In many ways, virtual teams are an ongoing experiment, as they have only been fully embraced by companies in the past decade or so. Remote working has showed healthy growth with an 80% increase in telecommunicating employees from 2005 to 2012. But what does it take to manage a successful remote team? Since Help Scout … Read more
The Steam Deck is an excellent device for playing PC games away from your actual PC. It’s not the most portable handheld on the market (due to its size), but it connects seamlessly with your Steam profile and allows you to download games locally—if you have the storage space. Given the size of many modern … Read more
When your team is spread out all over the world, traditional team-building activities like celebrating milestones in the office or grabbing drinks after work aren’t on the table. But that shouldn’t stop you from creating virtual opportunities for employees to get to know each other better, make memories, and build the kind of social capital … Read more
As a remote-first company, we have to be deliberate about alignment. Back when the company was small, we held weekly meetings over the phone. But by the time the team had grown to ~20 people, those weekly calls weren’t scaling. Teammates wanted to hear more about what was important to our leadership team and how … Read more
Conflict is a scary beast we encounter periodically through our personal and professional lives. Like all perceived threats, our natural inclinations are to either flee or fight, neither of which is particularly useful in interpersonal conflict. However, they’re likely the only two responses you’ve ever learned. Sure, you maybe got a “use your words” lesson … Read more
Few things motivate an employee more than a strong connection to other people on their team. Closeness creates trust and trust helps us work more effectively together which sustains a drive to overachieve. For co-located companies, closeness happens almost organically over lunch, coffee breaks or a cheeky beer after work. But how does this translate … Read more
Summary Shadow Ho-Oh event lets players use Remote Raid Passes for the first time. The event allows both in-person and remote players to tackle Shadow Ho-Oh. Hopefully, more online options will be available for Pokemon Go players in the future. Pokemon Go is finally bringing in a fan-requested feature, as the upcoming Shadow Ho-Oh event … Read more
Working in customer service no longer means sitting in a cubicle. You don’t have to drive to an office park or commute 90 minutes on a train every day. Customer service professionals (and their employers) can let go of that daily grind and still get ahead. Across every industry — and especially customer service — … Read more
One of the best decisions we’ve made at Help Scout is to build a remote culture. The 160 people on our remote team hail from more than 75 cities in over 12 countries around the world. While the benefits of a remote culture are tremendous, being successful requires radical commitment from leadership on your team. … Read more
Our Design team at Help Scout is distributed across three continents and five time zones — working remotely, but paired closely with Engineering, Marketing and Content teams located in a further 50+ cities around the globe. From little home studios in suburbia, to coffee shops and co-working spaces in the city, we thoroughly embrace the … Read more