HBR Guide to Remote Work

by Harvard Business Review

Get your best work done, no matter where you do it.

Video calls from your couch. Project reports in a coffee shop. Presentations at your kitchen table. Working remotely gives you more flexibility in how and where you do your job. But being part of a far-flung team can be challenging. How can you make remote work work for you?

The HBR Guide to Remote Work provides practical tips and advice to help you stay productive, avoid distractions, and collaborate with your team, despite the distance that separates you.

You'll learn

Create a regular work-from-home routineIdentify the right technology for your needsRun better virtual meetingsAvoid burnout and video-call fatigueManage remote employeesConduct difficult conversations when you can't meet in person

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Leadership, Audiobook, Self Help, Personal Development

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 2, 2021

Reviews

[Achim ('akim) Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection of 28 articles, originally published within HBR between 2010 and 2021 gives great ideas, best practices and insights about how to manage, deal with and survive remote teams and teamwork.

A must read for anybody practicing homeoffice and zoom marathons.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean, it was fine to listen to while I ran errands but I wouldn't go out of my way to get a copy.

[AnnaZ. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the advices and tips from the book you already understand intuitively or you just know if you work remotely for a while. But it is still worth to have a look.

“Without the boundaries of the office, it’s easy for your workday to have no beginning or end. If you are never at work, you are in danger of being always at work.”

Tips I found useful:

- start a meeting with a daily personal- professional check-ins
- don’t take everything personal, as we don’t know what other person meant to say or to do + with virtual communication we miss a lot of “soft data” exchange- emotions, voice, mimics..
- technology extends our working hours and interferes our cognitive recovery
- rest and recovery are not the same thing!
- just because you can use video doesn’t mean you should
-it’s ok to not use the video during the whole meeting; we need recovery from the “constant gaze”
- provide office hours to your directs and actively manage the 1-1
- you can never be too clear, but it is too easy to be less clear than you should be
- for the teams working in different time zones, the cadence of meetings is changed every month to privilege different time zones by rotating meeting times
- measure the team health by measuring the average lag time between identifying problems and discussing them

[Manouane Beauchamp · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est le premier ouvrage de la série des "HBR Guide To" que je lis et je dois avouer que je suis agréablement surpris.
L'ancienne collection de livre de HBR, intitulée : "HBR's 10 Must Reads", réunissaient sous un même thème des articles précédemment publiés dans le magazine trimestriel HBR. Les articles de ce période s'adressent aux novices ou aux curieux, mais pas aux gestionnaires d'expérience ou aux consultants. Avec pour résultat que les articles contiennent une ou deux idées intéressantes mais se retrouvent noyées dans de l'information secondaire de faible intérêt. Et il faut beaucoup de courage pour les lire au complet.
Dans cette nouvelle série, les articles sont présentés sous forme de synthèse, allant droit au but, exposant les idées principales. Ça c'est intéressant. Idéale pour les gestionnaires ou consultants novices ou les intermédiaires (le consultant ou le gestionnaire possédant beaucoup d'expérience va rester un peu sur sa faim).
Cela dit, en ce qui a trait au travail à distance, une fois qu'on a lu un livre sur le sujet je pense que 80% du sujet est couvert. Il n'y a pas de grandes découvertes ou de grandes idées révolutionnaire en la matière. Ce livre couvre probablement tous les aspects requis en la matière.

[Rodney Shae Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent summary of a lot of very common sense topics in a remote environment. Didn’t feel like there were any earth shattering takeaways, did have a couple nuggets that I appreciated (suggestions for how to celebrate remote colleagues since you can’t have say an in person birthday party, being intentional and clear on communication expectations, sharing the burden of late/early meetings across time zones) but for the most part felt like this was pretty standard stuff.

Granted that I may be more pessimistic than others about this book, because I have been making a concerted effort to learn more about this topic recently, and may have just seen most the information before.

[Ben]

This was a very good read.

Very helpful book on remote working - how to optimize your workstation, balance, life, and especially, your focus and productivity.

Had some excellent tips throughout.

The biggest takeaway - remote work is still just work. You must be diligent and be deliberate about work to succeed. Use boundaries to prevent distrations in your home, so you can focus on the work and do what you are expected to.

4.4/5

[Juan Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good guide but lacks depth. It is made up a many different articles relating to remote work that make it feel fragmented. It would have been great to have a single author base the book on, and reference, all those articles.

[Vovka · Rating 2 out of 5]

What you can expect from HBR on this topic. A relatively superficial review of remote work -- useful to ensure you're not missing the mainstream corporate perspective, but not useful if you're looking to more deeply understand the challenges and opportunities of remote work.

[Robert Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alterna recomanacions generals de sentit comú que poc aporten si estàs acostumat a treballar en remot, amb casos puntuals que difícilment s'ajustaran al teu cas. Correcte en el contingut i en la forma, però del tot prescindible.

[Pamela Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

It gives a high level overview of what remote work could involve but that's about it.

[Carlo Martinello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some articles are interesting and to the point. But on overall the book doesn’t add much to the general topic of smartwork, especially after having already experimented it.

[Urvi Shah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found it to be ok…finished in one sitting. Few topics were very informative but the rest was kinda ok.

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Keeping it to read it again in the future.

[Merlyn Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was fairly basic and didn't really introduce any new concepts. Some articles were helpful but most of it was quite repetitive.

[Rachel Feldman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of time. This didn't need to be a "book". 200 pages of common sense.

[Jon Koebrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a quick and helpful business tool. There were several good ideas I will consider adopting.