Empowering and Supporting Remote Software Development Team Members through a Culture of Allyship

Key Takeaways

hi my name is paige rataguero and i work for microsoft research and this paper is with tony harendez who works at microsoft today i'm going to talk about empowering and supporting remote software development team members through a culture of allyship we believe that remote work is the future of work whether that's fully remote work or a hybrid system the way we work will consist of a room or hybrid model in the future because of covet 19 many companies transition their employees to remote work employees work for a home however we will have to transition back to the workplace or continue to work from home after the pandemic work life will never be the same as it was before kobe 19. some people will stay working from home and some in the office we must become allies for those remote workers there are many benefits of remote work first there are flexible work locations you can work from anywhere you want in the world there can be an increase of work-life balance there is a reduction of the gender gap in software development if employees can work from home more opportunities for those with disabilities exist with remote work those with disabilities can work on software development teams from home with others that are working from home or in office with hybrid teams employers can hire top talent they can hire anyone from anywhere around the world by having a remote or hybrid system there are some challenges with room at work first an individual needs to develop a remote work routine that they follow so that they are productive available when they say they are available and on task it can be difficult to collaborate as a team this can be because of other obligations or time zone changes the company culture can be difficult to understand for those who have not worked with the team in person finally there is a fear of career advancement for those that work remotely more research needs to be done in this area we support remote workers and would like to promote an allyship movement for remote workers by empowering and supporting remote workers those that are remote workers will have higher job satisfaction teams will be more productive and teams will be happier both managers and team members need to take responsibility for including all team members in activities and communication so how do you be an ally well we have some steps the first step invite all remote workers ahead of time to all meetings that they may want to attend or meetings that you think that you might need them at communicate with remote workers regularly if you haven't heard from them check in on them communicate with them reach out third have inclusive formal and informal social activities make sure that everyone can participate and is involved allyship is the responsibility of all team members not just a manager not just one team member but everyone so tony and i have both worked remotely pre-covered 19 so we've come up with some guidelines for remote work from our experience on-site employees must be aware of remote peers and all interactions one way to have do this is to have telecommunication equipment it's essential to have in your meeting room so that those working remotely can join reach out to your remote worker colleagues the same way you would as if someone was in the office so if you're used to walking down the hallway just to see if someone's at their desk and to ask a question pick up a phone pick up microsoft teams and call them finally utilize your calendar feature so that you know when your team members are available there are some research questions that are still open in the term in terms of our network the ones that we think are worth further exploring right now are onboarding new employees to remote or hybrid teams how to improve collaboration between remote and hybrid teams and same with communication looking at remote workers and remote teams and hybrid teams as well thank you for attending our talk if you have any questions please reach out to us and we will gladly respond and get back to you if you are interested in any of this work we do have related work in our paper that you can reference for these benefits and challenges and if you have any questions about working remotely also feel free to reach out to either tony or i thank you so much