The Distributed Work Audit: Assessing Your Remote Collaboration Readiness

Transitioning to effective remote work requires rethinking processes developed for co-located teams.

It demands a management paradigm centered on flexibility, autonomy, transparency, and technology to unlock productivity outside the office.

While remote and hybrid arrangements are still evolving, one certainty is that flexible work is here to stay.

Organizations investing now to optimize operations, communication, culture, and leadership for virtual teams will gain a competitive edge.
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But how do you accurately evaluate your current remote collaboration effectiveness?

This is where the Distributed Work Audit comes in...

What is the Distributed Work Audit?

The Distributed Work Audit is an AI-powered assessment tool from RemoteFirst Institute that analyzes your team’s remote collaboration capabilities across 10 crucial focus areas:

• Communication habits
• Meeting practices
• Collaboration workflows
• Leadership approaches
• Operational processes
• Company culture
• Equality and inclusion
• Adoption practices
• Wellbeing support
• Transparency

Developed by remote work experts, this personalized audit benchmarks your current practices against remote work leaders in each area.

You’ll receive targeted recommendations to address any gaps identified, creating a roadmap to develop remote excellence. The audit establishes a baseline to guide your virtual work strategy.

Why Assess Your Remote Readiness?

Jumping into remote work without assessing existing practices typically fails. Because the complexities of virtual collaboration differ vastly from co-located norms.

That’s why remote leaders like GitLab and Automattic still continuously evaluate their processes years later - remote work is an ongoing journey of iteration and improvement, not a one-time transition.

With the Distributed Work Audit, you get an expert analysis identifying the crucial focus areas that will have the biggest impact on your team’s performance and cohesion.

It removes the guesswork of whether your remote collaboration skills need work. The personalized recommendations let you home in on optimizing the practices that will benefit your organization most right now.

Bottom line, the Distributed Work Audit helps set your remote team up for success from the start.

Distributed Work Audit Recommendations

Here are examples of personalized recommendations you might receive from the Distributed Work Audit:

Communication Habits

• Provide training on effective written communication for remote work
• Document meetings and project discussions on a shared drive
• Encourage more asynchronous communication through Slack or email

Leadership Approaches

• Implement more frequent one-on-one check-ins between managers and remote team members
• Build relationships and trust through regular video calls
• Set clearer goals and expectations for remote employees

Collaboration Workflows

• Increase visibility into workloads and timelines with project management tools
• Improve remote meeting effectiveness with agendas and facilitating engagement
• Foster social connections through virtual coffee chats or events

Company Culture

• Streiship building activities tailored to remote employees
• Send weekly company newsletters to remote staff
• Survey remote workers' sentiment regularly to address issues proactively

Equality & Inclusion

• Provide translations and captions to support non-native language speakers
• Ensure remote workers have equal access to training and career development
• Recognize achievements publicly to increase visibility for remote staff

Adoption Practices

• Assign peer mentors to onboard new remote employees
• Send welcome kits with company swag to new remote hires
• Conduct interactive video training on remote processes and tools

Distributed Work Audit Focus Areas

Let’s explore the 10 areas the Distributed Work Audit assesses in more detail:

Communication

• Analyzes your team’s communication methods, habits, and norms
• Assesses effectiveness of channels used for collaboration
• Identifies areas to optimize communication practices

Meetings

• Evaluates your remote and hybrid meeting practices
• Assesses inclusiveness, engagement levels, and productivity
• Recommends improvements based on remote meeting research

Leadership

• Examines your management style and approaches for leading remote teams
• Identifies areas to adapt strategies to better suit distributed teams
• Provides tips to engage, align, and empower remote employees

Collaboration

• Assesses your team’s workflows, tools, and processes for collaborating remotely
• Identifies areas causing bottlenecks, misalignments, or reduced transparency
• Recommends ways to improve coordination, productivity, and teamwork

Culture

• Analyzes your company culture and sense of inclusion among remote staff
• Highlights areas where remote employees may feel disconnected or undervalued
• Provides recommendations to nurture engagement and belonging remotely

Equality

• Examines whether remote employees experience equitable treatment and opportunities
• Identifies areas for improvement related to information access, involvement, and growth
• Recommends ways to build an inclusive environment across locations

Adoption

• Evaluates your onboarding, training, and support provided to new remote hires
• Assesses remote employee alignment on tools, processes, and cultural norms
• Provides tips to smooth the transition for new employees adjusting to remote work

Wellbeing

• Examines work-life balance, social connectivity, and mental health support provided
• Identifies potential areas causing burnout, isolation, or low job satisfaction
• Recommends strategies to nurture employee wellbeing and avoid remote fatigue

Transparency

• Analyzes information sharing practices and decision-making processes
• Identifies areas where remote staff may feel excluded or left in the dark
• Provides tips to increase transparency through communication and engagement

Processes

• Assesses your guidelines, workflows, and procedures for managing remote work
• Identifies areas that may cause confusion, inefficiencies, or communication breakdowns
• Recommends ways to optimize and clarify processes for hybrid teams

Distributed Work Audit Customization

The Distributed Work Audit is customized based on your remote team’s structure and needs through:

Industry Benchmarks - Your practices are compared against RemoteFirst Institute’s industry benchmarks based on data from remote work pioneers in your industry.

Role Breakdown - The assessment can be tailored to different audiences like individual contributors, managers, executives etc. Recommendations are personalized to each group’s needs.

Team Size - Recommendations are calibrated according to your team size, providing guidance scalable for smaller startups or larger enterprise teams.

This tailored approach means you get expert advice specific to your remote team’s context and challenges.

How the Distributed Work Audit Works

The Distributed Work Audit is powered by artificial intelligence, using natural language processing to conduct an interactive Q&A with your remote employees.

The conversational interface makes completing the assessment simple and intuitive for your team.

Behind the scenes, each response is analyzed using RemoteFirst's proprietary algorithms based on their extensive remote collaboration research.

At the end, you receive a comprehensive report with personalized recommendations, benchmark comparisons, and an action plan for improvement.

Finally, the Distributed Work Audit equips you with tools and templates to begin implementing the prescribed fixes right away.

Conclusion: Evaluate Your Remote Readiness

Preparing your team to collaborate productively in a virtual environment takes work.

But you don't have to start from scratch.

The Distributed Work Audit analyzes your remote collaboration readiness across 10 crucial areas like communication, meetings, leadership, and culture.

This AI-powered assessment compares your team's practices to remote work pioneers.
You'll get a personalized remote work score along with science-backed recommendations to improve virtual collaboration.

Stop guessing if your remote work capabilities make the grade. Let the experts assess your distributed team superpowers - and reveal opportunities to level up.

The future of work is flexible.

Ensure your team has the tools to thrive.