Workplace of the future
Every year since 2016 we've closed Buffer for a week at the end of the year. It’s like a reset, except across the whole company.
In this article, the Buffer Content team shares exactly how and where we use AI in our work.
With so many years of being remote, we’ve experimented with communication a lot. One conversation that often comes up for remote companies is asynchronous (async) communication. Async just means that a discussion happens when it is convenient for participants. For example, if I record a Loom video for a teammate in another time zone, they can watch it when they’re online — this is async communication at its best. Some remote companies are async first. A few are even fully async with no live ca
Like many others, I read and reply to hundreds of emails every week and I have for years. And as with anything — some emails are so much better than others. Some emails truly stand out because the person took time to research, or they shared their request quickly. There are a lot of things that can take an email from good to great, and in this post, we’re going to get into them. What’s in this post: * The best tools for email * What to say instead of “Let me know if you have any questions” a
At Buffer, we’ve long had teammates who have side projects in addition to working at Buffer. It’s pretty common for our team to run their own blog, we have several published authors on the team, and many of our engineers run apps that have nothing to do with their regular work. Though some companies prefer that anyone on their team not have side projects and actively discourage it, that has never been our way at Buffer. In fact, working at Buffer means you get a free Buffer account, making it e
I’ve been a Customer Advocate at Buffer for nearly five years. Throughout that time, I've worked hard to find the best way to guide customers to unlock the full potential of our platform to help them achieve their goals. I found a specific passion for our customers in the onboarding part of their journey by helping them look for the right plan to meet their needs, ensuring they have the necessary documentation to allow their company to move forward with our platform, and empowering them through
For many years, as a small startup, we did not do any sort of formal performance reviews. Instead, we did regular one-to-one meetings between managers and teammates, usually on a weekly basis. We also gave feedback to each other openly and regularly. (We even experimented with doing feedback transparently, but we went away from that practice — one of the few times we’ve scaled back a transparency experiment!) And lastly, every teammate had a regular mastermind with another team member, which oft
We’re firmly in the Information Age, which means we can have 25 synonyms for a word within seconds and get a boatload of facts about anything else we can think of with the tap of a touchscreen. But along with being able to access all of it comes the challenge of organizing, finessing, and presenting it. Composing a new marketing email for your small business, drafting slides for a presentation to your grad students, and drafting an iconic Twitter thread? You’ve got an ocean of info that you’ve g
We’ve been writing and publishing Buffer’s State of Remote Work report for six years now, and we’ve learned a lot about the trends, benefits, and struggles of remote workers along the way. This year, after releasing the report, we had several people comment that they wondered what the results would be like for only people who are managers — and it’s a good question! We weren’t clear enough when publishing the report that the State of Remote Work already includes people managers and remote work
In 2019, we introduced sabbaticals at Buffer. The concept is to reward long-tenured teammates and invite them to take a well-earned break from work. Most professionals have to leave their jobs to take a break longer than a typical one- or two-week vacation. Sabbaticals allow teammates to take that break and return to Buffer, refreshed and recharged. This is one of our most cherished benefits for this reason. When a teammate reaches five years with us, they are eligible to take this fully-paid s
We’ve always aimed to chart our own course at Buffer for how we approach traditional business practices, and severance is no different. Recently, we’ve adjusted our severance policy to apply in more situations. We’ve introduced the concept of “mutual separations” for the cases when a teammate and their manager both feel that the teammate’s chapter at Buffer has come to an end. We strive to be generous to these teammates who have spent a portion of their careers and lives with us at Buffer. In t
For some, remote work can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. I recount my own experience working from home as well as share how my Buffer colleagues manage to have active social lives while WFH.
Imagine that you are the only teammate online today in the Australian time zone in your company. You work in customer support and are trying to help multiple customers with questions that you’ve never come across before, and you can’t ask your teammates who won’t be online for at least another six hours. You feel isolated and demoralized, and these customers are losing their patience… Or, what if you just joined a new company and your new teammates are welcoming and friendly, and they tell you
For the last six years, we’ve published the State of Remote Work report. We use this report to do a deep dive into the experience of remote workers around the world, their work structure, their struggles, and their career growth and pay. This year, we had 3,000 remote workers respond to the State of Remote Work to help provide insights. In this post, we’ll cover the top seven insights from the 2023 State of Remote Work. We’ll take a deeper look at some of the trends that currently exist in the
At Buffer, we regularly share cultural spotlights to connect our global team and help us understand one another at a deeper level. Cheryl, one of our customer advocates, presents a deep dive into Ghana.
At Buffer, we regularly share cultural spotlights to connect our global team and help us understand one another at a deeper level. Sophie, our Growth Marketing Manager, presents a deep dive into life as a digital nomad.
At Buffer, we regularly share cultural spotlights to connect our global team and help us understand one another at a deeper level. Ben, one of our customer advocates, presents a deep dive into Thailand.
Our new time-off dashboard is meant to help our team members prioritize their mental health by providing a deep dive into how we utilize our vacation time as a company.
In early September, our team scheduled and organized our first in person meetup in Lisbon, Portugal. The initial plan was to gather in person and spend a week together, getting to know each other better and invest time into strengthening our team. However, due to a mix of reasons, from family leave to health, only half of our team was able to attend in person. I am the Engineering Manager for the Core Foundations team at Buffer, and we build and maintain the core elements for accessing, schedul
As an entirely remote team of more than 80 people, how we communicate is critical to how we operate as a company, collaborate, and build a solid remote culture. As they say, clear is kind. So we aim to be clear in our communication with each other across the team, and clear as a company what those expectations for communication best practices are so everyone can be aligned. We didn't always have communications expectations written down. When I joined Buffer in 2016, it was something I learned t
After hiring three new teammates I took an extended period off of work on sabbatical. This time ended up being really positive for my team, here's why and how I set everyone up for support while I was out.
Read all about the idea behind Build Week, what it means, and how we're approaching it.
In this post we share how we collected our DEI data, used it to identify focus areas, and formulated a roadmap to support our goals, ensuring DEI is a foundational component of our company strategy.
At the beginning of this year, we had a chance to explore new asynchronous training ideas for our remote team. Here's how we formatted it and encouraged participation.
