My, oh my, the workplace sure has changed a lot in 3 long short years. Along with the recent rise of remote work, there have been several benefits and drawbacks that have become apparent. Notably, remote work has allowed for increased flexibility and improved work-life balance, encouraging employees to work in a way that suits their lifestyle. Remote work also eliminates the need for a daily commute, saving both time and money. On the other hand, a drawback of remote work is the potential for isolation and reduced social interaction, which can impact mental health. Additionally, remote work can blur the lines between work and personal life, making it difficult for employees to switch off and disconnect from work. While remote work offers many benefits, it's important for both employers and employees to consider the potential drawbacks and take steps to mitigate them. 

At the end of the day, you may be left wondering, “Can remote work really WORK?”

At Betsy Bash, we say “YES!” 

Since work is a necessity, we believe that everyone should be able to truly enjoy what they do and HOW they do it. In order to encourage our Babes to do their best work in whatever environment they choose, we’ve established a combination of tools, processes, and systems that helps create a work-life balance we love.

Tools We Use

With what seems like the whole world trying to navigate remote work, it’s hard to know what tools to use to unite your remote team. Our team is specifically focused on using tools that allow us to manage our time and our focus when we need–and want!--to, while also allowing us to disconnect.

Slack

Slack is the main tool we use for team collaboration and productivity. Our Babes use Slack to communicate in real time and asynchronously while also giving us the benefit of having “water-cooler talk” as well! Slack acts as a centralized platform for messaging, discussion, and brainstorming that helps to streamline our team’s communication. Additionally, Slack’s ability to connect with other productivity apps helps to keep our (ever-growing) to-do lists and assets in one place, easy to share with other members of our team. In this virtual world, Slack is our office away from the office.

Asana

If Slack is our “office”, then Asana is our “to-do list!” Asana is our go-to for organizing, tracking, and managing our work, enabling us to stay on top of our deadlines and deliverables. Even more helpful, we use Asana to assign tasks between team members and move our work through the systems we’ve set up–from copywriting to design to approval, for example. Ultimately, the Babes use Asana to help us assign and visualize our work, helping us to stay focused on what matters when it matters.

Google Drive

We’ve got communication and tasks covered, but where do we keep our assets? Easy.
Google Drive.

Google Drive allows our team to create and edit documents and share files with each other or with our clients. Our Babes can access and work on files simultaneously with each other or individually, making it a valuable tool for those of us working from different spaces, places, and cities. 

Ways we disconnect

The best way we can ensure that we’re prepared for work is by making sure we take care of ourselves and our mental and physical health outside of work. This looks different for each Babe but each of us finds the way that works best for us.

Set boundaries

Caitlin does a great job of looking at her schedule at the beginning of the week and forecasting what amount of time she’ll need to complete her work, the personal time she may need to recharge, and any events that are coming up for her. Setting realistic time boundaries for your work schedule can help to maximize your work efficiency while giving you the time you need to enjoy the "life" part of work-life balance. When you work remotely, resisting the urge to just “answer one more email” is tough, but by creating clear boundaries, you can create a clear separation between work and personal time.

Engage in offline activities

Take breaks from your computer and engage in offline activities that you enjoy, such as reading a book, going for a walk, or spending time with family and friends. Gavin designates time during each workday to work out and focus on his own physical health. Lauren sometimes starts her day with a walk around the neighborhood before diving into tasks. Doing things you enjoy can help you disconnect from work and reduce stress.

Turn off notifications

If the siren call of your work is too difficult to resist, consider turning off notifications from work-related apps or tools. This can help you avoid the temptation to check messages or respond to emails during your personal time. Lauren has all lock screen, badge, and sound notifications on her phone turned off and 99% of the time, her cell phone is on silent. She includes number notifications on apps like Messages or Slack so that she can visually see if conversations are happening. For apps like Gmail, Instagram, or Asana, she checks those as it makes sense in her schedule. 

Measuring our happiness

Like with any metric, if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter. And our team’s happiness matters! 

Each month, we take the time to measure how our team is feeling in a number of different categories and discuss the contributing factors to their subjective score. We check in with our team on how they feel on a 1-5 scale in 3 different areas of our work–Clients, Workload, and Culture. After getting each individual score, we average our scores together and get our overall scores for those areas. 

By calculating our team Happiness Score, we’re able to make necessary adjustments in our workload and personal work processes based on how our team feels at the time, leading to a more fulfilling work environment and experience.

With as much freedom as remote work has given us, learning to manage our freedom in a way that works can be challenging. By utilizing the right tools, healthy methods of self-care, and honest check-ins with your team as a whole, we believe any team can make remote work, WORK.