How a Remote Agency Works

Working from home a few days a week or even full-time is now the norm in many industries. We’ve seen the birth of the remote marketing agency and the digital nomad – and as global broadband speeds increase, technology advances and attitudes to working change, more and more businesses are making the shift towards flexible arrangements for their employees.

And while the results are spiritedly debated from both sides, there’s no doubt that many feel that working flexibly allows them to be happier and more productive. According to a 2019 survey from Indeed, the top benefits experienced by companies from offering a remote work policy include more productive employees (67%), improved morale (64%), reduced absenteeism and employee turnover (57%) and operational cost savings (51%).

From the employee perspective, almost half (49%) of employees think remote working makes them more productive compared to only 6% who think they are less productive.

How will work change in the 2020s?

Many tools, systems and ways of working have developed to allow entire workforces to live in different cities and never meet in person.

With just a laptop and an internet connection, you can log in and collaborate with your team.

For marketing agencies, there are two main benefits to this way of working:

• Lower overheads, as employers don’t have to pay for expensive office space
• Access to a greater pool of talent who don’t want to commute or have varying time commitments

For the clients of these marketing agencies, this is win-win. The trick is to find a remote marketing agency that is both good at its job (can create and execute a killer marketing campaign) and good at managing and working as a remote team (can communicate well and keep you involved at every step).

How a marketing agency (like us) goes remote (like us)

The functions of an agency dictate which platforms and strategies it’ll use.

Let’s use The Marketing Project as an example. We’re a small remote marketing agency with a crew based in Melbourne and a network of colleagues around the world. We’ll break this up into two parts: technology and people.

1. Technology

We need to be able to:

• Host and send files to each other and our clients,
• Communicate in both a quick chat-based way and a more comprehensive manner – again, with each other and our clients,
• Facilitate video calls where required to brainstorm or talk through tricky issues,
• And have all our projects in one place where they can be viewed, added to and edited by everyone on both sides.

To do this, we have a few tech platforms we use, and a few ‘rules of engagement’ for each platform. We also tweak and optimise our processes constantly to make use of new integrations and keep it fresh for ourselves.

2. People

We also need to find the right individuals to fit the plan. There are some amazing creatives and marketing experts out there, but not everyone is suited to a predominantly working remotely. On the people side, here’s what we look for:

• Trustworthy, accountable and self-motivated
• Ok with working alone/not having daily face-to-face interaction (although this can be mitigated with video calls)
• Methodical and thorough with their communication and digital filing
• Good with sticking to detailed communication standards
• Confident speaking to clients directly to interrogate a brief or get more info

As a client, do you need to use your agency’s platforms?

Many consultants and agencies (including us) will encourage you to jump onto their project management platform to see the progress of current tasks and keep on top of what’s coming up. And while it’s great to give you the option, you should never feel forced into using another platform or piece of software.

But we do recommend using something to track projects – email is not good enough, no matter how good your filing system. Things get lost in the shuffle and projects can’t move forward. We use and recommend Monday.com because we can chat with our clients, share files and update the status of projects to clearly mark when we need some more information or an approval on a project.

We’ll show you exactly which platforms we use – and why we use them – in a future post.

What we’re tweaking in 2020

This year we’re focusing on enhancing what works well and removing what doesn’t. The aim is to streamline our workflow, and make it easier for clients to collaborate with us and share our ways of working.

The TMP team looked back on 2019 and got together for a brainstorm about how we can do it better this year. Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re implementing so far:

• Quick (15min) Monday morning video calls to enhance the feeling of togetherness and inclusion amongst the TMP team and simulate a morning catchup in the office
• Redefining what it means to be the ‘owner’ of a project to spread accountability and improve delivery times
• Using Monday.com features like hashtags to help us see more clearly what tasks we’ve got on for the week and their pre-determined priorities
• Automatically turning emails into new tasks within Monday.com using a clever Gmail integration
• New rules around discussion threads on Monday.com to make sure no messages are missed

Can your business get more flexible?

Even traditional businesses can (and should) migrate towards a more flexible working culture, if it aligns with their purpose and makes sense to do it.

Startups have attracted much of the best talent by allowing people to work from home or travel while they work. To compete, more established players need to offer the same level of flexibility to their workers.

And the results do the talking.

The Quarterly Journal of Economics recently reported on the results of a working from home experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency.

Call centre employees who volunteered to work from home were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months.

Home working led to a 13% performance increase. Turnover decreased by 50% among those working at home, and those workers took shorter breaks and fewer sick days. The company saved around US$2,000 (A$2,784) per employee on lease costs. Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction.

Here are a few ways you can establish and maintain a flexible working culture:

Lean on cloud-based file hosting, communication and project management platforms – then rely on them

Older businesses (and especially smaller ones) still using servers and desktop computers to store their data and files are at risk of losing them all in the event of a blackout, fire or theft. Moving to secure cloud-based platforms is a good long-term investment in any case, but it also gives you the flexibility to ‘unplug’ when you’re ready.

Move your team onto laptops and tablets

Most workforces have some part of their team out and about regularly – for example, their sales team. But if part (or all) of your team still need to come into the office just to use a desktop computer, consider freeing them up with a laptop. Some workers, like video editors, might need some more power – but a lot of newer laptops can handle the processing power. You might just need to provide a bigger, better screen.

Introduce remote working, one day at a time

You might feel like the sky will fall in if your staff all stop showing up to the office all of a sudden. If so, it might help to start with a ‘roster’ in which everyone gets one day a week. That way you can split up the absences so that only one or two people are working from home on any given day. It’s also a good way to test out your processes and methods of communication.

Involve your team in the process

There’s no one ‘right’ way to add flexibility into your way of working. It depends on your people and the unique intricacies of your business. Keep an open dialogue with your team to discuss what’s working and what’s not, and make sure people feel they can speak openly about things that don’t work for them or make them feel uncomfortable. Changing work environments can be stressful and difficult. A little bit of empathy goes a long way.

Have your meetings on video chat even when most people are present

This is a technique that’s become popular among engineers in startups. If one or two of a ten-person team are working from home, the rest will join via individual video chats so that there’s no ‘chit-chat’ and nothing lost between the people in the room and the people working remotely. It helps to close the distance between all team members and ensure everyone feels included.

Regular one on one video calls/meetings with your team (if you manage one)

Even if you’re not in the same room, you need to keep rapport with your team. Individual contact is crucial, especially when things are busy. Try to understand the blockers each individual is facing, and address any issues before they become big. Even if you think you are on top of everything, you need that face-to-face time to make sure everyone’s really happy.

So while it’s not fool-proof, the benefits are numerous for those agencies who choose to go fully remote (and do it properly), as well as the clients who put their trust in these agencies. The key is to assemble the right people and empower them to be creative, have control and do their best work.

Global trends suggest we’re only going to see more flexible working arrangements – who knows, in a few years it might be the norm to skip the commute and log on from wherever you are! How will our cities and economies change in response?