How can remote workers grow in their careers? Since remote work is a recent revolution, it is a challenging question. In general, white-collar employees tend to grow more by changing companies, and, in my experience, it is even more common in remote environments. Nonetheless, it’s possible to grow in the same company as a remote worker—if the company did its homework. Since I started a community about remote work (in Portuguese), I’ve met many of those remote-first companies which worked hard to develop their collaborators and decided to look for a bit of their knowledge.

Careers in a blue sky

I invited my old friend from UnB, Fabricio Buzeto, co-founder of bxblue (a growing fintech here from Brasília), for a (virtual) coffee on October 5, 2020. He told me how bxblue’s career plan works: “We don’t do anything different from in-person companies. We have periodic evaluations and a promotions calendar.”

In their case, the career plans have two parts: a compensation and roles plan to ensure recognition to growing professionals, and a competencies plan, which will help them grow even more. Each department has its own evaluation criteria. For example, customer support has closing metrics, while engineering doesn’t.

Criteria should be clear, objective and, notably, collective. “Here at bx, the metrics are the entire team’s average,” Fabricio told me. “Our customer-facing department, today, is ten times more productive than the best individual attendant from the past.” This strategy, which focuses on the team and not the individual, makes it easy to find the real concerns behind the metrics. “If the attendants are not closing, which skill is missing to close more? The software can present inviable offers. Or maybe the attendant can be too slow to call, or doesn’t complete the call and doesn’t try different channels.”

Distributed planning for distributed careers

Intrigued by bxblue’s career plan, I decided to talk to other companies. Then I recall my dear friend Karina Varela from Red Hat—you may remember her from the brilliant tips on working from home with family (in Portuguese). She told me how, being a child from the 90s and 2000 free software movements, Red Hat has always been international, distributed and remote-first. I schedule another coffee with her and her leader, Glauce Santos, Latin America’s acquisition manager, for October 8, 2020. Then, I asked: how is the career plan at RH?

To my surprise, they don’t have one!

Glauce explained that the career development at Red Hat is more localized. “We don’t have a career plan, as in a Big Four. We have an open culture and individualized performance evaluation with the direct manager.” In this case, the accountable persons are the collaborators themselves. “The responsibility stays in the hands of the employee,” Glauce informs. For that, the manager’s support is fundamental, as Karina tells us: “The manager helps the collaborators to get where they want to be.”

While this is a very different approach from bxblue’s, there are similarities: criteria are defined by areas and teams. “The consultant is evaluated by customer’s satisfaction, maybe by worked hours. At support, one sees how many requests were attended and how many SLAs were met. Sales teams have targets,” Karina told me. Glauce complements: “Employees are evaluated for main responsibilities, goals, targets, and objectives. And there is a development plan for each one, developed together with the manager.”

Growing sideways

One of the most interesting points from the conversation was about something also encouraged here at Liferay: exchanging roles and teams. I, for one, changed teams many times. It happens both at bxblue and Red Hat.

“We are incentivized to change teams through internal selection processes,” Karina told me. The good side is that, when there are no vacancies or budget for promotion, the employees can develop themselves by expanding their horizons. Glauce complements: “At RH, there are always opportunities. Sometimes we don’t have the budget or the ‘next step,’ but we always have more responsibilities. There are horizontal, vertical or forked careers, it is possible to change areas of expertise, become a specialist, etc.”

Are sideway moves a solution for career growth? In my opinion, it can be a good complementary tool. Naturally, though, they do not replace promotions. Both collaborators and HR departments need the awareness that those do not substitute growth. On the other hand, I believe it can help a lot. By changing teams or departments, I myself have solved problems I thought demanded a promotion. I still looked for an upgrade, but the change was a breath of fresh air.

Summing up

Today, maybe even more than at the time of the interviews, companies have to make an effort to keep their collaborators. With more and more companies adopting remote-first, the challenge is yet more significant. Well-defined career plans, such as bxblue’s, are a great benefit to keep professionals. They are not mandatory, though, as Red Hat’s distributed model has proved. Team and area changes are also helpful, although, personally, I believe it is necessary to pay attention to avoid stagnation.

What do you think? Please comment below!

(This post is a translation of A Evolução da Carreira Remota.)