Stop overthinking video calls for remote work

Many people now work remotely — whether or not they were prepared or trained for that.

Some people on your team might love that, appreciating the calm of fewer distractions at home. Others miss working in an office where you can casually bump into people. Some still feel uncomfortable with having themselves or their home visible on video conference calls.

As we continue to establish and refine our “new normal” in a remote working era, it’s important to continually and intentionally reflect on how to improve collaboration with your team while working remotely.

At Test Double, we’ve always worked remotely with both our colleagues and our clients.

So here are some best practices I’ve picked up to stop overthinking video calls — and start boosting confidence, collaboration and inclusivity while working remotely.

Be present (and on video)

I cannot stress enough: Please turn on your camera. It can be really daunting at first and feel like “ah, I’m exposed; now people can see that I’m having a bad hair day” or “ah, they’ll see my living space and judge me." But that could just be our minds stressing about minor details that are not actually a big deal to anyone else. Can you remember if you have ever noticed someone having a bad hair day? If you’re like me, even if you noticed, you almost instantly forgot. Think of when you’ve seen a glimpse into other people’s lives and thought “Huh. Interesting! Anyways, back to thinking about whatever I was thinking about before.”

Consider your background, but don’t worry about it. I personally prefer seeing people’s actual backgrounds versus a filter. It’s not that I’m nosy, but I’m at home all day with my own background, so seeing some variety reminds me that I don’t live in a vacuum. Random occurrences like when your dog shows up or your spouse walks by are not good or bad. They’re just part of life. I like being remote, but I enjoy random moments happening in my day so I don’t feel isolated like a gerbil on a wheel. I love seeing backgrounds that depict a “slice of life” over a green screen (or if it is a green screen, it’s intentional and says something about the person).

Next, don’t obsess over your appearance or worry about looking perfect. Again, within reason, if your hair is kind of messy, I want to see! I don’t think any less of you — in fact, I think more of you and don’t feel like I have to be perfect either. I even feel like I’m trusted by you, and it shows that you’re human just like me, which helps me connect with you.

Turning on your video can make it easier to collaborate and help you stay focused. It’s easy to get distracted when nobody can see what you’re doing. By showing that you’re physically there, it shows others that you’re present and you can communicate with them through body language. This goes a long way in particular when discussing a more nuanced topic. Have you ever gotten a text from someone that seemed like they were mad at you, but it turned out they were just moving fast? Similar to chat conversations, it’s easy to read things in a more negative light when you can’t see each other’s body language.

You may be thinking, “Yes, of course it’s better, but it’s uncomfortable.” It’s a very natural response to feel like you or your home are suddenly exposed or that you’re in some way more vulnerable by turning on your camera. This is why it’s important to work with your team and establish some agreed upon team standards.

Establish some baseline of team standards

If you’re not intentional about establishing a team culture and expectations, then the norms might be implicitly set by the loudest voices. This would not be an accurate representation of the team and easily excludes underrepresented groups.

Rather than assuming everyone is on the same page or letting things fall as they may, set the intention to establish clear team norms.

This doesn’t mean that everything needs to be covered (which I don’t encourage), but a general framework will help guide your team in how to respectfully and openly communicate with each other. By spending time on this, the conversations become open to more diverse perspectives. By being intentional, the team will ultimately feel more connected and like each member has a voice.

Below are some ideas about what you could ask and all decide on together, but you can adopt all to none. It’s up to your team to decide what works for them.

• No comments on physical appearance. This is something that can get awkward really fast.
• Decide on a way to indicate you want to speak up. This gives everyone, especially those that may not often feel comfortable speaking up in a group setting, a chance to talk. Some ideas for indicating that you want to speak are using Zoom reactions, putting a hand up, or putting up fingers (e.g. one finger, two fingers, etc.) to signal order in the queue.
• You might also want to establish a chairperson who can ensure no one person dominates the conversation and gives everyone a chance to speak up. If you are a person who thinks you talk too long, there are tools that track how long you’ve been talking. If you’ve found yourself in this position, a simple “Hey, I’ve been talking too long. What do you all think?” is an easy way of helping others feel included.
• You can also set the standard for how people pair program by agreeing to alternate who leads each session. If you’re practicing test-driven development, you can switch off having one person write tests while the other implements code to make the tests pass. By balancing the roles and responsibilities within pairing, everyone gets a shared sense of ownership, which keeps people more engaged in the work.

Lastly, a word of caution about two team norms that can get sticky: any kind of dress code and/or rule requiring that everyone speaks up at least once during a meeting. Proceed with caution anytime you address appearance, including dress. Similarly, it’s important to solicit feedback and encourage open communication — but making people speak up when they may not want to is not fostering a safe environment.

To clarify, these examples relate mainly to the context of a group setting and not (necessarily) to one-on-one interactions, which can vary widely. It’s possible that it works for your team to set some norms for one-on-one conversations, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. The hope is that with these ideas, group interactions can become more uniform and open to all voices.

In regards to the actual process of making standards, encourage one-on-one follow-ups after the norms have been made if there is anyone who didn’t feel comfortable speaking up.

When you’re talking about these standards, it’s important to remember that context matters. If you’re working in a group vs. one-on-one, the expectations of conduct will probably be different. That said, when you’re working in a group in particular, standards help make the group know better what to expect. These interactions should be fairly uniform (thanks to standards). If you have a good relationship with a person and it’s a one-on-one, this might not apply. But in the context of groups, making a comment about physical appearance could be embarrassing/unwanted attention.

Having a Code of Conduct is good no matter what (whether remote or not) to set clear expectations of how we treat each other. It should include established consequences for violations as well as an escalation path to foster a safe environment. The goal here is to just begin talking about this. By starting the conversation, you are creating a safe environment where people can be a lot more productive and know what is expected of them during the workday.

Synchronous communication is still valuable

Jumping on a call from time to time when you have a question is sometimes going to be the more efficient way to get an answer. Sporadically* jumping on a call anytime for no real serious reason also makes being remote less lonely. Some of the best learning moments that happen at work are unplanned. This means you need to be there “unplanned”, so just be there. For example, I personally struggle at phrasing things, but especially so when I’m struggling on a ticket and I don’t have the vocabulary to explain what I don’t know. In this case, instead of going back and forth trying to explain the question, I can start out trying to figure out the other person’s availability to call instead.

*Sporadically doesn’t mean instantaneous or without warning. (Common courtesy!)

When you’re meeting, get out of your head. Speak out loud what you’re thinking as much as you can.

Visual aids can be a helpful tool with synchronous communication. There are a lot of great tools that can help you communicate better such as screen sharing or Zoom annotations to describe the issue going on. For example, I was recently working on a bug and I was blocked because I couldn’t reproduce the issue. After pairing with another engineer, it was clear that the ticket itself was vague so it wasn’t clear what the next steps were. We used Figma to diagram the current status and moved around shapes to brainstorm what possible solutions we could try.

Ideas for effective remote working

In no particular order, here are some of the “bonus” ideas of what you can do to implement effective remote practices with specific values/goals in mind.

• Inclusivity — People in outlier time zones might have to watch recordings more often. If you can find time to work with them synchronously (even if just every once in a while), it might help them feel more included. This can be a way of showing these individuals that they’re valued.
• Human connection — Introduce a Silly Hat Day for Friday standup, or start a short weekly meeting for people to chat about life or play games together. These serve as opportunities to help people connect by adding levity and making not everything about work.
• Balancing power — Pairing is more effective when each individual takes turns guiding the session, which also makes it less likely for one person to always dominate the direction.
• Uncovering root causes — Talking about issues while pairing teases out underlying issues that you only discover once you’re in “the flow” (in the context from the book Flow).

In conclusion: Don’t overthink it too much

I’ve talked about this above, but just to really drive it home: We really think sometimes that if we video call, that it has to be a whole production. It’s effective to just go softer on the ‘when’ and ‘why’ to meet. The way to get off of the remote-work island is to not be super strict/micro-manage-y. Loosen your grip on control and fly free!