What Makes a Great Remote Company? The RemoteRated Factors

We built RemoteRated.com to be totally focused on the factors that make or break a remote company. While no rating system can be exhaustive, we feel confident that with a few key facets accounted for that our ratings can provide a coherent and insightful sense of a company’s remote health and competence. At the very least, it’s a good start!

So what exactly does it mean to be “RemoteRated?” What criteria do we believe matters, and why? We’re sharing this today to help others think about their own strengths and weaknesses, and to hear from the remote work community — what did we miss? What do you disagree with? We want to hear from you!

Our assessment is pretty simple, we provide equal weight to leadership, transparency, career-opportunity, and benefits.

• Remote Leadership: Managing people is hard, managing and leading them from afar is even trickier. This criteria invites raters to consider: How engaged and effective are management? How supported do remote workers feel? How clearly are goals and objectives defined and managed? Is work-life balance considered?
• Remote Transparency: Transparency around objectives, decision-making, strategy, and issues are all critical for teams to function with efficiency and trust. This criteria invites raters to consider: Are decisions communicated clearly and in a timely manner? Does the company use clear metrics/objectives to establish goals and direction?
• Remote Career Opportunity: Growing a career means different things to different people, but broadly involves title upgrades, promotions, raises, increases in responsibility, skill development, and visibility. This criteria asks raters to think about: Can people grow their skills and expertise working for this company? Is talent recognized and rewarded? Does the company hire and promote from within?
• Remote Benefits: The challenges and needs of remote employees are different than traditional office employees, and great companies recognize this fact. This criteria focuses on considerations like: Does the company provide support to set up home offices? Are things like internet or phone bills subsidized or covered? Do team members get support to learn or travel for work?
• Remote Policies: We know that it’s valuable to see what exactly a company offers as far as policies, support, and benefits are concerned, so RemoteRated.com lays them out in clear terms.
• Remote Stack: We wanted to capture and share the tools and products that companies are leveraging to work. We think this is important for two reasons: 1) We want to help people learn from best practices and trends, 2) We know that in some cases, tech-stack and tool-set mismatch can be a source of stress, so we want to drive transparency to prevent this from being an issue.

We would love for you to add your rating to a company on RemoteRated! If the company isn’t already there, create the company profile in just a few short minutes (we’ll give you a Starbucks gift card to say thanks!)