I don't think it's correct to assume that working from home results in reduced communication, communication takes on different forms but good communication out of the office is equally as much of a challenge as good communication inside the office.
Both require a smart approach to communication, both are negatively affected by too little or too much.
The best thing we did outside the office was short term to-do lists in Trello (one list per team member, limited to around 5-6 items for the day.) This has a lot of the benefits of a stand-up meeting, but is very useful because it's updated through the day and you can easily see what everyone's working on right now. We use this to complement our task management system (Jira) and have been very happy with the results so far.
Apart from that, the rest of our communication requirements are covered with Google Apps (email, groups, chat, video hangouts with screen sharing for adhoc comms and meetings) and we haven't had any more communication issues than when we used to all be in the office together.
> good communication out of the office is equally as much of a challenge as good communication inside the office
Working from home may have a bunch of advantages, but it's pretty tough to believe that it's anywhere near equal in your ability to communicate. Even if you had a permanent skype/hangouts connection, you still have a much lower fidelity communication medium than face-to-face.
It depends on the company. As a remote worker at a 90% remote tech company of ~1000 employees, I have experienced much better communication here than at any other 90% in-office tech company of similar size.
The key here is "good" communication. A 90% in-office company will have lots more communication than a 90% remote company. But hardly any of that communication is getting written down, recorded, or shared among potential stakeholders (on a an internal mailing list, IRC channel, or video meeting for example). A 90% remote company communicates in ways that are more inclusive, robust, and efficient.
A thousand workers, 90% remote - wow! Can you tell us more? Does the company have any official comment on this (presumably it's a fairly fundamental tenet for the owners?)
Have there been any studies that have looked into this? I've been a remote worker for the past two years, and honestly haven't felt communication to be a problem. It definitely needs the company to have a culture that supports remote workers though.
Interesting, who creates the to do lists in Trello? The team member or team leader? If the latter, do they call the team member to discuss in advance or do they hash the detailed requirements out on Trello by adding comments to the to do?
Everyone manages their own lists, having a single person manage the lists would probably be a micromanagement nightmare for both the manager and the employees.
We all have visibility over all the lists so if we feel anyone has prioritisation wrong we just discuss it and the person will re-prioritise if it's deemed necessary.
Note that we still use other task systems to manage overall priorities, for development we use Jira and that's the single source of truth for development prioritisation. The Trello lists are for short term personal prioritisation and are very malleable, and encompass personal tasks that one would work through.
Both require a smart approach to communication, both are negatively affected by too little or too much.
The best thing we did outside the office was short term to-do lists in Trello (one list per team member, limited to around 5-6 items for the day.) This has a lot of the benefits of a stand-up meeting, but is very useful because it's updated through the day and you can easily see what everyone's working on right now. We use this to complement our task management system (Jira) and have been very happy with the results so far.
Apart from that, the rest of our communication requirements are covered with Google Apps (email, groups, chat, video hangouts with screen sharing for adhoc comms and meetings) and we haven't had any more communication issues than when we used to all be in the office together.