Thriving in the Remote-First Future of Work

At Newfire, we had an unfair advantage—we were remote-first long before the world was forced to adapt. Since 2016, we’ve built a culture designed for connection across thousands of miles, not just surviving remote work but thriving in it.

When the shift to remote work came, we doubled down and focused on bringing our team even closer together while making the most of our physical offices worldwide as strategic hubs. That experience has armed us with knowledge we now use to help our clients turn remote-first challenges into an advantage.

This article, Part 1 in our Future of Work Series, distills our approach into practical strategies for thriving in the remote-first Future of Work. From optimizing collaboration to building a strong culture, you’ll gain insights to turn remote work into a market differentiator. Let’s start with an honest look at the challenges that remote-first teams face.

Why Act Now? Address Challenges to Keep Ahead

While remote-first work is becoming the norm, it is far from simple to implement it well. So before we dive into solutions, let’s explore a few of the challenges.

Top-Tier Expertise or Development Velocity? A Balance of Tradeoffs

A global, remote-first team allows you to hand-pick the best of the best for your projects, bringing fresh ideas, diverse perspectives, and true innovation. However, this approach shifts how teams collaborate and communicate, often favoring asynchronous work over real-time exchanges. Without a structured system to manage this shift, timelines may slip, and projects can slow down.

Recent data confirms this. A Harvard Business Review study found that remote work can elongate completion times due to challenges in synchronous communication.

Sense of Belonging and Loyalty

Cultivating a sense of belonging is essential in remote work, particularly for individual contributors and younger team members. Employees who feel connected to their work and colleagues—regardless of team structure—are more engaged and perform at a higher level. Gallup found that only 31% of Gen Z employees feel engaged at work.

In our own experience as an IT services company, we recognize that belonging must extend not only within an organization but also across distributed teams working with external partners. That said, the broader challenge remains universal: fostering a culture where remote employees feel valued, supported, and motivated.

BetterUp reports that strong belonging can lead to a 56% increase in job performance and a 50% reduction in turnover risk. Those with a sense of belonging are also 38% more likely to go above and beyond in their roles, a key indicator of loyalty.

Emotional Derailers

Remote work’s flexibility can lead to isolation and mental health challenges, impacting cognitive function, creativity, and relationships with coworkers. As remote workers, we often work alone with few opportunities to exchange ideas, gain quick feedback, or share our feelings about work.

Addressing these issues through regular check-ins, wellness support, and team bonding is crucial to maintaining a healthy workforce.

Threat to Apprenticeship

One of the more subtle but meaningful challenges of remote work is the potential decline in apprenticeship and knowledge sharing.

This can create redundancies in work processes and inefficiencies in learning, as remote setups may lack the same organic opportunities for skill transfer that physical offices provide. Structured mentorship and knowledge-sharing programs can bridge this gap and support continual learning.

To sum up, most obstacles to maximizing the value of remote work stem from a human need to connect, communicate, and collaborate—activities made more challenging by physical distance. The human element is, therefore, at the core of our efforts.

Building Connections in Remote Teams: The Human Unlock

To help companies thrive in remote-first environments, fostering meaningful connections must be an intentional effort. Rituals that lead to deeper connections can encourage collaborative problem-solving and higher productivity and job satisfaction.

Intentional Collaboration

To promote collaboration remotely, it’s essential to facilitate virtual connections and create safe spaces for employees to reach out for support. At Newfire, we do this by leveraging digital tools (both commercial and proprietary) and taking every opportunity to connect—an approach we call Intentional Collaboration.

For example, we run social communities in Slack and other channels dedicated to various topics, from AI tools to mental health and wellbeing. These represent resources where team members can exchange knowledge, ask their “virtual neighbor” for help, bond over shared interests, or even participate in friendly competitions, such as our Detox Challenge, which recently wrapped up in a photo finish and an award ceremony.

Another example is our Expert Finder initiative, an AI-powered tool that contains a database of our hundreds-strong team. We developed Expert Finder to streamline access to knowledge by allowing team members to quickly find experts within the organization. Connecting across teams to people who are able—and willing—to help you through a bottleneck can be incredibly rewarding.

This is a fascinating project and one of our most successful internal initiatives, so I invite you to have a look at Newfire’s Head of Advisory Services and CTO, Will Crawford, presenting Expert Finder to the audience at the 2024 Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit (DHIS East).

Communication Rituals

In my experience as a professional service delivery and talent expert, I’ve learned that establishing clear communication norms helps diverse, remote teams work effectively together. Useful practices include:

• Being “answer first”: Present the main point before additional details to streamline conversations.
• Prioritizing impactful comments: Focus on contributions that can alter decisions or provide critical insights.
• Encouraging brevity: Challenge team members to keep responses concise and avoid redundant points.
• Having a solution-oriented mindset: Steer discussions toward actionable solutions, minimizing focus on problems alone.
• Clarifying meeting goals: Begin each meeting with a reminder of its purpose—whether to inform or discuss—and review the agenda and etiquette.

These practices help build clarity and efficiency in team interactions, building a culture of purposeful communication.

Engagement as a Two-Way Street

Cultivating an engaged workforce requires commitment from both the organization and individual employees. While the company can lay the foundation by maintaining a culture of engagement, active participation from team members is essential to bring it to life.

At Newfire, we set this foundation early by communicating our culture throughout the recruitment process, emphasizing the value of participation in engagement activities, and hiring for cultural fit alongside technical expertise. On our end, we ensure a packed calendar of engagement initiatives designed for a remote-first environment, making participation seamless—whether through online events, social channels, or structured team interactions.

This shared responsibility is a philosophy woven into the organization’s DNA, where both company culture and individual involvement are indispensable for success.

Leadership Alignment for Success

Effective leadership alignment is essential to guiding remote teams toward shared goals and ensuring consistent progress. Key principles include:

• Clear Goals & Priorities: Agree on major initiatives while allowing flexibility for adjustments, keeping essential goals steadfast.
• Measurable Outcomes: Use objectives and key results (OKRs) to set clear expectations, timelines, and quantifiable outcomes that align with company objectives.
• Predictability & Open Communication: Foster transparency by openly sharing updates on progress, challenges, and necessary pivots, helping teams stay informed.
• Encouraging Innovation: Celebrate efforts even if outcomes vary and acknowledge external factors impacting results to support a culture of growth.
• Prioritization & Decision-Making: Embrace “brutal prioritization” to balance speed and depth with structured decision-making frameworks for clarity.

Through intentional collaboration, structured communication, and shared engagement, you stand to build a remote culture where teams feel connected, empowered, and aligned with company goals.

Shape the Remote-First Future of Work With Us

I hope this article has shown you that the challenges you face in your transition to remote-first work are not just solvable—they’re opportunities to gain market advantages and strengthen the ties that bind your team together.

From overcoming performance slowdowns to re-engaging teams, Newfire has built solutions that drive world-changing innovation for our clients. I’m proud to be part of that journey. If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of remote work, let’s talk.