Mattermost has always been a remote-first company. Building a product that safely and securely allows our teams to communicate with each other regardless of geography or distance is the cornerstone of our philosophy on working remotely. Over the last year, the world of working online from home changed dramatically. Many people have been forced to move into a working situation they might not have been familiar with.

“What’s that? You want me to send you a large video file or something? No, that’s not a problem, it’s actually easy, I’ll just stick it on Box. Or DropBox, or stick it on WeTransfer and then we’ll do a quick Zoom to go through it – what?

The goal of management is always to ensure productivity and the fulfillment of preset objectives. But having so many employees working remotely because of current global circumstances or corporate policies makes performance management challenging. Here we have keys to managing individual performance remotely. None of these keys involve cracking a whip for getting the level of performance you want.

One thing that 2020 has clearly shown us is that communications services is a basic and fundamental driver of our global economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that many tasks can be done at home, if access to communications services is sufficient. Many of us can work from home or other locations outside of the traditional office; students do not have to be physically present at school to participate in lectures; and we don’t need to go to movie theaters watch a new film release.

The events of 2020 — from the pandemic to the resulting mass quarantines — have been one of the most impactful societal events of this century. Nearly overnight, it has relegated hundreds of millions of workers to their homes, likely through much of 2021 and perhaps beyond.