Thoughts on working together, and supporting organizations
| These are common ideas to [[_site/remote-work | Distributed / Remote Work]] but they work especially well for early-career people. |
In all cases it’s more about finding the right tone to get people to try it and realize the value. It can help to screen for willingness and receptivity during onboarding. Find how to get people to take risks and experiment with the changing office landscape, but know the chemistry of your team, too.
In the first week, do NOT leave them to their own devices, and do NOT assign them career training materials
It’s not everyone’s jam, but ‘avatar tools’ like Gather.town help to create some of the spatial feel of being around others.
You can also do “Shared space” sessions, where everyone joins a video call while doing quiet solo work. People can split off if a question gets too distracting to others. Sometimes these are best done in pairs, since the conversation styles can be aligned.
Regular collaborative sessions, such as mandatory pair and mob programming, are also effective.
You can also look to promote Journaling vs Standup. This is more common to when time zones and scheduled don’t overlap enough. But, with a jr or new hire, there are many things they’ll be thinking, and their effective ‘time and space’ will be very different from the rest of the team. Even if they are in the same office. Look to use intermittent daily journaling to give value in place of common standup time, and to act a bit like a GTD / pomodoro.
You are asking the rest of your team members to add “mentorship” to their weekly work, and duties. Communicate expectations, requirements, and policies, and ensure conversation to find the balances, and out-of-balances.
Here are some common guidelines:
In particular, I recommend the following: