Remote Work Glossary

Agencies are businesses that operate on a services model. They comprise of teams having expertise in different areas of work to help other businesses run their operations smoothly. For instance, a software team with full-fledged infrastructure and resources to develop SaaS products can operate on an agency model by offering software development services to the market.

These are the actual number of hours your employee or freelancer has worked for which you pay them based on a pre-agreed hourly rate. For instance, if Jake works for 40 hours a week at $20/hour, then those are his billable hours.

A lot of organizations prefer working with blended teams where some of their employees work remotely while others are required to come to the office premises for work. Oftentimes, IT and admin teams are required to be physically present at the office due to their nature of work, while sales, finance, and marketing departments are allowed to work remotely, creating a blended team culture.

This term is used for physical workspaces where employees come in for work. Brick-and-Mortar businesses have now evolved from being a full-time office setup to a place where hybrid teams come to work once or twice a week.

Brick and Mortar offices commonly have dedicated workstations for each team member, a team of administrative staff to manage on-site operations, an IT team to ensure cyber security and connectivity, and a healthy environment where employees can feel secure and work comfortably.

BYOD businesses require their employees to bring their own laptops or desktops to work, thereby minimizing the company’s costs on office equipment. Some BYOD companies may also provide employees the option to choose between a company-provided and a personal device.

Remote and hybrid teams need access to data from anywhere they’re working. To gain such access, all their data from projects and tools is saved on a virtual hard drive a.k.a. the cloud.

An excellent example of cloud storage is the Google Drive, where all your data remains safe and accessible from anywhere around the world provided you have the credentials. Cloud storages are normally protected by multi-tier security protocols and are considered safer than physical hard drives.

Remote or hybrid teams are often dispersed across locations, which is why they rely on conference calls for meetings. These calls can be done telephonically or on video calling apps like Zoom or Google Meet. In case two or more people operate from the same location (like a coworking space), they can participate in the call together from a meeting room.

Hybrid workers have to physically attend work at least once a week. The term daily commute in this context refers to traveling to and from work. This often becomes a hassle for employees due to potential rush-hour traffic, not to mention the time wasted on the commute.

On the flip side, fully remote teams don’t have to commute to the office, which saves their time and the fatigue caused by it. That’s one of the reasons why they show improved productivity during the day.

These are virtual spaces with a set of online apps that remote teams use to communicate and collaborate for routine work and processes. The idea is to keep everything digital, from meetings to work submissions, and beyond.

For example, Google Meet is part of the digital ecosystem for millions of businesses across the globe for online meetings. At the same time, they might use Trello for project management, Slack for communication, and timegram for time tracking, task allocation, and resource insights.

These are remote teams that are spread across various geographic locations like different neighborhoods, cities, states, or even countries. Some employees (in dispersed teams) who live in close proximity to each other may choose to opt for a shared workspace where they can coordinate in-person to mitigate remote working challenges.

When employees are constantly overworking themselves beyond their capacities, it may lead them to burnout - a point where they get tired and stressed, eventually leading to significant productivity drops in their performance.

‍Employee burnout has become a common concern for remote managers since most conventional health programs do not fit a remote work model. Modern remote managers, therefore, should keep a close eye on employee capacities to make sure no one is working additional hours on a routine basis.

Employee productivity is how efficiently an individual uses time and resources to get the job done and generate the maximum output from minimum input. Ideally, employees who use minimal resources, incurring minimum cost to generate maximum ROI for your business are considered productive.

You can measure employee productivity in different ways:
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●   The number of hours an employee takes to complete tasks.
●   The number of tasks completed within a day.
●   The cost incurred in completing a project.
●   The number of hours employees work against their estimated capacities.

It is essential to determine your employees’ productivity levels to identify their actual performance for accurate performance appraisals.

These include monitoring methods that managers use to watch closely how employees are working, mostly using invasive ways. Employee surveillance tactics may include taking screenshots of employees’ desktops, tracking their keystrokes, and accessing their webcam, among many others.

Some remote managers believe they’re beneficial for employee productivity, while others state that using such tactics is unethical and kills employee productivity in the long run.

A lot of remote teams don’t have to follow specific working hours as long as they meet their working capacity. This ability to choose when they want to work and when to take breaks is referred to as flexible hours. Flexible timings can look different for different organizations depending on the company policy:

●   Employees may begin their shift at their desired time and then work 8 hours from there.
●   Employees may choose to work at different times of the day. For instance, they can work 3 hours in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 at night.
●   Employees may have the liberty to choose their preferred working hours, but once they do, they have to stick to them. For instance, if Jake chooses a 12pm-8pm shift, then he’d have to follow the same shift every day.

Freelancers are self-employed individuals who work with one or more teams virtually and charge a flat or hourly rate for their services.

‍Freelancing has its pros and cons. A few pros are:

●   Freelancers have the liberty to choose who they work with and their schedule for work.
●   They are in charge of their own income, which means they can increase their monthly income by getting a new client onboard instead of waiting for their annual appraisals.

On the flip side:

●   Freelancers don't have a stable income since their revenue is entirely dependent on the projects they have. Once they’re finished, freelancers have to look for new projects to work on to continue their revenue stream.

●   They don’t get additional benefits like paid sick or annual leaves, medical insurance, maternity/paternity leaves, retirement funds, etc.

Remote or hybrid employees often prefer having their workstations at home instead of coffee shops or co-working spaces. This home-based workstation is called a home office.

In a hotdesking system, you assign the same workstation to more than one employee to be used at different times.

For example, Jake uses his assigned workstation when he attends the physical workplace on Mondays and Wednesdays. Amy, who comes to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, uses the same workstation. Then there is Stuart, who only attends work on Fridays, uses the same workstation that Jake and Amy do.

Hot desking also means that employees can come and sit at any workstation on a first-come-first-serve basis.

This is the per-hour payout you set for an employee or freelancer. It is calculated based on the billable hours of that individual. For instance, if Jake’s hourly rate is set at $20, and his billable hours are 30 per week, then:

                                                                         $20 x 30 hours = $600

This means that you owe Jake a payment of $600 based on his hourly rate and billable hours.

Unlike remote teams, hybrid teams have to attend the physical office at least once a week. Some hybrid employees have the liberty to attend work on their preferred days, depending upon the company policy.

Face-to-face team or 1-on-1 meetings are generally known as in-person meetings. They can be done anywhere but are usually conducted in meeting rooms either at a physical office or a shared workspace. In-person meetings are not held telephonically or on video calls.

Employees are required to log their working hours so their managers can see the time they spent working on each assigned task. This is usually done through a time tracking app. For instance, you assign Alex three tasks to be completed within an 8-hour workday.

At the day-end, Alex will compile his entire day’s activity into relevant tasks and log his hours. As his manager, this will allow you to see:

●   The activities he performed to complete each of the three tasks.
●   The time he took on each activity (research, writing code, taking online meetings, etc.).
●   The total time spent on each task, as well as the total time he spent working throughout the day.

Most co-working spaces or office setups have meeting rooms with dedicated infrastructure for video calls. These rooms make communication and collaboration a breeze for on-premise, remote, and hybrid employees by allowing them to be physically or virtually present within the same room.

The process of paying freelancers or external teams to get internal work done is called outsourcing. A lot of smaller or medium-sized teams do this due to various reasons such as:

●   Lack of in-house resources to effectively get the work done.
●   Lack of expertise in an area.
●   Limited budget.
●   To shift focus from mundane tasks to more important ones.

Any software tool that makes user privacy a priority can be called a privacy-first tool. In the remote work context, the software tools we refer to are time trackers. There are different types of time tracking solutions available on the market. Some of them are too invasive, which means they allow managers to peek into their employees’ desktops, track their keystrokes, take screenshots, etc.

On the other hand, some time trackers operate with a privacy-first policy, impeding managers to access employee’s work systems in any way. A good example of a privacy-first time tracking solution is timegram.

Project management is among the core aspects of a managerial role. It refers to managing the entire project portfolio for your team. This includes:

●   Taking new projects on board.
●   Completing existing projects with maximum efficiency.
●   Ensuring you meet all the deadlines.
●   Resolve potential hurdles in projects.
●   Realign projects based on priority levels.
●   Assigning projects to relevant teams for the best outputs.
●   Monitoring progress on all projects and tasks

When employees are unhappy with their jobs, they often start quiet quitting where they continue to work as per their job description but avoid putting in any extra effort. For instance, a quiet quitter may not contribute much in a brainstorming session or produce out-of-the-box solutions to resolve a potential barrier in the workflow.

Quiet quitters also tend to switch jobs as soon as they get the chance, thereby increasing employee turnover, making it difficult to scale the business.

Remote teams have the option to work from their preferred location, regardless of where they are in the world. They are not required to come to the physical office of the company and can work from home, a cafe, a shared space, or any other place. People who’re part of a remote team are referred to as remote workers. Some of the perks of being part of a remote team are:

●   You can work from wherever you want.
●   You are likely to have flexible timings.
●   You don’t have to worry about the commute.

However, different organizations have different WFH policies that may require remote teams to work at specific timing or follow certain rules of remote work set by the company management.

Remote work or Work-from-Home (WFH) are interrelated terms used for a work setting where employees are not required to go to a physical space to work. It means there are no offices or dedicated workstations involved. While working remotely, employees have the liberty to work from anywhere across the globe.

‍Remote work is of two types:

‍Fully remote: you work from anywhere around the world indefinitely.

‍Hybrid: you have to attend work in person whenever required.

These are companies that have a physical office and dedicated workstations for employees, but also offer them the flexibility to work from home. However, most remote-friendly companies only allow WFH when employees have a substantial reason. In other words, such organizations may not be open to the idea of fully remote or hybrid teams.

Managing your employees is referred to as resource management. This includes:

●   Onboarding employees.
●   Planning their exit.
●   Planning and allocating work.
●   Tracking their progress.
●   Monitoring their leave schedule and working capacity.
●   Managing their payments.
●   Ensuring a healthy work-life balance for them to avoid potential burnout.
●   And everything else associated with your team.

‍Resource management is among the core jobs of a manager, in addition to project management.

Software as a Service, a.k.a. SaaS tools are products with their entire infrastructure set up on a cloud, allowing you to simply access and use them as if they were installed on your desktop.

You can use SaaS tools through an app or a browser on your desktop or smartphone. An excellent example of SaaS tools are time tracking software like timegram.

Shared workspaces or co-working locations are places where more than one company operates. It is a setup designed for remote or hybrid workers providing them with all the essential features of a physical office, without the hassle of maintenance and administrative costs. Smaller startups often use shared workspaces to save the cost of running a full-fledged office.

You can use multiple additional services at a co-working space like meeting rooms, printers, internet, and more. These places usually charge on a monthly per-seat basis, but there are other payment models as well.

For instance, you can rent an entire room for a larger team, or get a single workstation on a per-day basis (in which case you will pay for a single seat for 24 hours). A drawback of opting for the daily payment model is that your workstation will be subject to availability. You may get the same station every day, or a different seat based on availability.

This is a team with a defined hierarchical structure including project manager, developers, software architects, quality assurance personnel, etc. Software teams are equipped with all the resources required to develop a fully functional software product from the ground up.

Time tracking software are SaaS tools that allow managers to track employee activity as per their working hours. This employee data is captured by a dedicated desktop app and is shared through the user dashboard, allowing managers to see the performance report at their end.

Most time tracking software are quite invasive, letting managers take screenshots, track keystrokes, monitor employee desktops, and invade privacy in several other ways. On the contrary, some time trackers like timegram prohibit managers from all types of employee surveillance tactics. Such SaaS tools focus on promoting accountable teams, leading to more productive outputs.

People working remotely from the same or different parts of the world as part of a team are called virtual teams. Virtual teams can be fully remote or follow a hybrid model depending on their employer’s WFH policy. The concept of having virtual teams is growing rapidly around the world due to its cost-effective and high-productivity traits.

This is a term used to describe a work settlement for remote teams. WFH means that employees are allowed to work from their homes using dedicated tools for communication, time tracking, and project management. Since work-from-home teams are innately remote, employees following this model may choose to work from any location like a coffee shop or a co-working space.

Employee capacity refers to the number of hours an employee works in a day or a week. It can differ depending on the agreement between an employer and an employee/freelancer. There are two terms related to working capacity:

‍Estimated capacity: The number of hours your employee or freelancer will work per day or week.

‍Actual capacity: The actual number of hours your employee or freelancer works per day or week.

Employee capacity helps you keep tabs on the billable hours of each individual and track performance in terms of hours worked.

A workstation is any place where employees sit down to work. It can be at a physical office, at home, at a shared workspace, or even at a coffee shop.