business-relationships&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">new way of working</a>, we must learn how to strengthen unity, empathy, camaraderie, and diversity in a distributed or hybrid workforce. That begins with building better relationships.&nbsp;
<h2>1. Build better relationships by creating a user guide</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/SUp7MWsQVeHduN6HzPOg" alt="undefined" />
Here at Qatalog, we&rsquo;ve adopted a user guide template that team members fill out and post to their employee profiles. These user guides cover questions like:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How would you describe your working style?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you like to give feedback?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you like to get feedback?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What actions from others make you feel most valued?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you respond when work gets stressful?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Outside of work, what is most important to you?</li>
</ul>
I get it, another get-to-know-you task that doesn&rsquo;t seem to lead anywhere. How is that the key to building better relationships?&nbsp;
Accessibility plays a huge role in having a sense of belonging at work. With a work hub, employee profiles are entirely public to everyone in the organization. Filling out a user guide isn&rsquo;t just useful for your specific team; it gives everyone a chance to get to know you.&nbsp;
<h2>2. Become an active participant</h2>
Traditionally, some of the best interactions in a physical space come from team discussions in meetings and lively, organic conversation in the workplace. Much of that conversation, brainstorming, and impromptu connection gets lost with the move to remote work.
It doesn&rsquo;t have to be this way, though.
Here&rsquo;s how you can encourage everyone to be an active participant in company matters:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Consider brainstorming exercises to spark interesting conversations and allow employees time to catch up and actively participate on calls.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">If you oversee a specific department or organization within your company, set aside specific hours in which employees can hop on and chat with you about work problems or about life.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">When sharing updates or posting about goal progress, include prompts for questions or random fun facts.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>3. Put empathy first</h2>
Empathy should live at the core of your employee experience. The people we work with are people after all, not just robots who routinely produce work out of thin air.&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s been a lot of talk about employee experience in the working world lately involving what we should subtract from our workdays &mdash; <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22412714/basecamp-employees-memo-policy-hansson-fried-controversy" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">including societal and political discussions.&nbsp;</a>
Here&rsquo;s the thing, empathy means treating your coworkers as humans first, workers second. And yes, this benefits company retention and <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-10-24-happy-workers-are-13-more-productive" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">productivity</a>, but it also makes work a better place. Encouraging employees to bring their whole selves to work in a top-down manner, meaning exuding that in your own behavior, is an excellent place to start.&nbsp;
<h2>4. Be reliable</h2>
With face-to-face interactions dissipating, building work relationships virtually depends heavily on your reliability. When you plan meetings with teammates, be timely and have an agenda prepared. Running behind? Communicate and send a quick message that gives them a heads up.
If your work involves meeting deadlines (which it likely does), have a plan to meet them. Set the same tone for your team.
Think about what a reliable leader means to you, and then portray those characteristics for your team.&nbsp;
<h2>5. Stay connected</h2>
t&rsquo;s easy to have a clock-in, clock-out mentality. Despite that many folks aren&rsquo;t in the office, it&rsquo;s just as essential to build work relationships virtually while in an office environment.
Here are a few tips for staying connected virtually:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Follow what your peers are sharing on LinkedIn. Engage with them.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Check-in with your manager to make sure he or she knows how your projects are going.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Participate in at least one activity each day that will help nurture your relationships with others.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Virtual relationships are the way forward</h2>
A recent <a href="https://time.com/6051955/work-after-covid-19/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Time article</a> pointed out that as our work culture changes, we have the power to reinvent working practices that no longer suit our needs. We&rsquo;re more focused on <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/the-argument-for-autonomy/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=better-business-relationships&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">what we spend our time doing</a> as the world reopens &mdash; and many of us have realized that our jobs aren&rsquo;t suited for us anymore.&nbsp;
The demands and expectations of the workplace have changed: and that includes our social interactions. And as we discuss other significant implications of widespread remote work on society, we have to remember that people are still people &mdash; and staying connected is essential. We might even be more accepting toward virtual social interaction now that it isn&rsquo;t just a solution to a crisis; it&rsquo;s the way forward.&nbsp;

Putting empathy first, being reliable,  and staying connected are all ways you can build stronger relationships with your team virtually.

Build better virtual business relationships | Qatalog

The demands and expectations of the workplace have changed: and that includes our social interactions.

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