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How much you feel you should pay remote workers is one thing; what your payment is worth to them — and how its value changes over time — is another.

Recent global financial strife continues to cause some economies to suffer, including that of the U.S. Many digital freelancers earning U.S. dollars are now receiving substantially less for the same work, as their own nations’ currencies gain strength against the U.S. dollar.

The rates that U.S. companies offer to remote workers may no longer compete with firms that are more local to the freelance web worker. For U.S.-based organizations, this may make sourcing good remote workers much more challenging. It may also be a challenge they haven’t had to face before.

Of course, currency fluctuations don’t just affect pay rates. In theory, web workers buying goods from the U.S. should enjoy exchange rate benefits as the U.S. dollar weakens, but this is rarely the case.

Late last year,  for example, I bought a $35 piece of software from the States on a day when the U.S. dollar was worth 1.015 Australian dollars. The software should have cost $35.53 AUD, but my receipt shows that I was actually charged $1.40 AUD more. The effects of a stronger currency aren’t usually reflected across the board.

And of course, your remote freelancer’s local costs don’t fluctuate with your currency’s value. So what could be a great rate for them this month might be a very lackluster rate in a month or two. You may need to consider offering other perks or advantages to procure the remote talent you really want, rather than accepting that which you can get cheaply.

Freedom and fun stuff

If your remote freelancer has some ideas they’d like to trial on your project, or extra suggestions that they feel are worthwhile, can you give them the freedom to implement those ideas?

The extra work may take extra time, but if you can see real value for your project, the extension of scope could be beneficial to the remote worker as well as to your business. It could also ensure you get a top-notch job on the key parts of the project, rather than settling for second-best.

Software and systems

Can you reduce the cost to the freelancer of taking on your project by giving them a license to use necessary software, or providing access to specific systems?

Finding ways to make their lives easier — and more cost-effective — could help you to win the remote worker.

Team involvement

Some remote workers really value the opportunity to work with a team — particularly if they’re solo operators, or work from home. Showing them how you’ll involve them in the project team, making them feel welcome, and communicating their value to their new colleagues are a few ways to help cement good relationships with valuable remote workers.

The promise of close working relationships with like-minded pros is likely to appeal to more than a few web workers — especially those who are interested in collaborative, on-the-job learning, and in building networks.

Credits or kudos

Kudos matters. Can you give credit to the freelancer you’re pursuing, perhaps through social media, LinkedIn references, linking to their site through your organization’s blog, or some other method?

Most freelancers will appreciate being publicly named for their contributions — especially if that recognition can help them win further work, or gain them exposure among peers who matter to them.

These ideas may not win you the remote web worker you want, but they might help sweeten a deal embattled by global financial tumult. Are you finding it harder to land good remote talent in places where your currency has weakened?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user OmirOnia.

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From The Go Game App’s site: “The Go Game App is a location-based game that’s part scavenger hunt, part mobile party and full-on fun. We’ve run over 5,000 street-level games since 2002 and now we’re bringing the party to the iPhone.”

Successful team building isn’t the result of just any game. We know from management research that the best team building helps the team members learn who knows what, who needs what information, and how to coordinate their efforts as a result of that knowledge. The closer the activity is to the team’s task, the better it is at building valuable team capabilities. Given the control you have with The Go Game App, you can create a game that supports your team building in an sensible, and fun, way.

For the intern example: Getting them out on the streets will let them learn who has the best background on the streets of San Francisco (valuable for location scouting). Learning to coordinate on the various missions helps with virtual work skills. Competition across teams can be a motivator.

Cities covered by The Go Game App:

• Chicago (Magnificent Mile and Millennium Park)
• NYC (West Village and Times Square)
• LA (Santa Monica and Hollywood)
• SF (Embarcadero, Fisherman’s Wharf, Mission and North Beach)
• San Jose (Downtown)
• Boston (Quincy Market area)
• DC (Chinatown)
• Denver (LoDo)
• Orlando (Lake Eola)
• Seattle (Pike Place)
• Atlanta (Midtown)
• Orlando (International Drive)
• Portland (Pearl District)
• Austin TX (6th Street)

This is an interesting example of the gamification of work. Give it a go and tell us how your teams did!

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Think about the following questions in relation to past jobs that you loved or hated. They will help you figure out what kind of projects you really want to work on now.

1. Teamwork. Do you prefer to work as part of a team where you can collaborate closely with other people on regular basis? Or are you happiest when people leave you alone and you can just get things done with minimal interaction? If you prefer to work alone and you end up in a job where you have to work very closely with other people, the chances of being happy are slim. Likewise, if you want to work as part of a team, you will likely feel alone, isolated and unhappy on solo projects. Finding a project or job that matches your team style can make a big difference in your job satisfaction.
2. Leadership. Are you happiest when leading a team of people on a project, where you can be in the driver’s seat? Or would you rather stay out of the limelight and work in the background? Just because you want to be in a leadership position doesn’t mean you can jump right into one right away, but you can look for opportunities to lead smaller portions of a project, to prove your leadership capabilities and set yourself up to move into leadership. On the other hand, if you aren’t happy leading, don’t get suckered into taking a lead job, even if it comes with a little more money. If you hate your job, a few extra dollars a month probably won’t make up for it.
3. Innovation. Do you like to come up with ideas that are revolutionary and new? Or do you prefer to take an evolutionary approach to make existing ideas and projects better? If you enjoy the latter, then you should be careful not to get into positions where you are responsible for coming up with groundbreaking ideas. It can also be a good idea to pair up with team members of the other type so that people are coming up with new ideas and others are working to make them better over time.
4. Employment. Do you crave stability and the benefits that come with being a full-time employee? Or are you happiest when you are working as an independent consultant with flexibility and the ability to control your work? There are many advantages and disadvantages of both, so it helps to know what you prefer.
5. Technology. Do you have specific technologies that you can’t live without? Or do you use whatever your employer or client prefers? If you are a diehard Apple  fan, the chances of being happy in a job where you have to use a Windows  laptop and BlackBerry  phone are slim. Some companies run on email while others use more collaborative technologies, so make sure you ask about technology usage if you have any strong preferences.

A few other things that are important to keep in mind:

• Is the project interesting to you?
• Do you get to work with people whom you want to spend time with?
• Do you like working for your manager or client?

Finding a project or job that plays into your preferences can mean the difference between a miserable experience and a happy one. Think about how you really want to work, then work toward a position that matches your preferences and makes you enjoy your work.

How do you stay happy on the job?

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Lars Plougmann.

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The problem with this purely quantitative approach is that it misses the great potential of collaboration: innovation.

Using a team, rather than an individual, isn’t just a way to get things done faster, it’s also a way to do things better, and do better things. Gone are the days when innovation was handled by management. Smart businesses know that idea generation, prototyping and testing happens on the ground, on the frontline, at the coalface — whatever cliche you prefer.

When viewed in this context, the shorter timeframes implied by the increased capacity in a team must necessarily expand. Why? Because innovation takes time.

Research

You don’t know what you don’t know. Innovators understand the value of research, through resources, other people, practical experimentation, and so on. And good research — the kind that’s thorough, creative, collaborative, and gives the innovator time to build prototypes and test cases to reduce the risk of innovation to the business — takes time.

An iterative philosophy of innovation might shorten the time it takes to get your innovative idea up and running, but it still takes time, as do subsequent iterations of the idea.

Discussion

We can’t innovate in a vacuum. Team-based innovators need opportunities to speak with other team members, to debate, contribute, conduct more research and report back on their findings.

They need to understand how the innovation they’re proposing will impact others’ work. What parts of their idea can others piggyback onto? What parts present potential risks or dependencies for others’ inputs?

Reflection and Planning

Most team leaders love a good plan, but we can easily underestimate the value of reflection.

Once a team member has conduced research, and discussed it with others, that person will need time to reflect on all that information if they’re to formulate a solid working plan to implement the innovation. Multiply that work by the number of people collaborating within your team, and it’s easy to see that reflection is both important and potentially time-consuming.

It’s true that reflective time isn’t bounded by the restrictions of the working day, but that doesn’t mean we can avoid allocating time for reflection at work.

Through reflection, the team can anticipate problems, mitigate risks, and pull together the strands of teamwork to make the implementation proceed smoothly. Skimp on reflective time — or ignore it altogether — and your increase the risk of having good innovations fail.

Managing Multiple Inputs

Innovating solo avoids many of the hassles of effectively integrating multiple inputs — inputs that may themselves be innovative (and therefore behave unpredictably), or may need to be integrated within an unprecedented system or framework (which in itself is unpredictable).

In the one-man-band, you know what you’ve created, and you know how it all needs to fit together. But innovative teams must manage the unpredictability of their individual innovations (and the processes by which they are developed), the unpredictability of the innovative system into which they fit, and the unpredictability of their colleagues’ innovations.

Communication is never perfect: a team member may believe they understand how something will work, but be surprised when they finally see the finished component. Using a transparent approach to innovation is a common way to lessen the likelihood of this eventuality, but it also takes time.

Making Collaborative Innovation Efficient

Plenty of techniques and tools have been developed to help us innovate more efficiently and more successfully. But it’s important that we understand the nature of team innovation if we’re to get the most out of the models we choose.

People are central to this equation. Smaller, more tightly-knit teams may be less likely to see each other as “human resources”, but it’s still important to understand how team members develop ideas individually and together, and to allow sufficient time for the less-visible aspects of those processes to take place.

How do you manage the time your team takes to innovate? Are you using a specific model for innovative collaboration, or are you winging it?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user kavitha.

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Rypple is focused on four main areas:

1. Recognition
2. Feedback
3. Coaching
4. Setting goals.

According to Debow, these activities help workers to stay motivated, focused and on track. When you first log into Rypple, you immediately see a familiar feed of activity from your team to get a quick overview of who is doing what and how they’re doing within your team. The power of Rypple, however, is what is happening deeper than the feed itself.

Let’s break Rypple down into its four parts:

Recognition

Rypple sets out to make feedback both more real-time and more fun. Yes, fun. Through Rypple, team members and managers alike are encouraged to give people recognition and thanks in a “bottom up” approach. Receiving this thanks can enhance a worker’s reputation, and — in a similar fashion to online games — team members can receive badges for things they’ve done well; those badges then show up on their profile.

Teams using Rypple can make their own badges, either from pre-loaded images or any other images they want to use. The customization of the badges gives them more shared meaning; badges can also be limited in availability to create scarcity.” You can even give badges to people outside your company or team. I’ll explore this “gamification of work” idea more in an upcoming post.

Feedback

Why wait six months to a year to find out how you’re doing? Rypple lets workers and managers ask for private, anonymous feedback on their work, on themselves, on processes or on the team. Questions can include a rating system as well.

Coaching

Great managers provide actionable feedback as well as  coaching, and Rypple gives people the tools to do both, helping them create relationships with workers — even remote workers — for regular mentoring interactions. In Rypple, people can create a private shared space with the person they’d like to connect with, in which they can interact one-on-one. They can set goals, attach actions to goals and share notes.

Setting Goals

In a team, goals should be set together, and using Rypple, you can set up social goals, including metrics so that they are clearly measurable. There is also a “Goal Explorer” feature available to premium Rypple subscribers, which lets a manager peruse goals, see who is working on what, when things are due, and access further details about each goal. By reviewing the Goal Explorer, a manager can get insights as to what the team thinks is important. Goals show up in a worker’s profile once they are completed: yet another reputation enhancer.

Starting a Rypple

Rypple isn’t meant to replace the software teams are already using, such as Basecamp, Salesforce or Yammer, but instead, is meant to provide an additional layer to better understand the people working with those products. If a company wishes to continue with traditional annual performance reviews, the entire record of a person’s participation and accomplishments with a company are archived in their profile, making for a more accurate and less painful process. The strength of Rypple, however, is through helping people improve their performance with the “micro-feedback” they receive on an ongoing basis.

The free version of Rypple comes with the badge tool, unlimited coaching and connections, unlimited questions for feedback, and goals. Premium members get the Goal Explorer, additional setup and integration support, and live phone support.

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Before we even think about results or what tools we should use, we should start with the core of collaboration: the group itself. What challenges prevent the group and its members from performing optimally?

One of the problems with collaboration is that when it’s done without much planning, it leads to what’s called “social loafing,” where members of a group working together exert less effort than they would if they worked alone. This phenomenon is especially apparent in  face-to-face brainstorming sessions. To avoid this tendency, here are some aspects of the group that we should work on before embarking on a collaborative project:

• Identifiability. In one study, one of the suggested causes of slacking off during group work is that individuals can hide in a crowd. To avoid this tendency, make each member of the team stand out. You can divide the tasks so that each person has his or her own individual deliverables that are easy to measure and evaluate.
• Diversity. When we form groups or committees that will work on important projects, we tend to pick the “star players” or “big thinkers.” This is especially true in large organizations that have a lot of talent and manpower to draw from. But having intelligent individuals in a group doesn’t really seem to influence its performance. Also, according to several experiments, people tend to work harder if they expect some of their colleagues to perform poorly. So it’s important to create a group with members that have varying  skills and performance abilities.
• Group size. Apart from supporting the points mentioned above, this paper from the Journal of Management shows that increased group size was related to increased social loafing. Keep group size to a minimum so that it’s easier to account for everyone’s work. The larger the group, the more each individual can hide behind its size. 37Signals suggests that a group of three is enough to start with for a software development project. Amazon is known for having two-pizza teams, which means that if two pizzas aren’t enough to feed the team, then the team is too large.
• Group cohesiveness. Several sources also indicate that increasing the group’s cohesiveness helps to avoiding social loafing. This means that the members of your group should like each other and want to work together to pursue the same goals. They don’t have to be close friends, but they should experience a feeling of unity that makes them feel that slacking off would let down the rest of the group.

In your experience, what qualities should a team have to ensure that each member performs well?

Interested in learning more about how to get teams to collaborate effectively? Check out our Net:Work conference in San Francisco in December.

Photo by stock.xchng user wagg66

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I find that since we’ve started this new working relationship, my output has become more consistent, and I’ve also had the time to work on side projects that I was “too busy” to try before. On her end, she tells me that my encouragement helped her start work on a stagnant project. Apart from improving productivity, here are the other benefits we’ve experienced as “work buddies”:

• More creative problem-solving. When you’re too close to a problem, it’s hard to find outside-the-box solutions. This is no surprise since you need some amount of psychological distance to see the problem in a new light. Your work buddy might have the right amount of distance from the problem to help you find new solutions you wouldn’t have been able to think of yourself.
• Obstacles seem easier. Even the biggest project can seem easier to achieve with the right work buddy. According to one study, social support from a friend can make hills seem less steep. So don’t be surprised if your to-do list seems shorter with the right person supporting you.
• Collaboration. Apart from providing you with emotional support, your work buddy can also give you more opportunities to collaborate on exciting projects – no matter how informal they may be.

If you’re going through a rough time professionally, or if you simply need your own personal support group, finding a work buddy might be a good solution for you. It’s just a matter of finding the right person. Ideally, your work buddy should be:

• Someone you respect. For me, this is the most important criterion for choosing a work buddy. By choosing someone you respect, both professionally and personally, you are less likely to waste their time and more likely to make the most out of the relationship.
• Someone who understands your work. As Dawn pointed out in a previous post, explaining most web working jobs to the uninitiated can be difficult. Your work buddy should understand enough of your work to give you constructive feedback, make suggestions, listen to your complaints and recognize your accomplishments. Someone who knows your work well is more likely to engage you in more meaningful exchanges, rather than just blank stares or insincere one-liners.
• Someone who knows how to deal with you. Your work buddy should also be someone who knows the right things to say or do that will motivate you to keep working. He or she should know how to push you when others are telling you to take it easy.
• Someone who also needs your help. For this to work, the two of you have to need each other, or else the relationship is going to feel one-sided. This could be someone who needs your skills, experience, network or even just your unique insight.

Other, more specific traits may depend on what you need. For example, you might need someone who works as a logo designer or has experience in leading a team. Be aware of these specifics so that you can come up with a clearer picture of who your ideal work buddy should be like.

Have you ever had a friend or colleague who helped you become more productive? What was your experience like with that kind of relationship?

Photo by flickr user vek

Orvet’s 20-minute talk has just been published online by the organizers of HDLive; it’s also embedded below.

The tool allows everyone to provide feedback and stay in the loop with a design’s progress, as well as archiving the design’s history. You can control who can see and leave feedback on each captured design. For example, a project manager could share one page with the copywriter, another with the whole team and yet another with the developers. The feedback occurs multiple ways, instead of one-way.

For example, let’s say I open a Notable account for the meryl.net web site. I work with a designer and a blog app expert; we’re all web workers living in different states. I capture different pages on my web site to highlight the current problems and identify ways to improve them, as the screenshot below shows.

While I could use my screenshot application to get a snaphot of the page to make comments on, Notable works faster. With a screenshot app, I’d capture the web page. Then, I would use the application’s drawing tools to add call outs. Notable takes care of everything for you. All I have to do is click and enter notes.  This video shows the process of capturing and annotating a site.

Notable offers a Firefox plugin for capturing any web page, which is especially helpful for those pages stuck behind logins. I grabbed Facebook pages and other password-protected pages with the plugin. You can also capture pages from a URL from within Notable, use a special URL formula to capture a web page (for example, www.notableapp.com/www.webworkerdaily.com would capture the home page of this site), download the iPhone app, or upload an image.

I can send my notes for one page to the designer and notes from another page to the blog expert. Or I can send it to both. Notable gives you control on what feedback and notes you share with others, and you can remove someone from the discussion after the fact. The designer and blog expert can capture their own pages to add notes or leave comments on my notes.

In this case, I have a workspace called “meryl.net” for the meryl.net redesign project. I can organize the pages into three sets: one for the business section of the site, one for games and one for the pages about deafness, as the next image shows.

Notable sends email notifications whenever someone adds notes and shares them. You can control who receives the notification to be able view the specific page and leave feedback. Permissions are also available on a per-set basis.

You can also see different views of each page. You not only view the design, but also you can see and post annotations on the code (the underlying HTML code of the page), the copy (just the page’s copy, without any distracting visual elements) and search engine optimization (which lets you see the page’s structure for SEO purposes).

Currently, Notable works with Firefox and Safari. However, I could leave comments and view notes in Google Chrome — just not capture pages. One of the biggest benefits is that it cuts down on emails and confusion. The only emails you receive are notifications of new notes or updates, rather than a bunch of emails from different people on a project and trying to keep track of it all. Best of all, Notable is fun to use. While it works great for teams not working under one roof, but it’s suitable for those that do because the work is centralized and visible in one place.

Check out the use of Notable on the CNN and MSN home pages. A free plan is available that handles up to three users, 3 GB storage, one private workspace and the iPhone app. However, the free plan doesn’t come with enhanced security or private URLs. Other plans range from $24 per month up to $119 per month, based on number of users, storage size and other features. You can try any paid plan for 30 days with no obligation.

Have you tried Notable? What do you think of it?

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