How we maintain a culture within our remote team using Asana

[Bastien_Siebman]

Our team is fully remote. 15 members, all working from home. For us, this feels natural. For most people, they struggle to understand how we can maintain a culture and “bond” with our colleagues.

2 fun facts: we met Julie in person after working with her for 3-years; and we hired several team members without meeting them face to face first.

We implemented a few things to make sure everybody is engaged, motived and has fun.

Every morning we have an optional coffee break (8.45am-9am) to chit chat with the team.

We also have an Asana task where everyone describes the day ahead, so we can identify opportunities to help, delegate…

A second virtual coffee happens in the afternoon 2 or 3 times a week to see our US-based colleagues (almost everybody else is in Europe).

Our random channel in Slack is used to share gif, memes and fun facts throughout the day.

Our Asana is also filled with emojis, Asana celebrations, memes and gif, we found the right balance between fun and work.

Once in a while, we have virtual drinks together, play Kahoot, share stories…

We meet in person with the core team twice a year, and team members go to events together, whether it is a trade show, a conference…

Our values, and our 10-year vision, are written down for everybody to see.

I learned 3 things from running a remote team:

1. don’t force anyone to attend virtual coffee breaks or drinks. But if they never attend or stop attending, find out why.
2. your virtual events won’t always be fun. One day we’d be laughing non stop, and the next day we wouldn’t have anything to say to each other. That’s fine.
3. face-to-face time several times a year is critical, make sure to schedule it ahead of time.

Any other tip from running your remote team?

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Bastien, Asana Expert
iDO (Asana Partner: Services & Licenses)

[Melanie_Joos]

Thanks for sharing your experience – really inspiring how you’ve built a strong remote culture!

Our team is also distributed across Germany and mostly works remotely. Some of the things you mentioned really resonate with me: We also meet twice a year in person with the whole team, our values and vision are clearly defined and actively referred to, and we use a lot of emojis and fun celebrations in Asana and Teams to keep the mood light.

I really liked your idea of a morning coffee break – I’m going to try that out! I’m curious to see how my team responds. We’re an all-developer team, and some folks tend to be on the quieter side

Would you mind sharing a bit more detail on how it works for you? Do you use a specific tool? Is there a calendar invite? How do the conversations get started – does someone come with a topic? And do you stick strictly to 9am or does it end more organically?

Would love to hear more – thanks again!

[Bastien_Siebman]

@Melanie_Joos

I really liked your idea of a morning coffee break – I’m going to try that out! I’m curious to see how my team responds. We’re an all-developer team, and some folks tend to be on the quieter side

it can definitely be awkward sometimes, we don’t always have things to talk about. When that’s the case, you can switch to “Cowork” mode where you work while being on the same zoom call, and you can joke around and work as the same time.

We stick to 8.45am-9am, there is a calendar invite for everyone, and we have between 2 and 7 people depending on the days. No agenda, we usually discuss about something from the news, something that happened that week-end or that day, or something upcoming. And we sometimes talk about work.