I’ve worked for clients who wanted me to come in to the office and I’ve been surprised how two people, sat a few feet apart, have no idea what each other do all day.

I’ve worked for clients who never ever meet face to face and they know exactly who is doing what and what their progress is.

The key to it is putting the right infrastructure in place.

When I had a team (based in England, Russia, Nepal, Pakistan and Australia) we would sit in Slack for most of the day. All tasks were published on a jobs board and progress tracked. We would sit around and chat about what we had for breakfast or what we’d watched on TV, then get to work. If anyone got stuck or wanted help they could just ask. If a task needed a decision making, the outcome and the reasons why were recorded right there on the “job sheet” itself so everyone knew what was going on.

Working from home has been forced upon lots of us and we’ve all been making do.

But if you want to stick with it and make it part of your company’s future, you need to put the right infrastructure in place, or your communications will get even worse than when you were all sat blankly staring at each other over your desks.