Disclaimer: this article presents my own opinions and views and not Treatwell’s policy on remote working.

I dread the “So what do you do?” question. This is the spoken equivalent to the ideal LinkedIn headline. So many rules. Can’t be too long, shouldn’t simply be your current role and employer as that doesn’t say much about you nor your particular skillset and isn’t hugely enticing either. It has to be balanced, informative and provide a glimpse into your future self.

Still, “I work at Treatwell” does actually say it all.

What I do at Treatwell has changed dramatically since I joined back in 2009. And where I do it from ought to be negligible. It is so to me.

I have already mentioned in my previous post that I was so very excited to be part of this company’s journey that it’s only natural that I was prepared to do anything to make it work. Well, apart from relocating to London.

Joking aside, this is simply because I never believed it was actually needed. We live in a digital world, do most tasks online, from managing our finances to ordering food, arranging our travel and accommodation, finding entertainment or purchasing goods and even furniture, not forgetting finding the best place to tend to all our beauty needs on Treatwell!

Yet, a lot of us believe that effective work can mainly (or only) be done in an office setting. There’s still a stigma associated with the expression working from home, as if people that do that sit on their sofas all day long scoffing snacks and watching daytime TV. Or binging on Netflix, if we want to stay true to current trends.

This despite several studies that show that individuals who work remotely at least some of the time tend to be more productive, feel like they have a better work life balance and are likely to be more loyal to their employer.

The other common notion is that this works perfectly well for someone that is simply required to perform a number of tasks that don’t rely on the work of others nor cause dependencies, but it gets trickier when you need to contribute to a team’s output or, heaven forbid, be in charge of said team.

When it comes to working remotely, I guess you can say I was an early adopter. I was willing to sacrifice certain perks of office life like catching up on gossip by the coffee machine or being able to take part in or overhear colleague’s discussions to embark on what I firmly believed to be the biggest revolution in how we work since the Industrial Revolution.

Those who are old enough went through digitalisation within an office environment and at a slow enough pace that it didn’t feel like a huge change in the end, but it has completely altered the way a lot of us perform our tasks in the workplace.

We are all online, connected, whilst sharing a physical office space. Even in the office, a lot of communication happens over digital channels. In my head all you needed to do was to swap the physical office by the virtual office and you’d get similar, if not better, results. I am keenly interested in the Future of Work and in the last meetup I attended on this topic I realised I had been living in the future for over a decade!

Sometimes I even wonder if I could ever go back to working in an office full time, and I’m genuinely not sure.

But let me be very clear. I am not for one second implying that offices are obsolete or we should all start working remotely to avoid commuting or moving country. Far from it.

Working remotely may not work for every role — although I will gladly dispute this with anyone that wishes to discuss it. However, and most importantly, it doesn’t suit everyone. You have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy working from home, and yet a different type of person to make it feasible and worthwhile for both you and your employer.

At the very least you need to be independent, autonomous and feel at ease with your own company — isolation is one of the main complaints from remote workers.

And a lot of stars and planets need to be in alignment for you to enjoy career progression, personal development, be able to deliver value and innovation on top of having a functioning healthy team and, at the same time, not be present every day.

You have to be the right kind of person, and so do they. Both the organisation and the people in it. Because let’s face it, once you have a remote employee, everyone has to learn to work remotely, else it’s doomed to fail. It’s a skill set just like any other.

I could attempt to analyse all the different factors across multiple employers and roles, including my freelancing spell, but ultimately it boils down to some very simple ingredients: relationships, trust and communication.

Relationships

As much as online interactions such as messaging or video calling can never fully match a face to face interaction, I do believe they are very close proxies. True relationships can be formed and nurtured remotely. Over the last 13 years I have always enjoyed close relationships with my colleagues and I even go to affirm they are likely deeper than most office camaraderie.

The most extreme example I have of this is that from 2010 to 2012 I managed a team of freelance content writers and data entry people who were based throughout Europe and the US. To this day I have not met some of these individuals in person. Others I only met years later, once they no longer worked for me. Professionally they moved on but the relationship and the connection remained.

Even now I am probably one of the people that knows the most Treatwellers across all 11 countries. This is partly due to my way of being but mainly due to an effort to get to know people. And I don’t think I would have this trait so developed had I not worked remotely. It has become somewhat of a second nature to me. Not only do I try to meet everyone, I strive to get to know them, to remember them and be remembered in turn.

And the result? Although I work remotely I feel very much part of the Treatwell family.

Trust

It all boils down to treating others they way you’d like to be treated, right? Being remote there is the fear (often irrational) that you will be forgotten, overlooked, dismissed. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

There is some truth in this though. Your work has to speak for you in ways colocated people will never experience. They have a lot more opportunities to defend an approach or line of thought.

Take a genuine interest in your colleagues –– people spot fake a mile off even online — we are all unwitting social media experts by now.

Ask all the questions; the only way you will know what happens in the office is if people take the time to inform you, and they will only do that if they trust you and, more importantly, if they care. Proving to them you care is a basic ground rule.

And if trust is important for any team, it is essential for a remote or distributed one.

Find allies. Who are the people that will help you out when you need support? Conversely, be that person for as many people as you possibly can.

As a manager, I make it very clear that I won’t be micromanaging my direct reports’ work. It would not be impossible to do, technology allows for the tracking of pretty much everything. But that’s besides the point. If you require micromanaging –– most people claim they don’t but reality is vastly different –– then you shouldn’t be in my team. Which brings up recruitment and ensuring you are selecting the right individuals for the team’s success but let’s discuss that another time.

I foster a working environment with my teams that is very close to the company’s values: being courageous, open and driven. We operate on a permanent feedback loop, and honesty and openness are two of the most valued attributes, as without them there is no trust. And if trust is important for any team, it is essential for a remote or distributed one.

Communication

In my experience, you have to make a real effort to make it work. You’ll need to over communicate everything because the message will get lost and it simply won’t carry the same weight as it would if delivered face to face. As I mentioned before, the organisation needs to know how to involve remote workers too, it’s not a one way street.

An interesting aspect that I’ve noticed is that often people who have a lively online persona reveal themselves to be shy and introverted in a face to face situation. The physical distance acts as a safe space where they feel more comfortable, which in turn allows them to find their voice.

This is not to be dismissed or underplayed. A lot of individuals, if not all of us, suffer from a range of social ineptitude spanning from simple awkwardness to more serious fears or even phobias.

Therefore, in some ways, remote communication can be more effective.

Another myth I would like to dispel is that remote working means zero face to face time. It clearly doesn’t and you and the organisation you work for should invest in making these meetings take place as much as possible.

Sometimes it is easy, as the nature of the work you perform lends itself to that. For the past 5 years since the company went international, I have spent a lot of time in Treatwell offices across Europe, and not just HQ. Prior to that, during the period I was in charge of Operations in the UK, I travelled very frequently to London. And by this I mean several times a month.

Interestingly, once we started having offices and teams across multiple countries, my situation stopped being so much of an exception. Every country is remote from the others, in a sense. I was able to offer advice on ensuring communication channels work and people don’t feel left out of decision making or of project and product or feature launches. This was part of the reason Product Support was created.

I am happy my personal experience has paved the way for others to become remote too, although that is not the norm at Treatwell.

In guise of conclusion, remote work is here to stay if statistics are anything to go by. I’m talking about situations where working remotely is what you do the majority of the time, not every now and then.

It’s a complex and multifaceted way of working, and if you are considering it as an option, you should give it some real thought. Make sure the solution serves both you and your employer. But it’s definitely a possibility.

Some practical tips:

• Invest in having a work space that is separate from your living space. It makes all the difference. You don’t want the lines between work and the rest of your life to become too blurry, trust me.
• Invest in good quality internet connection. I have a professional installation as I am totally reliant on connectivity to do my job.
• Treat going to work as an activity, even if it means you only have to cross the hall. It’s about the mindset.
• Have an open door policy. People need to feel like they can approach you and that you are available to them, albeit online. There’s pitfalls with this as it can get out of balance, but I still think it’s important to create that feeling.
• Find a hobby that will get you out of the house and around other human beings. This will contribute to both your physical and mental wellbeing.
• It’s important to have a support network at home, if you happen to work remotely from where you live. Those you live with need to respect meeting times, noise levels, etc. Harder to teach the dogs not to bark at inconvenient times or the cats not to jump onto the desk, but working on that.

Edit: Since I wrote this piece I have come across this article which references some of the studies that have been performed on remote working and working from home.