Eduards Saknikovs from Ness will share on experience of transitioning through remote work culture change, problems have been solved and what IT community is looking forward to.

1. Remote work: Lessons and
opportunities from the
pandemic
Eduards Salnikovs
DevClub 20.10.2022

2. Ness Global
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4. First fully distributed team working out of Riga?

5. 5 | © 2022 Ness Digital Engineering.
What has happened in 2020
Personal-network presence and strength of
interpersonal ties leaves significant impact on
productivity of fully remote team
“Remote work increased asynchronous
communication, and made it difficult for workers
to convey and process complex information.
Firmwide remote work caused collaboration
network of workers to become more static and
siloed, it became harder for employees to
acquire and share new information and pushed
employees to spend more time with their strong
ties and less with weak ties (which more likely to
provide new and more innovative information)”
Combined Berkeley, Microsoft and MIT research on
COVID impact

6. And what has changed since
Cultural heuristics Culture design
Work life balance Work life integration
Synchronous Asynchronous
One size fits all Workspace flexibility
Office centric Digital centric
Relationships Transactions

7. Problem solving customs in fully remote team addresses
new challenges and evolves around new norms
Assumptions
Beliefs
Artifacts
Observable behaviors and processes
Ideals and rationalizations
How to solve on things if you
do not see persons emotions
and face gestures? Solutions
taken for granted.
Unconscious values
What practices are more
efficient with 8-22
workday schedule?
Why people are irritated
on the stand-up? Why
some are late?
What is the root cause here

8. Team relaunches enables continuous adaptation towards
ever changing private person work environment
Resources Location
Business value
Organization Information
System
Additional locations
(long-term, summer,
vacation)
Office hotdesking
Less tacit knowledge shared
Less face-to-face training
New skill requirements
Availability for late calls
Leaner media channels
(IM & Teams, Zoom..)
New tools (Miro..)
New functions i.e. wellbeing
experts
New constraints – legal and tax
New norms and rules
ESG as a shareholder value
Ways of working
New companywide processes
Use of new tools
New bonuses and incentives

9. Richer media is strongly suggested with complex
coordination and innovation in the work process
Leaner media Richer media

10. Gaining trust from the group requires disciplined
experiences and rich information
References
Specialized team formation
Repeating
experiences
Trust is:
 fragile and evidence based
 not evenly distributed
 established through interactions
and contexts
Passable trust - minimum threshold
of trust required to communicate
Swift trust - characterizes the high-
level of trust that must be “swiftly”
established by members in a team
formed for a specific project or
assignment i.e. flight attendants
How Can I Trust Colleagues I Barely See in Person?

11. Routines
Transparency
Mental
health
Done tasks, progress
Working software
Personal availability
Architectural decisions
Problem acknowledgement
Self awareness
Continuous improvement
Stretch assignments
Open for help from others
Volunteering to help others
Conflict resolution techniques
3 focus areas aiming to achieve individual stress tolerance
Discipline
Operational activities i.e. Scrum
Personal efficiency
Regular reporting

12. 12 | © 2022 Ness Digital Engineering.
Group resilience and what expeditions tell us about
teamwork*
Mountaineer’s work is simple: “To win
the game one has first to reach the
mountain’s summit … but, further, he has
to descend in safety.” said George
Mallory
• When the goal is simply to summit a
mountain, the researchers found, a
collectivistic focus within the group is
essential.
• But when circumstances turn dire and the
goal shifts to mere survival, then differences
within a group ought to be exploited.
* Stanford Graduate School of Business research insights

13. 13 | © 2022 Ness Digital Engineering.
Psychological safety is indispensable cultural element
to achieve high degree of innovation in team
Aiming to achieve it:
1. It should be easy to ask for help, ok to speak
about health and feelings, we know each
other personally
2. My Unique skills are valued, I am not afraid
to ask (seemingly irrelevant) questions,
problems are not buried down under the
carpet, its ok to disagree
3. Its ok to challenge Status Quo, we
continuously learn, its not a shame to admit
mistakes and I feel safe to take risks

14. Employee hopes and fears from the future of remote
work*
Better work life
balance
Better flexibility Positive
impact on
compensation
Increased focus on
employee wellbeing
Increased
chance of
disease spread
Loss of
community
connection
Reduced
collaboration
between
individuals
Worse work life
balance
* McKinsey reimagine work employee survey 2021
• Employees across the board
are eager to see companies
to put up more emphasis on
flexibility, well being and
should leave and impact on
bottom line
• At the same time significant
number of respondents are
concerned that remote work
will reduce collaboration
opportunities in general and
worsen the life balance
51% 49% 49% 47%
51% 49% 49% 49%
Junior members of the staff
having most impact

15. Q&A

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