Teresa Douglas - Working Remotely: Secrets to Success for Employees on Distributed Teams

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2020 Teresa Douglas, Holly Gordon, and Mike Webber

Published by Kaplan, Inc., d/b/a Barrons Educational Series
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eISBN: 978-1-5062-7152-1

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There were many people who helped move this book from an idea into reality, and we would like to thank them for their support. Jim Shevlin started this project in the first place, and then let us run with it. Lola Disparte contributed hours of her time toward the writing and editing of this book. Paula Fleming took time off from her holidays to copy edit our writing so we would have a clean copy to submit for publication.

Caitlin Duke joined the team at the 11th hour and helped us write, organize, and edit the vignettes and pro tips in a very short amount of time. We wouldnt have made our deadline without her.

We would also like to thank all of the Kaplan colleagues, past and present, who contributed vignettes, pro tips, or personal experiences to our book. Thank you Corinne Simon, Ibrahim Husain, Christine Terrell, Dru Ciotti, Bobby Amirebrahimi, Brian Sabel, Evan Gaughan, Rei Champion, Walker Williams, Julie Minnich, Melanie McKay, Jenn Freeman, Yeo Ju Choi, Kristin Robinson, Sascha Strelka, Chrissy Damasco, Elle Mastenbrook, Dustin Semo, Patrick Reagan, Kate Mitsakis, Melody Young and Katie Stanfield. Sharing your personal experiences helped us to create a book that is truly by employees, for employees.

A big thank you to the team at 750 Publishing for their flexibility and willingness to nurture this book and help it see the light of day.

In midsummer 2010, I received a strange call from my manager. I was instructed to make myself available at 4:00 p.m. and to be in a place where I could talk freely without my fellow employees hearing. It was both mysterious and unsettling, but most of all it was intriguing.

When I dialed into the rather large conference call, I realized the presenter was the much-admired CEO of our division. His first words were galvanizing: If you are not able to keep a secret, please leave this call immediately. And so it began.

The next hour was spent detailing an audacious plan to completely shift the current business model for Kaplan Test Prep, the worlds leader in the field.

On November 3, 2010 (just a few months from that midsummer call), Kaplan would essentially flip a switch and change from a brick-and-mortar organization, with 170 physical locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, to a predominantly virtual company where almost 90 percent of all employees would work from home. While on the surface Kaplan would continue to service students as it always had, the organizational structure behind that service would transform completely.

Jim Shevlin

That provides the background for this book. On a single day in 2010, a 70-year-old, industry-leading company completely embraced the remote workforce and implemented an entirely new organizational structure. Written after the fact, this book is about the lessons learned from that extreme transformationby employees, for employees.

This book is about being a remote worker, from the perspective of remote workers. By detailing the many lessons we learned transitioning from traditional offices to remote ones, we hope to help others understand how to enter, enjoy, and thrive in the wonderful world of working from home (or a library, or a coffee shop, or an exotic island). We have tried to write honestly and directly about the physical aspect of this type of work. We have tried to portray the mental challenges of this job. But most importantly, we have tried to provide words to convey the extraordinarily novel emotional and psychological considerations of working within this structure.

The main thrust of this book is not about how to manage a remote workforceat least, not directly. As their titles clearly indicate, many of the books available today about working remotely are focused, with varying levels of success, on this management challenge. But while this book is not primarily about how to manage remote workers, we believe it is a tremendous resource for managers because of what it does discuss: the remote worker, from the remote workers perspective. To manage remote employees, a manager needs to understand remote employees. In fact, the last section of this book is written specifically for managers, but it will only be completely understood by a manager who has incorporated the lessons from the earlier chapters.

The biggest revelation we experienced while researching this book was that, thus far, little consideration has been given to the thoughts and emotions of the remote employee; the psychology of the remote worker is rarely addressed. But, by definition, a remote worker must confront a number of challenges alone. As we began to structure this book, we realized we had to focus on the psychological world of the remote employee as a definitive element of the experience. Only by understanding this inner world of the mind could the reader make sense of the corresponding physical and functional aspects of working remotely.

This book is written by the employees who made it through Kaplans radical transformation and thrived. By writing about an experience that is based on the collective realities of many brilliant and sharing individuals, we hope to portray a picture of what could and should be the reality for future remote workers everywhere.

By employees, for employees. Lets begin the journey.

Chapter 1

Of all the transitions youll have to make as you move from a traditional office into the remote workforce, the psychological adjustments may be the most surprising. Many people already know that they need a comfortable physical workspace. This chapter will help you think about setting up a comfortable mental space as well.