How APIBEST organised the work of its team remotely

Read Time 4 mins | Jan 26, 2023 9:34:29 AM

Since the pandemic, many companies have gradually transitioned to remote work, offering their employees comfortable home offices.

Now, remote work is not perceived as unusual and incomprehensible - most companies know how to set up a process, maintain productivity, and increase it several times.

For APIBEST, the process of switching to completely remote work happened a couple of years ago, and in that article, we would like to share our experience.

We will talk about the principles that guided remote work organisation and show the critical stages of our transition.

The five stages of our transition to remote

  1. Take care of safety

First, we needed to ensure that employees took all measures to protect their work from home from cyber attacks, including hacks and theft of confidential data.

Our team meticulously protects their digital workspaces from data leakage as they process private customer information in some cases. Employees who process sensitive data use a virtual private network. In addition, we use a single application that stores all the necessary passwords and supports two-factor authentication.

  1. Changed communication channels

Employees need the right communication platform to feel genuinely connected and improve collaboration.

Agree that when a problem requires an urgent solution, writing an email to a colleague, indicating the subject of the letter, and waiting until he sorts the mail and answers is not the best option. That is why we have implemented a platform that allows you to exchange instant messages, so the team can quickly contact the PM, for example. Our favourites are Slack and Skype.

For daily meetings, meetings with the team, and in general for personal sessions - we use Zoom and Google Meet.

  1. Found a way to measure team engagement

Conducting an anonymous survey using Google tools has been an excellent way for us to understand what problems engineers face regularly and how to solve these problems. In addition, this regular feedback ensures that the employee feels like an active and engaged company member.

In addition, we have regular one-on-one meetings, with the help of HR, which help leaders get a real sense of how things are going. Our employees need to feel safe, honest, and open.

  1. Chose a platform for project management

When employees need more resources to complete tasks and track their progress against goals, it can be challenging to organise work remotely. 

It was a great idea to choose and set up a project management tool that each team member could access and the files and data they needed. We love using Jira and all the available Google tools, including Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Spreadsheets, to share and manage documents and files.

  1. Created a company handbook

A unique tool, the main task is to compile and provide employees and customers with a complete picture of the company's functioning, including some internal processes.

Its feature is that each team member can supplement it at any time! Thus, employees feel involved in the company's affairs and feel part of it.

The APIBEST handbook includes several main sections: information about the company (goal, mission, strategy formation, general information, organisational structure, and so on), a section dedicated to the team, finance, planning, development, marketing, and services that we provide.

Thanks to the handbook, a new employee can easily understand internal processes, see instructions for using tools and get to know the company's activities more closely.

Summary

The transition to a remote work format required much effort from us. Still, thanks to this, we gained invaluable experience and some competitive advantages, such as exchanging knowledge with foreign partners, hiring employees from different parts of the world, increasing work efficiency and strengthening strong communication between team members.

Now we are guided by such principles as safety, corporate culture, communication with mandatory feedback, continuous learning, and technology.

Can you share what is most important for your company in your work? And do you have experience working remotely with a team?

Join the discussion in the comments!

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