(Illustration by Christian Dellavedova)
Farid Dordar is a former kick-boxing champion and founder of PerfectMind, a North Vancouver–based software-as-a-service company. He has 110 employees spread across Canada, Ukraine and India. Here’s how he keeps them working together even though they’re located on different sides of the globe.
1. Choose your locations carefully
“We had four main criteria we needed to satisfy before expansion: cost, stability, scalability and security. We decided to partner with reputable local companies that could better satisfy our business needs. The selection process proved to be rigorous and time-consuming, but we needed to do our full due diligence to guarantee the outcome. Once the offices were operational, instead of letting our partners drive our business, we took charge in both cases and built teams that were true extensions of our local [Canadian] teams.”
2. Bring everyone to head office
“We bring new employees here for the first three months. We want them to be part of our culture. It’s important for employees to develop a personal rapport.”
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate
“Our project managers are constantly on Skype. Often that means holding conference calls outside normal business hours, but team members are willing to make that sacrifice.”
MORE ABOUT REMOTE WORKING & WORKPLACE CULTURE:
- Offices are some of the worst places to truly get any work done
- Slack founder Stewart Butterfield on how to be in two places at once
- Millennials are forcing Canadian firms to up their mobile game
- 70% of millennial workers would rather telecommute than come to the office
- The unspoken loneliness of working from home
