From the entrepreneur’s corner (71): Transitioning to async
While many startups have embraced the hybrid work spectrum, we’ve jumped straight into the async-first model, saying goodbye to most of the direct meetings with team members located in other geographies and using pre-recordings, short Slack (or similar) conversations, and project tracking via tools like Trello.
Some would say the lack of real human connection with colleagues or facetime with managers and founders will have a negative impact, but I’ve noticed a higher retention rate, more productive output, and happier colleagues.
Here are some tips on how to make the transition to async succeed:
· Hire professionals with strong independent skill sets, who are self-motivated and can (micro-)manage themselves.
· Be creative and cultivate community: balance day-to-day async work with sync activities that focus on team connection. Team retreats in the wilderness/nature are a must.
· Choose and use the appropriate tools (Slack, Notion, Asana, etc.) Video messaging is also useful (Loom, for example).
· Document as much as you can a handbook for the fresh remote-first employees, so that they can access it when they can’t ask their managers for answers. In our case, we’re all starting and ending every week (and in some cases, on a daily basis) with what we plan on doing that respective week (day) and what we’ve done in the team’s comm channel(s), for colleagues’ visibility and so managers can give feedback.
Although we’re doing asynchronous work and are aware of a widespread desire of many colleagues in the same location to partially shift back to the pre-pandemic office culture, flexible work is here to stay and we’ll never return to a five-day office workweek; in fact, we’ve already embraced the four-day scenario, and hope this one will stay as well (more on this later.)
That’s why the async work tips will still be useful regardless of what your team’s work week ultimately looks like.
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