Hi Ravi, welcome to remote working! Here are my top tips 
I really honestly belive that your question is (outside of financial and regulatory compliance) my number one job for the company to be successful.
More than that - it means building up a company that it’s enjoyable to work for - and there’s multiple strands to it.
- be realistic
First thing, some people are going to absolutely thrive working for you - others, who at face value are just as talented and skilled, simply will not. You have to forgive yourself that you may have hired someone you thought was perfect and it just doesn’t work - in which case you need to quickly move on otherwise the dissonance will bring you both down - but you can obviously learn and refine the process.
- Hire without hurting
I’ve linked this on another thread, but here it is again, as I wrote this to help attract those who wanted to work for us, to give them clues on how to get a job with YCBM: How to hire without hurting | YouCanBook.me.
I would say most, if not all, our recruits from the last few years mentioned they had read that piece - as well as watching some of the other things I’ve said publicly (like the Business of Software talks etc).
As well as showing genuine interest and research in the role, above all it demonstrated curiosity - a desire to find out things, which is one of the things we look for at the company. As a remote company, you can’t rely on people just discovering information floating about in the office as people are chatting. You need to find people who are purposefully and pro-actively interested in problem solving on their own initiative. How they apply to a job here at YCBM will tell us a lot about that person.
- be clear on team values / culture
I go on about this a lot, I interview and hire to a criteria, and I am totally open about it - we have a culture deck we use which is based on a description of ‘who we are’ and how we like to work.
I’ve learnt that if you endlessly repeat what is important to you - others become keepers of it as well, and more importantly, it answers the question ‘what is the right thing to do?’ in this situation - it’s a north star.
- be fair open, generous and transparent about renumeration
quick points - at YCBM we:
-
employ everyone in their native countries - everyone is on social security / health insurance / pension protections. Employee benefits (particularly home ones) are really important to people, and they would forgo a bigger salary via a contract in return for job security and being paid via payroll. It’s a bit controversial and sometimes hard to operate it all, but I’m a believer in it and have been ever since we hired our first non UK based employee (currently we’re set up to hire in the US / Ireland / Spain
-
Have open and transparent salary scales - we all know what everyone is paid. There’s no internal secret gaming or negotiation, there’s no gender pay stuff going on, it is what it is.
-
pay 10% profit share to employees vested from 1.5-4 years in the company. This is deliberate as an alternative to options as we’re a wholly private company with no plans to take on VC.
At the end of the day, if you are generous and fair with your employees, they know you are playing straight and you are all on the same field. Companies who seek to make a profit by basic exploitation of their workforce should just get in the sea.
- Repeat, Rinse, Repeat
I’ve been running YCBM for 8 years - in that time we’ve had people come and go, mistakes and triumphs, some of the people who work for us now feel like family - they are putting their best work and their best years into our team and product. This isn’t something I take for granted and so I am concious that everything we do to allow them to do their best work is my job.