Remote Worker Office Etiquette Guide
Working from home, be it from time to time or every day, doesn’t make you immune to the social weirdness inherent in other people. In fact, physically distancing yourself from colleagues can make communication that much weirder. Here’s what you need to know to avoid awkward silences in chats, flat jokes during a conference call, or just feeling isolated from the rest of your coworkers.
You might not have to worry about cooler chat or office politics when you’re not in the heat of the moment, but you still need to be able to chat with your coworkers – otherwise you might as well be the one man (or woman) to show. Fortunately, this is not difficult. A little empathy can make you happy on any remote team, whether you see them all at the office tomorrow or never (other than a company holiday party).
Respect each person’s time zones and busy times
Be mindful of the time zones and working hours of your colleagues. For the most part, this is simple empathy, but it also extends to the way you communicate. If you treat your colleagues the way you want them to treat you (or better yet, how they would like them to treat you), you will go far. Here are a few things to remember:
- Choose your communication method wisely . Between email, chat, and even text messaging, choose the communication method that works best for the time of day and when the other person will see it. It goes without saying that if you are the only one in your time zone and it is now 3am with the rest of your team working, it might not be worth starting to call you unless it is an emergency. Sending a chat message at 3 a.m. can guarantee that someone will see it in the morning, but perhaps not the one who needs it. Use email instead.
- Respect your free and busy time, even if you are in free time . This should be taken for granted, but if someone says that they are absent during the day, do not ping them in the office chat after that. Do not email and expect an immediate response. The fact that you work from home and everyone else is in the office does not mean that you should schedule a call for 7 am because you will get up, or 8 pm because you will be free. If you are in San Francisco, do not send your New York colleagues to work late. They will need to work all night to get everything ready by the time you get up. You will be comfortably rested and they will just hate you. Respect other people’s boundaries and make it clear that you respect that their day is over, even if yours is not.
- If in doubt, ask. Don’t assume. Think about the little things in office communication, especially emails and chats that annoy you. Now think how great it would be if someone asked you about them before they did. Ask your coworker if you can ping him when he is at lunch or away – don’t assume that a “Hey @BobSmith, email me when you get back” notification is okay. Maybe they don’t care, or maybe they strongly prefer it. Anyway, when you respect their space, almost everyone becomes more flexible.
The key to all of this: let people know when you are, when you are not, and when you need to get an answer from them. If something is important, tell them about it, but don’t feign urgency when it’s not there. You probably don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night any more than everyone else.
Use technology to make telecommuting easier, not harder
A little etiquette goes a long way, as does some good old technology . Check out the intricacies of your office email or work smartphone.
Here are some simple things you can do:
- Schedule mailing during business hours . If you work with people all over the world, don’t be afraid to schedule your email to be sent when you know others will see it. Almost every email application has a way to do this. Outlook can do this natively , Thunderbird and Postbox have add-ons that allow you to do this , and Boomerang allows you to do this in Gmail. They are all useful for ensuring that your message ends up at the top of the inbox when they are actually looking, instead of being buried in the hustle and bustle of the day. Just make sure your coworkers know this ahead of time so they don’t see your email and think that you are at their computer and available. They may reach out and get upset if you don’t answer.
- Tame your notifications . A vibrating, buzzing phone with chats and emails is no fun for anyone, especially when you’re not at work. Set up an email filter that will only notify you if the email contains the word “urgent” or comes from a list of people you trust so that you can only contact them when they really need you. Use features like the awesome Gmail priority inbox to avoid receiving notifications from less important people. Do the same with chats and SMS. Turn off push notifications at the end of the day, or set them up so that after hours, only pre-approved apps or people can vibrate your phone or wake you up.
- Benefit from services that make scheduling global meetings easier . Services like the previously mentioned World Meeting Time can help, and apps like Assistant.to and other related apps can save you the hassle of scheduling meetings and making good time for people around the world. Remember that the evening meeting at 17:00 for you, for example, in San Francisco, for your colleagues in New York – 20:00. Quite late, even for work from home standards. It’s even worse if you have people in London where it’s 1:00 AM. These people probably won’t show up. Don’t make them isolate or isolate you by ignoring all your appointments and calls. Finally, make sure you have the right equipment for these meetings and set it up properly before you need it. Don’t waste time troubleshooting your computer while everyone is waiting for you to join.
All the technologies we have at our disposal are supposed to make communication easier, not harder, and yet we are still struggling with it. This is in part because no technology can replace mindfulness, so we need to fill in the gaps. You will find that once you start thinking first, you will find many new tools (and features in your favorite tools) that make it easier to connect with everyone.
Navigating Office Chat Like a Pro
If your company uses a chat room to stay connected, you might be tempted to use it, like chatting with friends. Resist the urge. Chances are, the atmosphere in your office chat is light and friendly, but that doesn’t mean you should move on to posting gifs and emoticons (if that’s okay for your team, of course!). You might even think of a service room for office chat, as well as “offtopic” or random chat for conversations with a water cooler so people can turn off alerts or leave them separate. Anyway, the best advice here is one that will help you in any online community when you are a newbie, be it a chat, a forum, a blog comment section, whatever: hide first and read everything you can before you open your mouth …
Read more than you type. You will feel how everyone interacts naturally, even before you have a reason to do so. Then, when you do that, you can do it in a way that feels normal and natural, instead of joking, as you hope everyone will hear (and then it’s awkward to wait for anyone, anyone, to say “lol “Or” haha ”to admit that you exist) or to type paragraphs for someone to say” okay “). You will be wrong here and there, but this is natural. Shrug it off, don’t let it confuse you, and try to remember next time not to talk so much, or joke around, or only offer the information you need and the rest in a private chat.
In a similar vein, use chat features like ping sparingly, if ever. Chances are, whatever you say, it doesn’t need to be heard by the entire room – or abandon everything they do to hear it right now. Sure, ping someone when you need their attention, but ask yourself (especially when it comes to everyone on your team), “Do I need their attention right now ?” If the answer is less than an enthusiastic yes, step away from the @ symbol and wait for them to enter the chat to ask if they have time for your question, or send them an email.
Communicate clearly: your words are more important than non-verbal words
So far, we’ve discussed how important it is to respect your colleagues’ time zones and boundaries. This is important, but you deserve a break, too. After all, one of the best things about working from home is the absence of distractions, so it would be nice to be able to make good use of that time and space.
To get started, make sure you communicate clearly with your colleagues in the office and abroad . If you are the type of person they turn to regularly, such as a manager or boss, let them know when you go out for lunch, go out for the day, work headless, or need to go away on business. Let them know when you come back. This ensures that they tag you when you have time to talk, and not when you are out or trying to work. Make sure your own calendar is up to date and refer people to it to see when you are available.
In email and live chat, make sure you are clear and concise about what you need, when you need it, and what you are looking for. Leave yourself open to clarification if things get difficult, but keep in mind that subtleties don’t really show up in the text, and while there are no non-verbal words in the game, there are a lot of nuances and implied readings between the lines. Whoever is on the other end of your email or chat is likely to notice little things like missing punctuation marks, short and harsh sentences, or other “verbal non-verbal expressions” that indicate your attitude or mental state. Make sure you don’t behave in a way that you are not going to, and try to avoid passive aggression.
Finally, keep in mind that while you should be clear and concise, try to be approachable and cordial as well. Every email you send, every chat you participate in, almost everything you transmit to your coworkers is probably logged, tracked, and stored with the company. You have to assume that whatever you say may come back to you or, even worse, at some point will become public knowledge. Don’t say or email anything that you don’t want someone to see or don’t want that person to forward to someone else.
Working from home has many benefits, but close relationships with coworkers are not usually included. You will have to put in a little extra effort on this front, and a lot of it has to do with being clear about when you need something, respecting the boundaries of others, and strengthening your own. As long as you can get rid of these things, you will be fine.