Follow the sun!
Increasingly, teams ‘follow the sun’. The sun never sets on their work, as they spread themselves across the globe. Some follow the sun as a permanent design, others on a temporary basis. The temporary global teams are often fuelled by the relatively new flex phenomenon, the ‘workation’, where people mix travel and adventure with paid work.
Whatever the reason your team follows the sun, it’s something that I see more and more in my work as a flexpert.
What’s the upside?
With such a sunny outlook there are many benefits to enjoy.
1. Work gets done while you sleep!
It’s quite a magical experience when you hand over to a colleague at the end of your work day and then wake in the morning to find they’ve finished the job! It’s a whole new method of driving productivity and delivery faster than ever before.
2. Attract great talent from all over the world
If you’re competing globally you want to be able to hire globally. This flex approach means you can hire the right person, wherever they may be in the world
3. Retain great people who want to relocate
It used to be that if you were moving overseas, you left you job and found a new one. Not anymore. Many people now move overseas and take their jobs with them, because they can!
4. Build relationships in other parts of the world
With people in your teams located in different regions, you have a broader reach into other markets. You can develop those local relationships and insights you need to make better quality decisions.
What’s the downside?
Putting anything in the sun creates a shadow with an inevitable cooling effect. How can you manage the shadow side and still enjoy the sun?
1. A disconnected team
With minimal opportunity to bring the team together in one time or space they can increasingly feel very disconnected from each other. Inducting someone new into the team takes a lot of work and maintaining the connection requires effort from everyone. Using asynchronous connection with voice and video can keep the human connection alive and well without people feeling obliged to attend video calls in the middle of the night.
2. Resentment within the team
Those located in HQ often feel the pressure to deliver first and fast, as they’re more visible than their ‘satellite’ colleagues. This breeds resentment over time if it’s not acknowledged and managed to be evenly spread.
3. Loneliness
Isolation and loneliness needs to be talked about regularly. Encourage global team members to connect with their local community for the all-important in-person experience.
4. Planning and innovating is hard
Short-term planning is OK, but over time, it can get hard to replicate the conditions we need for our best collaborative ideas to come to the fore. The best remote-first teams invest in bringing their people together, albeit rarely and purposefully. Virtual technology increasingly makes the remote experience ever better, so watch this one evolve.