This is a pretty good test for how well a company supports remote workers:
- Does your team have a shared, public method for asynchronous communication?
- Does your team have easy access to high-quality video and audio conferencing tools?
- Does everyone on your team have access to all the tools they need to do their job?
- Do you have time set aside at regular intervals purely for communication?
- Does your team have 4 or more hours of work day overlap?
- Are priorities clearly defined and communicated in advance?
- Can your team make most decisions on their own without waiting on others?
- Is every task in the organization tracked in a shared project management tool?
- Does your team meet up in person at least a couple of times a year?
- In case of emergency, is there a way for team members to call for help immediately?
- Do team members use cloud based collaborative tools wherever possible?
- Is your team made up of self-motivated, self-managing individuals?
It’s not perfect – some of these have a lot more wiggle room than the questions from The Joel Test – but if you’re looking to work at a company as a remote worker these are good topics to discuss.