Ask HN: Resources for Communication and Listening Online

2 points by lkozloff 9 years ago | 1 comment

I run the tech department for a small non-profit with employees on both sides of the Pacific. Recently we have a number of new hires, or people who have never used remote communication tools in business, talking more frequently. This has lead to some unique challenges that they're not equipped to deal with.

Do you have any ready-made resources (blog posts, slides, videos) that might help staff use remote communication tools like Google Hangouts more effectively? I'm looking for both etiquette and culture type resources. My dream would be a comparison between 'real life' and 'video chat life'.

If nothing seems to exist, I'd also be interested in collaborating to create a resource like I've described.

brudgers 9 years ago |

A couple of thoughts:

1. 'Remote first' is a new buzzword that describes how organizations organize around remote workers as the default. A bit of Googling will probably provide descriptions of organizations facing similar change and how they dealt with it.

2. The first order solution is not at the employee end. It is at the organization's end structuring communications and changing operations so that the remote worker is a first class employee. This means that normal practices like making decisions over drinks after hours is out and that means that people in the home office have more work to do to make it work than the remote workers.

3. Scott Hanselman's list is useful for remote workers: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/30TipsForSuccessfulCommunicati... But it is a secondary tool. The primary accommodations still need to happen among the home office workers.

Besides Hanselman who has been working remote for Microsoft for many years, Cognitect's podcast is another good resource and over it's lifetime the company has shifted its operations to provide equitable treatment for remote workers.

Anyway, it's a people problem not a tech problem. Therefore it is a hard problem.

Good luck.