• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Work Life Balance

Cue a thousand eye-rolls. Trust us, we know the phrase “work-life balance” has been overused, abused and beaten to a pulp in the corporate world. Even so, this principle is extremely important for every business—especially for distributed teams. Sadly when it comes to ensuring employees live a well-adjusted life, plenty of companies talk the talk; but very few walk the walk.

Here at Intridea, we’ve discovered that when our team members derive joy from activities outside of work hours, they channel that happiness directly into their projects during work hours. In the end, this leads to increased employee productivity and higher quality work. That’s exactly why we urge our employees to maintain a healthy balance between their professional and personal lives.

Can’t Buy Success

According to a study by Accenture, more than half of surveyed workers say work-life balance is the key determiner for whether or not they have a successful career. They place it ahead of recognition, autonomy and even money.

The study was based on surveys of 4,100 business executives from medium to large organizations in 33 countries, including the U.S. Half of those surveyed said they have turned down a job offer because they believed it could negatively impact their work-life balance.

"Companies that can help their employees navigate both their professional and personal lives are likely to see strong employee engagement and enjoy an advantage as they recruit and retain high performers,” said Nellie Borrero, managing director of global inclusion and diversity for Accenture.

Boost Your Bottom Line

Not only does work-life balance lead to more engaged employees—it can also give your company’s earnings a major boost. Based on a study by UK firm Morgan Redwood, businesses that helped workers achieve a healthy work-life balance earned nearly a quarter more per employee each year than companies that did not.

Study participants said their employees were able to manage their personal lives more easily, resulting in fewer missed days, improved well-being and increased productivity—which led to higher profits for the entire company.

The Happiness Factor

Employees with a balanced life are generally more cheerful people—and studies show that happiness pays off big time for businesses.

In The Happiness Advantage: Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, author and researcher Shawn Achor points out that a happy workforce increases sales by 37 percent and productivity by 31 percent.

“It’s irrefutable. We know happy employees are the most successful employees, so happiness brings success, and that brings success to our organizations,” says Helen Mumford Sole, an executive coach who specializes in happiness. “This is a win-win all around.”

Not surprisingly, remote workers are often happier simply because they aren’t forced to schlep to a brick-and-mortar office day after day. According to an annual telecommuting survey issued by Staples Advantage, telecommuting programs are “mutually beneficial” for both employers and employees. That’s because remote working results in more content employees, reduced absenteeism and less stress. “Telecommuting can help achieve balance between workplace demands and life obligations,” explained Tom Heisroth, senior vice president for Staples Advantage.

Because distributed businesses cut out the commute and offer employees a more flexible schedule, these companies inherently lead to improved work-life balance. However, we believe it’s not enough for distributed teams to simply suggest that employees strive for work-life balance—or even strongly encourage it. If you want your business to thrive, it’s essential to put work-life balance front and center.

In our next blog, we’ll reveal seven surefire ways to enforce work-life balance for your distributed team.
Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Get in A-Synch

In our last blog, we discussed the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication. (Synchronous communication is a real-time conversation, such as a meeting or phone call, while asynchronous communication is a discussion that take place outside of real time, such as an email. Synchronous communication requires an immediate response; asynchronous doesn’t.)

If you read the last blog, you might have picked up on the fact that we at Intridea are big fans of asynchronous communication. That’s because teams fall into four major pitfalls when they rely on synchronous communication:

• Pitfall #1: The demand for instant answers, which leads to hasty responses.
• Pitfall #2: Increased pressure on employees.
• Pitfall #3: Constant distractions, which forces employees to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus.
• Pitfall #4: Ineffective conversations and meetings dominated by extroverts and chronic interrupters.

We believe that asynchronous communication solves each of these common pitfalls. Here’s how:

Solving Pitfall #1: The Power of Delayed Gratification

The first common pitfall of synchronous communication is the demand for abrupt answers. We all have an innate desire for instant gratification. It’s just human nature. We don’t want it later; we want it right now. The technological advances we’ve enjoyed in recent decades only feed this desire by meeting our demands for immediate fulfillment.

With the advent of DVR and VOD, instant messaging, video streaming, same-day delivery services and thousands of time-saving smartphone apps, many folks have lost the ability to wait for anything.

This demand for instant gratification doesn’t just apply to material objects; it also applies to answers. When it comes to running a fast-paced business, we want answers, and we want them now. But is this really the most effective approach? Sure, it may feel great to ask an employee a question and receive the answer instantly. But is that rushed response the correct answer, the best answer, the most insightful answer? Probably not. It’s almost always better to wait patiently for a well-prepared response than to demand a hasty answer.

Solving Pitfall #2: Release the Pressure

Because synchronous communication demands immediate answers, it often puts employees under intense pressure. Yet, some corporate leaders claim that employees hatch the most creative ideas when they are under a time crunch. According to research published in the Harvard Business review, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed,” write researchers Teresa M. Amabile, Constance N. Hadley and Steven J. Kramer. “Although time pressure may drive people to work more and get more done, and may even make them feel more creative, it actually causes them, in general, to think less creatively.”

So when you don’t demand immediate responses from your team, it protects employees from unnecessary stress—and gives them elbow room to create ingenious work.

Solving Pitfall #3: Derailing Distractions

Synchronous communication also leads to constant disruptions. When you choose to communicate in real-time with your employees every single time you have a question or an issue, you are often distracting them from their work. On the other hand, asynchronous communication greatly reduces the number of disruptions in the workplace. When an employee is not expected to respond to every single question or issue immediately, they can focus on one task at a time, which will send their productivity levels soaring.

Research shows that even a three-second interruption can cause employees to make more mistakes. One Michigan State University study, in which 300 people performed a sequence-based procedure on a computer, found that interruptions of about three seconds doubled the error rate. In the workplace, the vast majority of these interruptions come in the form of phone calls, chit-chat and impromptu meetings.

When you create an environment where employees are not expected to respond to everything immediately, they can stay focused on their work and effectively manage their schedules. Some employees may prefer to respond to emails at specific times of the day or at specific intervals. Others may choose to reply to the “easy” emails more quickly but wait until later in the day to respond to messages that require more time and thought. Asynchronous communication allows for all of this.

Solving Pitfall #4: Don’t Interrupt

One of the most common forms of synchronous communication is the in-person meeting. Yet, these meetings are often wildly ineffective. Why? Because it’s virtually impossible to carry on a productive conversation when people are constantly interrupting each other.

And let’s face it: Some folks are chronic interrupters and terrible listeners. These talkative types tend to dominate in-person meetings, often talking over other contributors (that is, if anyone else can even get a word in edgewise). In this type of environment, the majority of participants never have an opportunity to present their ideas—and extremely introverted team members don’t stand a chance.

Asynchronous communication solves this common predicament. After all, you can’t interrupt someone in a chat message or email. When you choose to communicate via email or chat message, it's easier for all parties to get their thoughts across without stepping all over each other. You’re also more likely to hear from the more introverted participants, who might have something extremely valuable to contribute.

Asynch @Intridea

Why are we such huge advocates of asynchronous communication? Because we’ve experienced the effectiveness of this type of communication first-hand.

When we first founded Intridea, we worried that not being able to meet in-person would be a problem. But as it turned out, we actually freed ourselves from many standard operating procedures that tended to get in our way, allowing us to examine what was most important in our communication. Without having to meet in-person, we found ourselves optimizing communication methods, which in turn boosted our productivity.

For example, in the early days of our company, we held a daily phone call to discuss each of our projects. During this call, we talked about what we had worked on yesterday, what we were working on today, and if there was anything blocking our progress. In the software industry, these daily calls are often called “scrums.” (The term comes from the “scrimmage” formation in rugby, which is used to restart the game after an event that causes play to stop.)

At the beginning of a particularly time-crunched project, we decided to switch things up. We moved our daily scrum from an early-morning phone call to a mid-day check-in via our microblogging platform—and it was transformative. We found that using the online check-in, our developers had more time and inclination to go into greater depth about past and anticipated progress. They were also more likely to acknowledge any obstacles they were facing—including being blocked by other developers. It seemed like a fairly subtle change, but it allowed us to gain so much development velocity, we ended up launching the project early.

So we initially tried to replicate the standard way of communicating with a distributed team. When that didn’t work, we changed our approach. Obviously, technology has helped us solidify our communication process. Either way, we know what type of communication works best: Asynch all the way.

Of course, asynchronous communication is just one of many principles we value here at Intridea. Don’t miss our next blog on the importance of work-life balance.

• Read more about Maintaining Your Boxen Install

@Intridea we use boxen as part of our employee on-boarding process and equipment upgrades. The selling point: having a shared automated process for getting machines up and ready to do real work on...

What Happened?

Recently, a co-worker received a new laptop and I pointed him to our boxen-web instance. The problem is it didn't work for him. I was confused because running boxen on my machine worked just fine. After digging deep and troubleshooting I learned that the initial install process for boxen is quite different than running the boxen command afterwards.

It had been a few months since anyone installed from scratch with our boxen setup, and the only error message I was getting was pretty vague.

sudo: /opt/boxen/rbenv/shims/gem: command not found sudo: /opt/boxen/rbenv/shims/gem: command not found ... 

I could tell both ruby and git were failing to set-up properly, but it wasn't much to go on. I didn't yet know whether the failure was due to Jeff's configuration or the main boxen configuration. After having him try it with his personal manifest files removed, it was confirmed to be a problem with the main boxen configuration. The next step was to try a fresh install myself.

Fixing our Boxen Setup

First I partitioned my hard drive and installed a fresh copy of 10.9.2. I removed the files for my personal manifest from the boxen repository in order to keep the install as simple as possible. I verified that I was receiving the same error message listed above.

Next, I tried a fresh install from the mainline boxen. This also failed with a different git related error. I've mentioned before that the boxen documentation is lacking, and I was only finding issues with people having the same problem and no solution. I was out of options.

I decided to merge mainline boxen with our boxen setup. I found that doing this created conflicts in both the Puppetfile and Puppetfile.lock. I fixed the conflicts in the Puppetfile. The official boxen docs say that it isn't necessary to resolve conflicts in the Puppetfile.lock. So I tried:

rm Puppetfile.lock bundle exec librarian-puppet install --clean 

However, those steps only gave me this error:

Could not resolve the dependencies. 

So I backed up a step and manually resolved the conflicts in the Puppetfile.lock. This, while extremely tedious, worked.

After merging mainline boxen, I was left with the same error referring to git. I next looked at what version of git our Puppetfile was using and what was available on the puppet-git repository. I found that mainline boxen was using 2.3.0 while 2.3.1 had been released more recently. On a hunch I upgraded to 2.3.1 and performed yet another fresh install of boxen. This time it worked.

Preventative Maintenance for your Boxen

After going through the above hellish process, here's some recommendations on how to ensure smooth operation in the future.

Keep a fresh install of OS X on an external drive

• You should keep whatever point release you expect to send laptops out with (10.9.2 in our case).

Use the nuke tool

• After an initial boxen run, you can restore the machine to pristine status by using the nuke tool that comes with boxen.

/opt/boxen/repo/script/nuke --force --all 

The above command will remove boxen entirely from your machine. It isn't necessary to reinstall OS X.

Create a dummy user for your boxen repo

• You will need a github user for your organization which has no personal boxen configuration. This makes it simple to determine whether the problem lies in personal configuration or in your company wide boxen configuration (site.pp).

Test the install often

• In the above scenario, I left out the part about the homebrew version that boxen uses also being broken. Testing more often would have allowed us to catch and fix each of these minor problems one by one instead of as part of a marathon debugging session.

The mainline boxen is not always correct

• In the scenario above, I figured merging the mainline ought to get us to a working state. However, mainline boxen had a broken puppet-git module (2.3.0) at that point, while 2.3.1 was the version that worked. So beware of keeping up to date with mainline too fast.

Got any tips or tricks for using boxen? Send us a tweet or message us on Facebook!

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Why Synchronous Communication Sucks

We at Intridea have learned that running a distributed business is half art form, half calculated science. Without clear purpose and direction, a remote team will quickly unravel. That’s why we follow a specific set of principles or “rules” to keep our team as effective and connected as possible. One of those rules is to avoid synchronous communication as often as possible.

Ask yourself this: What is the most effective way to communicate with your team? Is it best to meet face-to-face with employees, present them with a problem and attempt to resolve the issue together in real time? Or is it more productive to send your employees an email, give them a couple of hours or days to digest the information and ask them to respond later when they are prepared with an informed answer?

While it may seem inconsequential, the mode of communication you choose can make or break your company—particularly if you run a distributed business.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

Synchronous communication is basically a real-time conversation. For example, if you call up an employee, meet face-to-face or send an instant message to discuss an issue, that’s synchronous communication. Another example would be an online meeting or conference call, when your entire team gets together to chat and offer immediate responses.

Synchronous communication is extremely popular with traditional brick and mortar businesses, where most discussions are handled in-person through conversations and meetings. Usually everyone is in the same location and participates at the same time. Because it necessitates swift answers, synchronous communication often gives an advantage to those who speak fastest—not those who speak the wisest.

On the other hand, asynchronous communication occurs outside of real time. There is a delay or a “lag” between the question and the response. This lag could be any given amount of time specified by the team leader—whether it’s two hours, two days or two weeks. Unlike real-time conversations, asynchronous communication allows your team members to respond when they can focus fully on the discussion.

For example, if you email an employee a question and ask her to respond by the next morning, that’s asynchronous communication. Asynchronous communication also takes place through project management tools, wiki or microblogging platforms. With these tools, the organizer posts a question, concern or document and each employee responds with their answers, suggestions and edits on their own time.

Down with Knee-Jerk Responses

Naysayers of asynchronous communication often claim it is ineffective for urgent matters—but this is simply not true. Although there is a delay between the question and the response, the pause may be as little as one minute. If an issue is time-sensitive, it's important and reasonable for a colleague or team leader to request a response within a specific amount of time. For example, when you send an employee an email marked “High Importance!” and ask her to respond within the next five minutes, this is still considered asynchronous communication.

Because synchronous communication always calls for immediate answers, it does not afford much time for reflection—which often leads to impulsive, unimaginative and sometimes downright wrong responses. It also creates distraction that forces the recipient to drop whatever they’re doing and switch focus. On the other hand, asynchronous communication gives an employee time to prepare a thoughtful, educated answer as opposed to a knee-jerk response.

Particularly in a distributed business, it’s important to create a business culture where instant responses are not demanded or expected. When your team members have time to respond carefully, it fosters a culture of creativity and productivity and limits the number of distractions they face in a day. These are just a few of the many reasons why business communication should be handled asynchronously whenever possible—especially with distributed teams that are often dispersed across a variety of time zones.

Four Fatal Pitfalls of Synchronous Communication

So, why do we at Intridea hate on synchronous so much? Because teams that rely on synchronous communication fall into these four common pitfalls:

1. The demand for instant answers, which leads to hasty responses.
2. Increased pressure on employees
3. Constant distractions, which forces employees to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus.
4. Ineffective conversations and meetings dominated by extroverts and chronic interrupters.

We believe asynchronous communication solves each of these common pitfalls. Tune into our next blog to find out how.
Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...NASA Gets Their Webby!

Previously, we mentioned that NASA won a Webby, and we were delighted to accompany them to New York City to receive it. With a packed schedule of events, the Webbys pulled out all the stops with a star-studded, wildly entertaining night to remember. Award recipients and attendees were treated to a cocktail hour, followed by a fun, fast-paced ceremony at the famed Cipriani Wall Street.

During a delicious, four-course meal, guests were regaled with a stream of acceptance speeches by all of the winners. All speeches had to be 5 words or less, which left little room for rambling, but lots of room for wit. A crowd favorite? A speech that wisely stated: “As my favorite song says—”

NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, wasn’t the only powerhouse in the room: guests rubbed elbows with Orange Is The New Black’s Taylor Schilling; Jason Collins, the NBA’s first openly gay player; the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team; De La Soul; the co-founder of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee; and one of Mobomo’s all-time favorites, George Takei (who presented NASA’s award!). And for those who want to know exactly what the Fox says, we can tell you, but we’ll have to charge: he sat right next to us during the ceremony, and as you’d expect, had a lot to say.

After an exciting night, the Webbys closed with one more after-party, where guests celebrated their Internet wins. Congratulations, again NASA! We may be biased, but you were the most stellar winner in the room.

• Read more about Molten Magic: Mobomo Visits Mars, Inc.

We love all of our customers, but working with a world-renowned, chocolate company makes everything a little bit sweeter!

While building mobile solutions to help Mars’ global sales teams, we were invited to visit the company’s main North American candy campus. There we took a private, guided tour around, and saw exactly how all that Mars magic is made.

We’ve been on a lot of tours, but none as colorful and sweet! We got to see the magical center of an M+M, giant vats of gooey chocolate, and even some of our favorite candies being made. Willy Wonka himself would have been awed.

We couldn’t be more…satisfied to call Mars one of our clients—and we certainly couldn’t be more full! Thanks for the tour and treats, Mars! We’ll happily come back (and taste test!) any day.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: How Distributed Work Benefits Society (As In the Whole Wide World)

In our last two blogs, we detailed the advantages distributed work offers both businesses and their employees. However these benefits extend far beyond the business world. In fact, we’d go so far as to say the distributed trend is benefitting everyone—as in society as a whole.

“Numerous studies find that telecommuting can lead to many economic benefits that accrue to workers, consumers, businesses and society,” states a report by the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research. “[Telecommuting] could lead to less pollution and oil consumption for society, increased benefits for consumers, and a better work life balance and opportunities for the employees, especially for the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and rural residents.”

Here are just a few of the major societal benefits:

Benefit to Society #1: A Breath of Fresh Air

Distributed businesses conserve energy and reduce fuel consumption and pollution. Since remote teams don’t require brick-and-mortar offices, wasteful after hours heating and cooling is eliminated. Instead, employees simply heat and cool their home offices—which would be heated and cooled regardless.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), telecommuting saves 9 to 14 billion kilowatt-hours of energy each year—roughly the amount of energy needed to power 1 million U.S. households annually.

Since remote employees don’t commute to work every day, distributed businesses also help reduce greenhouse gases and conserve tons upon tons of oil. If employees with telework-compatible jobs who want to work from home did so just half of the time, the U.S. would reduce greenhouse gases by 54 million tons—the equivalent of taking almost 10 million cars off the road for a full year. Our nation would also save more than 640 million barrels of oil valued at more than $64 billion, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

Benefit to Society #2: Giving Our Roads a Break

The distributed trend also relieves pressure on our nation’s crumbling highways and interstates. According to Global Workplace Analytics, less than six percent of U.S. city’s roads have kept pace with the droves of commuters over the past decade. If traffic continues to grow at its current rate, we’ll need to build another 104,000 miles of new road—which will cost our nation $530 billion. However, if more companies were to embrace remote work, it would give our nation’s disintegrating transportation infrastructure a much-needed break—and save tax payers billions of dollars.

Benefit to Society #3: Encouraging Family Values

Nearly half of American workers say they are willing to take a pay cut to telecommute or have a flexible work schedule—primarily because it would improve their personal lives and make them better parents, according to survey sponsored by Mom Corps.

“The way the majority of corporate America works no longer aligns with the way U.S. families conduct their daily lives,” Allison O’Kelly, founder and CEO of Mom Corps, points out in a press release. “Participating in some form of flexible work option allows employees to regain a modicum of work/life balance, and successful companies know that this also can yield a significant return on investment for them.”

At YourTime.Intridea.com, we showcase examples of what our team members do with the time they save by not commuting to an office every day. Many of our employees spend those extra hours with their children, partners and other loved ones.

For example, Andy Wang says he spends time, “taking care of my baby girl and playing games with her every day.” Ben Markowitz writes, “As the father of three small children, there are so many moments I get to be a part of. I was able to see my son’s first steps, see my daughter off to her first day of dance class, and greet her every day when she gets home from preschool.”

“Every day I walk my son home from school,” Marc Garrett says. “We throw rocks, talk about girls, and keep an eye out for dragons—all those things fathers and sons do if you don’t have to worry about sitting in traffic. I can’t imagine spending that time any other way.”

Benefit to Society #4: Saving Lives

Because distributed businesses keep their employees off the roads, these companies are literally saving lives. Global Workplace Analytics reports that telework could save more than 1,600 lives, prevent nearly 99,000 injuries and save more than $12 billion a year in traffic accident costs—and that’s just if workers with telework-compatible jobs worked from home half the time.

Benefit to Society #5: Protecting Our Sanity

Sitting in traffic is literally driving commuters crazy, according to a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Using data from two national surveys, researchers found negative responses to daily stresses such as conflicts at work or sitting in traffic led to psychological distress or anxiety and mood disorders ten years later. In other words, everyday irritations like sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic can make you slowly lose your mind.

Benefit to Society #6: Down with Discrimination

Whether intentional or not, discrimination, nepotism and favoritism still run rampant in the workplace. Since distributed teams rarely work face-to-face, employees and managers are less likely to judge their colleagues by their appearance.

“Virtual interaction seems to be effective at reducing various kinds of discrimination within team members,” writes Joe Willmore in “Managing Virtual Teams” (Spiro Press, 2003). “With visual stimuli removed, the focus is more on content and less on the person generating the content.”

Benefit to Society #7: Putting Retirees Back to Work

The majority of retirees want to keep working, but they also want the flexibility to enjoy retirement. More than one-third of retired workers say that if they would have had the option to work part-time or work from home, it would have encouraged them to keep working, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

“Holding a job in retirement is becoming more necessary, and re-entering the job market through a telecommuting job is a fantastic option,” writes Brie Weiler Reynolds, the Content and Social Media Manager at FlexJobs. Many distributed businesses are attracting highly skilled retirees back into the working world.

Benefit to Society #8: Business as Usual, Even after a Disaster

Distributed businesses enjoy continuity of operations in the event of an avian flu outbreak, inclement weather, earthquakes or other disasters. Three quarters of teleworkers say they could continue to work in the event of a disaster compared with less than one-third of non-teleworkers, Global Workplace Analytics reports.

"More employers put telework policies in place after 9/11 and various natural disasters," says Susan Bergman, MA, SPHR, The Society for Human Resource Management’s director of the Knowledge Center. “Today, employers see remote work capabilities as key to keeping their business operating when there are disruptions."

Thanks to these valuable advantages, business leaders are realizing that building a remote workforce isn’t just an awesome employee incentive or a smart way to boost the company’s bottom line—it’s also a social responsibility.

Want to learn more about what makes distributed teams tick? Don’t miss our next blog on the power of asynchronous communication.

Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Remote Employees are Happier, Healthier and More Productive

Yep, you read that right. While it’s no surprise that remote employees are happier than their commuting counterparts, many business owners are shocked to learn distributed employees are also more productive. How could that be? It’s actually pretty simple. Psychologists have proven time and again that a happy employee is also a productive employee.

According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, people who work from home at least three days a week are more satisfied with their jobs because they have less work-life conflict, lower stress levels, less time pressure and face fewer interruptions. “Telecommuting is a win-win for employees and employers, resulting in higher morale and job satisfaction and lower employee stress and turnover,” write Penn State researchers Ravi Gajendran and David Harrison in another study.

So why exactly does working from home make employees absolutely giddy with joy? Here are the top eight career perks distributed employees enjoy:

Perk #1: No More Hellish Commute

Remote workers no longer have to suffer through the twice daily excruciating nightmare known as “the commute.” According to the Department of Transportation, the average American commuter spends more than 38 hours a year stuck in traffic—and that number is much higher in the most congested cities.

When employees complain, “This commute is killing me!” they aren’t being overly dramatic. Studies show that long commutes correlate with neck and back problems and an increased risk of obesity, thanks to poor eating habits and less exercise. To make matters worse, workers with long commutes say they feel less rested and experience less enjoyment, Gallup reports.

When asked to draw comparisons, telecommuters said their stress levels have dropped and their overall happiness has increased since they started working from home, according to a Staples Advantage Survey. As an added bonus, the majority of distributed employees give their saved commuting time back to the company. According to a ConnectSolutions study, the typical employee with a 60-minute roundtrip commute will work 30 minutes longer on days she telecommutes.

Perk #2: Tailor-Made Work Environment

Unlike office-bound workers who have no control over their work environment, remote employees have the freedom to build their own workspace. So if an employee feels most inspired snuggled up in her Wonder Woman Snuggie on the couch with her cat curled around her feet, we say go for it! If another worker gets his creative juices flowing by standing in front of his laptop at the kitchen counter and blasting The Black Keys, he can crank it up to eleven and even indulge in a little air guitar action without a second thought.

On the other hand, employees who are tethered to a traditional office face countless distractions throughout the day—from impromptu meetings and tasteless music (think Michael Bolton) to the offensive odor of seafood lunches heating up in the office microwave and overly talkative co-workers chit-chatting about the latest episode of The Voice. According to Global Analytics Network, businesses incur annual losses of $600 billion because of workplace distractions.

Perk #3: Healthier Living

According to a ConnectSolutions Remote Worker Study, nearly half of respondents say they eat healthier when they work from home, 40 percent say they sleep more, and almost two-thirds say they exercise more.

“Teleworkers often eat healthier meals and are less inclined to consume fast food lunches,” note the researchers at Global Workplace Analytics. Plus, remote workers aren’t tempted daily by the office vending machine, the candy jar at the receptionist’s desk or the fresh glazed donuts in the conference room.

Because of their flexible hours (not to mention the time they save by not commuting), remote workers also have more opportunities to go for a run or hit the gym. At Intridea, we encourage employees to stay active by holding company-wide Fitbit competitions. At the end of each week, we crown the employee with the most impressive exercise stats as Fitbit champion.

Perk #4: Ultimate Flexibility

Remote work offers the ultimate flexibility. This gives parents an opportunity to spend more time with their kiddos, allows disabled workers to take a job they may otherwise be hesitant to accept and enables geographically isolated professionals to stay put in the boondocks and still land that dream job.

Because working from home allows employees to achieve a better work-life balance, they’re also less likely to call in sick than traditional office workers. Organizations that implemented a telework program realized a 63 percent reduction in unscheduled absences, according to the American Management Association. This is because distributed employees typically continue to work when they’re sick (without infecting others) and return to work more quickly following surgery or medical issues. Plus, because distributed employees generally don’t have to stick to a traditional 9 to 5 schedule, they can run errands or schedule appointments without cutting their workday short.

Perk #5: Major Savings

Remote workers save a bundle as compared to office employees—to the tune of $4,500 a year on average, according to the ConnectSolutions Remote Worker Study.

A whopping 92 percent of American employees say they are concerned with the high cost of fuel and more than two-thirds of them specifically cite the cost of commuting to work, according to Global Workplace Analytics. Remote workers not only save on the cost of commuting (including gas, tolls, mass transit pass charges and car insurance premiums). They also save on dry cleaning, business clothing expenses and meals since they are less likely to eat at restaurants during the work day.

Perk #6: Frowns Turned Upside-Down

The vast majority of remote workers report off-the-charts job satisfaction. Probably not a shocking revelation considering that distributed employees generally work in a more comfortable environment and have more personal time for family and hobbies.

The ConnectSolutions Remote Worker Study reveals that people who telework are much more optimistic than office-bound drones. More than half of surveyed teleworkers said they have a more positive attitude when working remotely. According to a survey by The Wall Street Journal, workers who telecommute report the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and loyalty to their employers.

Perk #7: No Drama

Distributed workers are far less likely to get wrapped up in co-worker drama and office politics. When Kathryn L. Fonner with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee associate and Michael E. Roloff with Northwestern University queried 200 workers (half telecommuters and half office-based), they found telecommuters are less aware of office politics—which seems to be a healthy thing.

“By working remotely the majority of the time, teleworkers can avoid or ignore some of the unjust practices within the organization, such as cronyism, self-interested behavior, and pressure against speaking out against those in power,” write Fonner and Roloff.

Perk #8: Killer Collaboration

Contrary to popular belief, distributed teams actually feel more connected and collaborative. According to the ConnectSolutions study, 80 percent of surveyed remote workers reported feeling more connected to their co-workers, particularly when their remote work practices were supported by unified communications.

To top it off, distributed team leaders often make better use of technology and communication tools. Here at Intridea, if we want to reach out to a co-worker or employee, we’ll simply HipChat them or shoot them an email; while our brick-and-mortar counterparts might spend ten minutes trying to hunt down a colleague in the office or even schedule an unnecessary formal meeting in a conference room.

These eight priceless perks (along with countless others) all come together to make distributed employees happier and more engaged, loyal and productive than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. In the end, these advantages pay off hugely for the employer…and even society at large.

Think we’re exaggerating? Think again! Check out our next blog to learn how the human race is benefitting from distributed work.
Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about Working at XO Group

The XO Group Inc. is the parent company of leading wedding website, The Knot, along with its counterparts, The Nest, The Bump, and the Wedding Channel. Headquartered at 195 Broadway in New York City, XO Group is in the heart of creativity.

XO/innovation

With innovation at their core, XO is continuously reinventing itself and as of late, has embarked on the migration of their .Net based applications to Rails.

In early 2014, XO brought on Intridea to help build one of their main apps.

With a team of talented folks: product manager (Elliot), tech lead (Steve), designer (Laura), three Ruby on Rails developers (Jeff and Tom from Intridea, and Edina from XO), and one mobile developer (Meghan). The new app was brought to life, it is designed as a single web app built with Backbone, CoffeeScript, Twitter Bootstrap, Rails, and Postgres, the app is intuitive, responsive, and easily adaptable to the changing trends in the wedding industry.

After Intridea's initial three month agreement and successful completion of MVP (minimal viable product) features, XO extended Intridea's contract for three additional months, asking us to also help them with one of their other major apps; which we were more than happy to do!

XO/entrepreneurial spirit

Surrounded by creatives, XO exudes an entrepreneurial mindset. Each product team is largely self contained, with their own budget, and responsibility over their own data and services (which are exposed with APIs). Thus, allowing for great flexibility and efficiency, and enabling teams to quickly take their products from inception to production.

The Agile and TDD development process (for apps built with Ruby on Rails) has been set up by Pivotal, which we followed with some modifications to improve efficiency. XO uses its own enterprise version of Github for project repositories. Builds are handled by Jenkins with the build success/failure status prominently displayed publicly for everyone to see. The team is situated in the same area for easy communication (and pairing). Hipchat and Basecamp are also used to enhance team communication and sharing of project artifacts. Most of the technical docs (like API specs) are hosted on internal wiki and XO has recently migrated from Microsoft Office to Google's Gmail, Drive, and Hangout.

XO/life

The NYC office is conveniently located right by the Fulton subway station. They have the 25th and 24th floors of the historical 195 Broadway building, also known as the old AT&T building where the first transatlantic telephone call was made to London in 1927.

In addition, XO perks are pretty great too. From free drinks, snacks, and Thirsty Thursdays to game rooms with Ping Pong, pool, and foosball tables, XO group knows how to make folks happy! And not only this, but XO Group graciously hosts a number of NYC area meet-up events including Hack Upon A Cause and NYC Big Apps. Each employee is provided with locker, which helps to declutter the office desks, and makes it easier for engineers to move around when pairing with different people. There is a gym nearby where some XO employees go workout regularly. XO also has a running club whose members run on the beautiful NYC Greenway bike trail just a few blocks away.

XO is a top notch company with awesome people, perks, and services! It's been a great experience for Intridea and if there was a rating scale for amazing clients we'd give them a ten out of ten - hands down!

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Businesses Reap the Benefits of a Remote Workforce

Companies across the globe, from mammoth corporations to small businesses to emerging start-ups, are embracing the distributed format. In fact, Fortune Magazine reports that 85 of the companies that landed on its 2012 “100 Best Companies to Work For” list allow employees to telecommute or work at home at least 20 percent of the time.

Why are droves of businesses flocking to the distributed trend? Because companies that adopt remote work benefit from substantial cost savings, better talent acquisition, heightened employee productivity and extended marketing reach.

“The virtualization of business is like outsourcing on steroids: not only is it highly efficient, but it is probably the most advanced and evolved economic system yet devised,” writes John Meyer, CEO of Arise Virtual Solutions. “It’s arrived, it’s booming, and we need more of it.”

Keep reading to learn more about the boundless benefits distributed companies enjoy.

Benefit #1: Major Cost Savings

Because distributed businesses don’t have to pay for a physical office space (and the utilities, equipment, housekeeping and supplies that go along with it), these companies enjoy ample cost savings. In fact, distributed companies often save more than 30 percent on operating costs as compared with traditional brick-and-mortar businesses.

Just ask the leaders of insurance giant Aetna. Nearly half of the company’s 35,000 employees work from home all or part of the time. This has allowed the company to eliminate 2.7 million square feet of office space, saving Aetna $78 million a year on real estate costs, utilities, housekeeping, mail service and document shredding.

And distributed companies aren’t just saving on real estate and operating costs. According to the International Teleworking Advocacy Group, after implementing teleworking programs, small businesses report saving an average of $85,000 to $93,000 per year, thanks to lower turnover, reduced operating costs and increased productivity.

Benefit #2: Access to a Vast Pool of Talent

If your business isn’t tethered to one spot, you can hire the best and brightest employees from all over the world.

“By hiring remote workers, today’s businesses are harnessing the speed and flexibility they need to gain a competitive edge and prosper,” writes oDesk CEO Gary Swart in a FOXBusiness article. “When companies hire within commuting distance of their physical locations, as is the traditional preference, the practice becomes limiting when the right talent, at the right price, isn’t available nearby.”

Not only do distributed businesses gain greater access to talent—these companies are more likely to retain their highly skilled employees. According to Global Workplace Analytics, 95 percent of employers say that telework has a major positive impact on employee retention, and nearly half of companies that allow remote work say it has reduced attrition.

Benefit #3: Extended Reach

When your employees are scattered across the country and even the world, this extends your reach into many more local markets as compared to brick-and-mortar businesses tied to one geographic area. As a result, distributed businesses gain an edge when it comes to marketing, advertising and research efforts.

“Having people employed, and a presence across the globe, gives a diversification to the well you can tap into to solve problems as well as expose your product or service to more markets giving you more research to work from,” writes reporter Ronan Steyn in a Ventureburn article.

Widely dispersed teams also gain access to clients who live in dramatically different time zones and speak other languages. “You’ll automatically get better coverage of multiple time zones and languages when your team is more distributed,” points out Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic and partner at True Ventures.

Benefit #4: More Productive Employees

More than half of business decision makers say telecommuting leads to more productive employees, according to a survey issued by Staples Advantage. Not only are distributed employees able to focus more intensely without the frequent distractions that occur in a traditional office, but they also tend to work longer hours than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. According to Gallup, employees who work at home log an average of four more hours per week than those who work on-site.

“Remote workers—without a commute or office distractions to factor in—can spend more time per day focusing on work alone,” emphasizes Swart. “No wonder half of the employers oDesk surveyed have grown their businesses’ revenue, size, or service offerings by using remote workers.”

Corporate giants Best Buy, Dow Chemical and American Express report that their teleworkers are 40 percent more productive than office workers, according to Telework Research Network.

A Powerful Business Model

The benefits of running a remote business are undeniable and unprecedented. Considering the extraordinary advantages, it’s no wonder an increasing number of businesses are tapping into the power of distributed teams.

But distributed business owners aren’t the only ones reaping the benefits. Tune into our next blog to learn about the priceless advantages remote employees enjoy.

Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.