How to build a strong culture with a remote team

Remote work culture enables employees to do their best work. It doesn’t force them to work a typical 9-5 schedule, work overtime, or neglect their personal life.

Yet, only 21% of U.S. employees feel connected to their company’s culture. This disconnect leads to a lack of a sense of purpose, isolation, burnout, and employee turnover. 

Leaders must learn to build a healthy remote work culture that brings employees from all backgrounds and locations together. Doing so gives everyone a sense of belonging and purpose in the organization, regardless of their role or location.

This guide explains how to build a strong remote work culture and offers some real-world examples for inspiration.

You can avoid this by focusing on a remote-first work culture. It drives every step of an employee’s time with you and how they get things done — and it’s beneficial for everyone.

What is a remote-first work culture?

A remote work culture is a culture that puts connection and sense of belonging of remote workers front and center.

Companies with remote-first work cultures transcend geographic boundaries and time zone differences. They’re built on values like trust, inclusivity, autonomy, and transparency.

Remote-first work culture isn’t about adding a ‘remote’ label to an office-based type of work and allowing employees to work remotely at times while not upgrading the way things get done. It’s about treating remote work and remote workers' needs as the default way of working.

Remote-first principles then become the foundation for how work gets done, not an afterthought or a fix.

When you champion and nurture a remote culture, you don’t leave connection to chance. Remote-first companies are people-first companies. They enable people to bring their best selves to work regardless of their location because they foster flexible hours and asynchronous communication. Capbase have put together a useful guide on how to build a remote-first culture.

Why the modern workplace needs a remote-first culture to succeed

In March 2020, 88% of companies encouraged or required employees to work from home due to COVID-19. Within a year, companies like Microsoft, Spotify, Apple, Cisco, and others moved to a hybrid model.

Some of these companies now let all employees choose if they want to work from home, from the office, or a mix of the two permanently. Others ask employees to be in the office a few days a week or 50% of the time. Today, around 12.7% of all full-time employees work entirely from home, while about 28.2% operate under a hybrid model. 

For companies that offer a remote option to their workflow, whether remote-only or hybrid, their workplace cultures must foster inclusivity and participation, given the distributed nature and diversity of their teams. By aiming for a remote-first culture, you naturally align your workplace culture with what’s best for your people.

For example, let’s say one of your employees is a parent who may need to build their work schedule around getting their kids to and from school. A remote-first culture acknowledges this employee’s scheduling restraints. It ensures they don’t feel guilty for taking care of important personal tasks.

Challenges of hybrid and remote working environments

In Buffer’s 2023 State of Remote Work report, 48% of people said they frequently work outside traditional business hours, and 22% find themselves unable to unplug from work. 

Without an intentional approach to collaboration, meetings, and expectations, people in remote and hybrid positions can feel overworked, overwhelmed, disconnected, and ineffective. For example:

• Employees who feel isolated and lonely won’t contribute their best ideas to projects

• Those with decreasing work-life balance will struggle to support their family and seek a less demanding job elsewhere

• If people feel they can’t switch off as it risks their chance of a promotion, they will burn out, and their efficiency and performance will drop

This harms your success as a company and employees’ satisfaction and happiness at work.

Opportunities and benefits of building a remote-first work culture

The shortest way to summarize remote-first benefits: empowering every employee to do their best work.

When we unpack that, we’ll find many layers to what makes that happen. True remote culture is intentionally inclusive and creates equal opportunities for everyone. Without geographical and other barriers, people can bring their knowledge, life experiences, self-expression, unique capabilities, and talent to work.

As a result, employees in a remote-first culture are:

• Productive and efficient because they work during hours they feel most productive.  For instance, some employees may have the most energy in the morning, whereas others may feel more focused in the afternoon.

• Happy and easy to retain because they feel valued and rewarded as an important piece of the company puzzle. A remote-first culture prioritizes inclusion, valuing everyone’s contributions in moving the company forward.

• Rested and balanced because they can live their preferred lifestyle and support their family. For instance, having flexible hours means parents can leave work to bring their kids to and from school.

• Connected thanks to the deep trust and belonging with coworkers and managers. Remote-first companies work extra hard to facilitate interactions and team-building among the team. This helps to keep feelings of isolation at bay.

There’s also the reduced fixed costs of running a remote company compared to a traditional, office-based company, offering several benefits:

• No employee relocation needed: Employees don’t need to uproot themselves and move a long distance to be in the office. They can remain in the community they love while working for your organization. This is especially helpful for employees in areas that offer less access to excellent job opportunities.

• The ability to invest in employee growth: You can put your fixed cost savings toward employee continuing education reimbursement. Employees appreciate when their workplace helps them advance their careers.

• Customizable work environment: You can use your savings to provide employees with home office stipends. They can build a home office that fits their work style, boosting their comfort, productivity, and satisfaction. 

• More resources to reward employees: Savings from fixed costs allow you to invest in rewarding employees for their hard work.

• More flexibility: Fewer fixed costs mean wider profit margins. This helps your company improve its flexibility. Employees can take time off more easily and build their work schedules around their personal lives.

See also: 4 essential elements of a sustainable remote work culture

How can you build a remote-first work culture?

A strong, supportive, remote-first work culture is made of seven parts:

1. Recruitment

2. Compensation

3. Onboarding

4. Communication

5. Meetings

6. Benefits

7. Management

Your company culture can only be remote-first if you deeply integrate all seven parts into it. Hiring from a diverse, global marketplace isn’t enough; fostering true ownership and belonging throughout different time zones, life situations, and work styles is crucial.

Each of the seven parts plays an essential role in a remote work culture. Let’s dive into them.

1. Hire with a remote-first mindset

The success of regions like Silicon Valley created a rise in living expenses, which means that the best talent can’t necessarily afford to move there for job prospects. Remote-first recruitment is the opposite: it creates opportunities for talented tech workers and gives companies access to a global talent pool.

To reach potential candidates worldwide, use your job posting to outline and advertise a global benefits package and a company culture that endorses work-life balance and flexibility. This can include paid time off, sick leave, parental leave, mental health support, allowance for learning and development, home office budget, and more.

Remote-first recruitment also gives you the power to build a diverse workforce. Instead of relying on your job description alone to attract non-homogenous candidates, be sure to seek out a diverse applicant pool. This can include searching for talent in developing nations or posting a job on a site for female engineers or people of color.

See also: How to build belonging for women in remote work

At Remote, we encourage belonging, inclusion, diversity, and equity (BIDE) and believe that the more diverse we become, the more attractive we are to a wider range of people who might consider Remote for their next career move. When you make this a non-negotiable, you create a space your future hires can thrive in.

2. Create a remote-first compensation structure

The goal of a remote culture is to pay well to hire great people. The good news? As a remote-first business, you no longer have to offer San Francisco salaries for the best talent. Our Global Workforce Revolution Report revealed that many jobseekers are willing to take a pay cut to work remotely.

This, of course, doesn’t mean you should go for the lowest compensation possible for a given location. Fair and competitive pay is key.

Here’s how some remote companies approach this challenge:

• Basecamp pays the same salaries based on seniority levels, regardless of the location

• Buffer adjusts pay based on seniority and cost of living

• Gitlab includes San Francisco benchmark, location, level, experience, contract, and exchange rate into their salary calculator

The goal is to make your employees feel rewarded, connected, and like they belong. You’re competing with local and global businesses for the same talent, which means you need to do as well or better than both of them to hire the best of the best.

3. Curate a remote-first onboarding experience

Employee onboarding is the bridge between hiring an excellent candidate and making them successful in your remote company. Some 59% of HR professionals believe the battle for top talent is shifting from acquisition to retention.

Successful employee onboarding results in role clarity, social integration, knowledge of company culture, and taking ownership of the work. It prompts confidence.

But this is much simpler to achieve in a physical office space, where you can let your new hire explore and discover the company culture independently. They can also approach colleagues in person, get real-time support from HR, and physically feel like part of something bigger.

See also: Onboarding Remote Employees: Expert Tips & Advice

If your company is remote-first, then you need to intentionally curate the new hire experience to maintain a strong remote work environment. Your employees might feel lonely and disconnected if you just leave them to it. And if you throw every piece of documentation at them, they might get overwhelmed.

Here are some suggestions for a balanced, deliberate remote onboarding experience:

• Communication and documentation guidelines are key, so reinforce this early with your new hire

• Create an onboarding page with direct links to the most important content

• Encourage new hires to progress through onboarding at their own pace and schedule and to learn and explore as they go

• Consider pairing a new hire with a buddy in their time zone so they can gain new perspectives and have someone for typical “I’m new here!” questions

Remote-first onboarding means you can scale a curated, positive employee experience from day one.

4. Default to asynchronous communication

Asynchronous communication (async) is the keystone of true remote work. It allows every person to work at their peak periods of energy and creativity, and to do so in deep, distraction-free focus mode — no notifications or interruptions.

To make async work for everyone, you need tools that support transparent work and thorough, always-updated documentation. At Remote, Notion houses our employee handbook and our meeting notes, and GitLab is our engineering single source of truth.

Rely on tools like Loom to record videos for questions and updates, and share those updates in public spaces like Slack a channel. The goal is to make the status of ongoing work visible to all, so everyone can stay productive in their time zone and on their schedule.

It’s up to managers and leaders in the remote workplace to set the right example with asynchronous communication. They must stay proactive with tool usage, respect calendar boundaries, and regularly meet with their reports to make sure they have everything they need to succeed.

See also: Easy communication guidelines for remote teams

Remote-first communication assumes that people won’t be online at the same time. It removes FOMO — the fear of missing out — and allows employees to do their best work and to fully disconnect when they aren’t working.

5.  Make your meetings efficient and productive

Employees surveyed for Slack’s recent State of Work Report estimate that about 43% of their meetings could be canceled without consequence. 

Slashing these “pointless” meetings is much easier, thanks to remote work. However, some sync meetings still have to happen, even with async capabilities. These look different, as well, since the employees are not in the same physical room. There are also additional challenges in getting employees to participate and pay attention, especially if they feel the meeting isn’t warranted. 

Plus, technical issues, such as a weak Internet connection or outages, can stop employees from attending or cause meetings to end prematurely.

So, first, look for opportunities to turn team meetings into async communications. 

When meetings are required, do the following to make them as efficient as possible to avoid wasting meeting time:

• Always have a meeting agenda.

• Only invite the necessary participants.

• Limit each meeting phase and topic to a certain amount of time to prevent dragging topics out.

• Assign a meeting facilitator and timekeeper to keep the meeting moving along.

• Lay out procedures for meeting participation and communication; for instance, advise employees to use the hand-raising feature on the video conferencing software if they’d like to offer input.

• Define the tools to be used for the meeting.

• Take notes in a shared document and clean them up after the meeting.

• Allow time for questions at the end of the meeting.

• Record the meeting for those who couldn’t attend, and ask them to watch the recording when they can.

Evaluate your need for recurring meetings. Chances are, you can turn some of these into quick email updates or announcements.

If your meeting must remain synchronous, rotate them to include all time zones. This allows everyone to participate instead of always catching up with notes and the meeting recording. As a result, you get feedback from all employees and ensure everyone feels included.

Map out the time zones of each team member, and then create a rotation schedule. You can group some time zones, such as continental US time zones, to minimize these rotations.

Naturally, having employees in different time zones means you may not always be available for sync meetings. You need other team leaders to step up and lead sync meetings that you can’t lead yourself.

6. Build a customized remote-first benefits plan

The essential benefit you can offer as a remote-first company is flexibility. Can your employees shape their work around their lives and not the other way around? Before considering added benefits, like learning stipends or co-working allowances, make sure your foundation is rock-solid.

Then, consider what your employee’s home country already offers, and how your benefits fit into that. For example, some countries mandate 6+ months of paid parental leave, so an employee in that country won’t consider parental leave a bonus benefit.

Use our Country Explorer to learn about the statutory benefits required in each country and some helpful advice on what makes up a competitive package.

Remember that not everyone wants to permanently stay in one country. Our research found that 81% of people would move regions, states, or countries if they could do so without it affecting their work prospects.

If you have employees who live as digital nomads, make sure your company can support their relocation. This includes compliance with local labor laws, taxes, visas, benefits, and international payroll.

7. The importance of supportive remote-first management

Remote-first leaders and team managers have a huge goal: protect and prioritize the physical and mental well-being of their teams and themselves. Without physical presence, it can be hard to notice when a team member is at risk of burning out or feeling physically unwell.

First, make sure you’re aware of your employees’ workloads. This way, you’re able to proactively clear paths and encourage feedback when your direct report needs assistance. This also helps you notice overworking, avoid setting unrealistic expectations and deadlines, and reduce stress.

See also: Common mistakes of first-time remote managers

Build processes that allow people to take time off and get the rest they need. This includes off-work hours as well as vacations. Being offline shouldn’t create anxiety, and returning from a break shouldn’t be overwhelming.

As a leader, it’s important you do this, too: you deserve the rest, too, and you’ll set a powerful example for your team. If team leads and directors don’t use their PTO, employees will feel they’re expected to work and minimize breaks and vacations.

Finally, fostering connections through agenda-free, zero-work meetings and activities is important. Consider virtual workshops, group activities, volunteering initiatives, and bonding calls (we added a question of the day to help more introverted team members ). Explore and try different ways to connect and make them a recurring activity.

Employee wellbeing can’t be an afterthought. People can only bring their best selves at work when they are being their best selves.

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How to ensure a strong culture fit when hiring

“Culture” on its own is a bit abstract, so focusing only on it can result in hires who don’t fit with your organization. 

However, good company values create a good workplace culture. So, discuss your company culture with a focus on values in your job descriptions when hiring. Highlight your remote work practices throughout the onboarding process, including in the job description, interview, and so on. Explain how your team communicates, stays connected, and makes decisions. This helps prospective employees self-screen based on those values. 

As a result, a larger portion of your candidates will be a good fit for and enthusiastic about the role, saving you time in interviews and helping you focus more on whether they have the necessary skills for the job.

Pioneering companies to inspire your remote-first work culture

Need some first-hand inspiration from companies excelling at remote-first work culture? Start with these businesses and useful resources about their approach to remote work.

GitLab

GitLab is among the largest remote-first companies in the world, with more than 2,100 team members in 65+ countries worldwide. GitLab empowers its people to work and live where they’re most fulfilled. Check out their guide to all-remote, where you’ll find The Remote Manifesto, their values, hiring practices, experiences, and more.

Buffer

Buffer’s team of 80 people is fully distributed across 20 countries. Since their beginning, they’ve worked in the open and shared their commitment to a remote-first work culture. Check out their public salaries, salary calculator, and diversity dashboard.

Help Scout

Help Scout is made of a team across 115+ cities around the world. Nick Francis, Help Scout’s CEO, says he doesn’t remember remote being a conscious decision over a decade ago when they started out, but a survival strategy.

But he knows what it takes to build a thriving remote culture. “Go all-in on remote, or don’t bother. A culture’s effectiveness revolves around how information flows. Everyone needs to feel like they have access to the same information.”

Zapier

Zapier was founded in 2011, never had an office, and counts 800+ employees over six continents. One of their values is defaulting to action. “When you have a distributed company, you have to try to hire folks predisposed to finding problems and solving them,” says Wade Foster, Zapier’s CEO.

See also: Remote Talks: Episode 5 with Wade Foster - Global Leadership, Working Async, and International Compensation

Like every remote-first company we admire, Zapier embraces the remote-first approach to documentation, hiring, compensation, benefits, mental and physical health, and connection.

Doist

Doist is the company behind the Todoist and Twist products. This tech company’s team has been remote from day one and now counts 93 people across 39 countries. Flexibility, async, and transparency are deeply built into the way things get done in Doist.

Doist hires based on values like independence, passion, focus, clear communication, self-mastery, and courage. Check out the comprehensive How Doist Makes Remote Work Happen article and Doist’s remote work guides.

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Guide to hiring international employees

Hiring international employees can be risky if you’re not familiar with local payroll, taxes, benefits, and compliance in every country where you source talent. This guide was developed to answer all your international hiring questions to help you feel comfortable and confident as you begin onboarding international employees.

Remote’s publicly available employee handbook

Everything we covered in this guide to remote-first work culture, we live and breathe at Remote.

Want to see how we work asynchronously, run meetings, share information, and document progress? Curious about our hiring process, inclusion and diversity efforts, how we onboard new hires, and the PTO and benefits we offer?

You can see all of this and more in our publicly available employee handbook.

Remote-first and people-first is the way to go

Embracing and living the remote-first work culture leads to sustainable, balanced, productive work. It equally benefits your employees and your business; neither need to be compromised for the benefit of the other.

Remote-first culture starts with:

• Dedicated effort to recruit a diverse workforce

• Offering custom compensation and benefits to match the needs of employees in different countries

• Prioritizing asynchronous work and over-documentation

• Supporting the physical and mental wellbeing through leading by example

If you build this foundation for remote-first collaboration, you’ll be able to scale a globally distributed team, open up the largest possible talent pool, and build a platform for sustainable remote work success.