What gets in the way of a remote or hybrid team
Decisions stay in calls and direct messages. A question gets settled in a direct message or on a call, and only the people involved know the decision. A month later a new hire asks the same question. The answer isn't written down anywhere, so someone has to explain it all over again.
People in the office know more. Some questions get settled in a meeting room or at the next desk. Whoever works from home hears about the decision later, sometimes after they've already done the work under the old plan.
It's unclear who's available. A teammate doesn't reply, and you can't tell whether they're busy, in a meeting or on vacation. That's where "are you there?" messages and extra calls come from.
Everyone expects an instant reply. If the team hasn't agreed on how fast to respond, every message looks urgent. People keep the chat open all day and get pulled away from their work.
All four problems are solved by messaging rules the team agrees on up front.
Messaging rules for a remote team
These are the rules we follow ourselves:
- Ask work questions in shared chats. Everyone who needs the answer will see it, and a month later search will find it. Keep direct messages for personal requests, informal conversation and feedback to an employee.
- Reply in the thread. A thread is a discussion branch under a specific message. A reply in the thread stays next to the question, and the chat itself shows only the topics. A reply in the main feed ends up among other people's messages an hour later, and it's hard to tell which question it answers.
- Need someone who isn't in the chat? Bring them into a cross-chat thread. In Pachca, threads are cross-chat: you can @mention any teammate in a thread, even if they aren't in the chat. They see the thread and the message it started from, but not the rest of the conversation. Then you don't have to forward them messages and pass their answer back.
- Get to the point right away. A bare "hi" gets an answer only when your teammate opens the chat, and the question waits an extra hour.
- Send a thought as one message. Ten short messages in a row mean ten notifications for everyone in the chat.
- Add a reaction instead of "thanks" and "ok." Only the author gets notified about a reaction, so it doesn't distract anyone else.
- Flag urgent things with an @mention. Reply to everything else within the working day. Then nobody has to keep the chat open all day.
- Write meeting recaps down. After a call or an in-office meeting, whoever called it posts in the chat what was decided, who's doing it and by when.
- Set a status. If you're in a meeting, commuting or on vacation, your teammates will see it and won't wait for a reply.
Write the rules up in one message and pin it in a general chat. A new hire will read them on day one. For more on each rule, see the article "Business etiquette for team chat apps".
[Team] Marketing
8 members
Max Collins pinned a message
How we work when part of the team is remote: 1. Work questions go here, DMs are for personal stuff. 2. We reply in threads. 3. Whoever called the meeting posts the recap. 4. Urgent things get an @, everything else a reply by end of day. 5. Heading to a meeting or on vacation? Set a status.
How to set this up in Pachca
Fewer direct messages. People send direct messages when they don't know which chat to ask in. Create chats for questions to other departments, such as "[Questions] Accounting" and "[Questions] Engineering." Make them public: then anyone can find the chat through Browse and join on their own. If a discussion needs someone who isn't in the chat, bring them into a cross-chat thread. Ten forwards a day at 30 seconds each add up to more than 20 hours a year, and with a cross-chat thread there's nothing to forward.
Chats with clear names. A remote employee can't ask the person at the next desk where the ad campaign is being discussed. They'll find the chat by the prefix in its name: "[Team] Marketing" for a department, "[Project] Billing" for a project that spans several teams. Pin the list of prefixes in a general chat. An admin can assign a group tag to an employee, and Pachca adds them to every chat with that tag. For other chats worth creating, see the article "How to organize communication in your team chat app".
Company news in a channel. In a channel, only editors can post, and everyone else adds reactions and comments in threads. People in the office and at home both see the announcement about the new vacation schedule, and the discussion doesn't push it up the feed.
Meeting recaps in the thread. To start a call, click the video camera icon in the chat's top menu. If a participant turns on transcription, an AI summary and a full transcript land in the thread under the call message after the call. If the meeting happened in the office, whoever called it posts the recap. To get meeting minutes automatically, see the use case "How do you record a meeting and get the minutes automatically?"
The Working remotely status. Your status shows next to your name everywhere in Pachca. Besides Working remotely, there are four more standard statuses, and you can create your own. Before a vacation, turn on Away and say in the description who's covering for you. A teammate sees that description above the message field when they message or mention you.
[Team] Marketing
8 members
The newsletter mockup is ready, it's in the thread
A scheduled message for a teammate in another time zone. Write the message and pick a send time, say 9:00 in your teammate's time zone. It arrives at the start of their working day. A recurring scheduled message can remind the team about the stand-up every Monday at 9:00.
Task updates in writing. Everyone posts in the chat what they've done and what's blocking them. Only questions that can't be settled in writing go to a call. To collect these updates with a bot, see the use case "How do you run a daily standup in 15 minutes?" To assign tasks with an owner and a deadline, see "How do you assign tasks and keep track of them?"
Where to start
Start with one team. Pin the rules in its chat and ask people to set a status when they're in a meeting or on vacation. After two weeks, look at which questions still get asked in direct messages and agree to discuss them in the chat.
Frequently asked questions
As many as there are questions you can't settle in writing: a disagreement, a tough decision, meeting a new hire. Task updates go in the chat, so they don't need a call of their own.