We all know that when it comes to work, small changes can make a big difference.
Recently, our remote team made one small change to our daily routine and our productivity went through the roof!
I’m excited to share what we did and how it can benefit your business as well. Keep reading to find out more!
(For context, we’re a 100% remote team of 10 working across Australia timezones – 8 in engineering, 1 operation and our CEO.)
So here it is…
*Drumroll please*
You may have guessed it…
It’s a daily update ritual!
We ask everyone in the company to post a daily to-do on a #daily-updates channel on our team Discord server by 9:50AM AEST. We ask everyone to read each other’s check-in before our full team check-in (10 mins, if that). On that call, we say a quick hello, talk about anything that comes up upon reviewing each other’s daily updates and make sure that no one is blocked on anything. Lastly, we ask everyone to update this at the end of their work day with their updates on the tasks.
This change has been life-changing for our team!
Since implementing this, we’ve seen:
- Less confusion and overlap in tasks
- Greater clarity on what everyone is working on
- Increased transparency and accountability across the team
- And most importantly, a boost in productivity!
This has saved us so much time, and we’ve been able to focus on more important things – like our work!
This process beats doing a 30-minute 5pm end-of-day meeting where everyone goes around the room and says what they’ve done that day (who wants to sit through that?). Not to mention, talking is the last thing most of us want to do at the end of a long day!
This change also gives everyone lots of autonomy and ownership over their work. People can focus on completing their tasks rather than time at desks. If someone finishes early, they can do their ‘end of day’ update on Discord and take the rest of the day off, use that time to help a teammate out or work on something else.
In place of the daily end-of-day meetings, we’ve introduced a 2 hour end of week “retrospective” meeting on Friday afternoons, where we discuss how the week went, what we could improve and any challenges we faced. We also spend this time documenting what we’ve learned. This has been a much more effective use of our time, and we’ve found that it’s helped us to focus on the week ahead rather than dwelling on the one that had passed.
This change also gives everyone lots of autonomy and ownership over their work. People can focus on completing their tasks rather than time at desks. If someone finishes early, they can do their ‘end of day’ update on Discord and take the rest of the day off, use that time to help a teammate out or work on something else.
If you manage a remote team, I highly recommend giving this a go! It’s helped us out so much and I’m sure it can do the same for you.
Do you have any tips on how to boost productivity among remote teams? Share them with us in the comments below! We’re always looking for ways to improve.