In the never-ending debate about whether remote work is good or bad, have you ever noticed that where people work (or formerly worked) has a pretty strong correlation to their opinions on the subject?
Look for the people who are shouting to the high heavens that remote work is great, and then check their resumes. Odds are, they’ve spent time at one of a relatively small group of companies. Atlassian. GitLab (my own alma mater). Zapier. Hubspot… the list goes on, but it isn’t long.
In the wide world of business, there’s a very short list of the companies that are absolutely nailing it at distributed work.
Anyone who joins one of those teams will gain an entirely new sense of what it really means to work remotely. I speak from experience, having earned my own master’s degree in remote work* at GitLab. Once you gain direct experience with what it takes to work remotely as a global team, you’ll never again see it as something simple. It’s a full system revamp: an operational retooling and a team-wide upskilling, and a culture transformation too.
Most (all?) of the companies doing remote work really well in 2024 were already remote-first before the pandemic. That doesn’t mean that office-based companies can’t be fantastic at remote work – in fact, I joined Upwork to prove that a transition to remote-first can be a smashing success – but it does indicate that mastering remote-first takes time. And intention. And strategy. And patience.
To succeed, remote-first companies need to focus in five key areas. Jump to the list – or keep reading to learn how I created it.
How I did the research
At Upwork, we’re well into our transformation, and we’re gaining both skill and momentum. But there are some questions we’ve run into again and again: how do we define the right outcomes? What are the remote-work best practices? How do we know what’s really effective? There are many things I personally know to be true, because I have experience with them; but as of 2024, there’s very little research or analysis to back up my knowledge. We’re at the leading edge. Management philosophy and academia haven’t caught up yet.
This may be the leading edge of work, but I still want proof that something is a good idea before I ask an entire company to try it.
A best practice is a best practice because it’s true in multiple cases – so there must be cases. I set out to find them. My hypothesis: if a company’s workers are happy and engaged, the company is probably doing things pretty well. Ergo, if a remote-first company has great reviews on third-party sites, it’s worth looking at their policies.
I analyzed 25+ remote-first or hybrid companies, seeking to uncover any trends and correlations in their work practices. I chose companies that have incorporated remote work as a key part of their model. In a couple of cases, I looked at companies that tried going remote and then returned to the office. I only looked at companies that had at least 1,000 team members.**
I started with company reviews. Comparably was a primary resource for this. Their survey asks detailed questions that really dig into the elements that matter in a workplace: culture, operations, leadership, compensation and more. I also incorporated the overall Glassdoor score, coming up with a combined estimate of how satisfied team members were.
Next, I collected a wide variety of factors that I expected would contribute to remote team satisfaction. It’s important to note that I wasn’t just looking for what makes any company a great workplace: I was specifically seeking the factors that matter for distributed teams.
Example of remote-first differentiation: Anywhere you work, compensation and benefits matter. But for distributed companies, having customizable benefits is a signal that the company is considerate of team members’ varied lifestyles, locations, and needs.
Here are the factors I measured:
- Quantitative
- Overall score (Comparably/Glassdoor rating)
- Retention factors grade (Comparably score)
- Benefits satisfaction (Comparably responses)
- Meeting effectiveness (Comparably responses)
- Global distribution (countries the company hires in)
- Qualitative
- Work effectiveness (Comparably/Glassdoor comments)
- Professional development (Comparably/Glassdoor comments)
- Transparency (company values and communications)
- Compensation model (company careers page and job listings)
- Benefits package (company careers page and job listings)
- Early career programs (company website)
- Remote work as a talent branding factor (company website and PR)
- Office utilization (company website and PR)
- Remote operational model (company website and PR)
Finally, I looked at the trends. Which of these factors were strong at the highest-rated companies? Among the lower-rated companies, which factors had statistically lower scores?
Findings: The 5 things great distributed companies do extraordinarily well
The results were fairly decisive. Highly-rated companies scored consistently better in five specific areas, as compared to companies with average or poor ratings. In other words, if you want to build a best-in-class distributed organization, these are the areas to master:
1. Transparency
Transparency is table stakes for distributed teams. Many all-remote companies baked in transparency from the start: as a company value, a key practice, and a leadership philosophy. Transparent companies start from the belief that building culture remotely requires an extremely high level of trust – so we have a foundation of mutual respect that requires fewer touchpoints to maintain, and so we can each work independently, confident that our collaborators will show up and do their part. This also helps teams maintain high psychological safety and authenticity, which in turn supports cohesion, inclusion & belonging.
Transparency shows up in how companies work, how leaders share strategy and objectives with their teams – and above all, in communication. The Automattic creed phrases this beautifully: “communication is oxygen.”
2. Async-first collaboration
People often say they know how to work async – but trust me, you almost certainly don’t. I’m not a master of it, either. Async work isn’t about never having meetings, and it’s also not about sending a bunch of emails. It’s an entire system of work and task tracking, and it requires buy-in and shared behaviors across an entire team.
To vastly oversimplify: collaborating asynchronously is about sharing information consistently and effectively, so that people can work well with as few meetings as possible. Great knowledge management; consistent work planning and project/task management; a culture of strong documentation. When you have these things, people can work around the globe and around the clock, as flexibly as they need to.
GitLab has a great starter guide to async. But trust me, it takes years to implement these practices for even the most dedicated teams.
3. Really good meetings & gatherings
Great meetings are completely worth the time it takes to organize, host, and follow up. But we often forget that the real value of a great conversation is psychological, not tactical: it’s less about the work you accomplish in a meeting, and more about exchanging ideas and inspiring one another.
Most remote companies struggle with meeting overload. The highest-rated companies fight back with strong guidelines on why/when to meet, how to get the value out of meetings, and how to keep work rolling in between (or in lieu of) calls. You’ll also see initiatives like “calendar audits” where people are encouraged to review everything on their calendar and see what can removed. Atlassian’s ritual reset playbook is a good place to start. Shopify went a step further and created a cost calculator for meetings.
Now that we’re moving away from pandemic-era policies, it will be interesting to see how companies approach in-person team events (offsites, retreats, etc.); it’s too early for me to have findings here now, but there’s a clear trend toward planning big, impactful get-togethers to spark relationship-building.
4. Design-your-own learning and career development
Remote workers can feel invisible and left behind – particularly when it comes to growing their own careers. When they can’t easily network with leaders or observe others’ pathways to growth, people need more support and a sense that their employer will invest in them.
Leading distributed companies are reinventing learning & development as a self-driven practice of investing in individual growth. Many companies now encourage workers to self-select the books, courses, and even degrees that inspire them. This is supported by discretionary learning budgets (which range as high as $10,000/year) and strong internal mentoring programs. Automattic even spun out its mentoring program: Mentor Everywhere.
5. Customizable benefits packages
Gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all approach to rewards. Great distributed companies spend a lot of time (and money, and resources) designing rewards programs that have a variety of options, customized or customizable depending on your location, lifestyle, and needs. Discretionary budgets run the gamut from fertility and childcare to home office equipment or even food. Parental leave is generous. Mental health and career coaching are available on demand. And that unlimited PTO comes with just one requirement: a minimum number of days off.
For experienced remote workers, the “total rewards” package is the clearest signal of whether a company is really committed to remote work. If the package is designed to flex with your life, you can predict you’ll be afforded flexibility in your work as well.
The big takeaway: to truly stand out, distributed companies have to do all the things that office-based companies do, plus everything on this list. It’s no small project – this transformation could take years at a minimum. But it’s absolutely, provably possible to do this well.
If you’re ready to take on the challenge, there’s one more nice thing to know: most of the companies who are leading the remote-work movement are also incredibly open and transparent about their processes and best practices. The information isn’t yet available in MBA programs – but the information is out there. For those who are serious about mastering distributed operations, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look.
I recommend starting on Comparably.
*There is no master’s degree in remote work, and if there is, I don’t actually have one. But I do believe I have equivalent knowledge & experience, so if anybody ever creates a master’s program in remote work, please send me an honorary degree. tx
**This restricted range of companies brought up some trends as well: which types of companies, in which industries, are potentially more able to operate remotely? But that’s another article for another time.
