Last month, Axios published an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data titled, “Welcome to Remote Work’s Equilibrium Point.” In it, Editor Alex Fitzpatrick noted that the number of workers citing Covid-19 as the reason for working remotely has plateaued. WFH Research, in conjunction with the University of Chicago, Stanford University and ITAM likewise noted that the “percentage of paid full days worked from home is stabilizing.”
“For many workers, remote work looks like it’s here to stay — but early pandemic-era prognostications about the impending death of office life were greatly exaggerated,” said Fitzpatrick.
While the office has by no means lapsed into obsolescence, employers and employees alike are beginning to see the contours of a more permanent balance between remote and in-person work.
For Sandra Martinez, vice president, talent management for video messaging platform BombBomb, the last two years have been an opportunity to retool the company’s culture for a remote-first future.
“Since 2020, we have become more open to hiring talent where they live and have more remote employees now than at any other time,” said Martinez. “Because we operate in more than 17 states, we’re flexible when current employees need to relocate due to personal circumstances. The more that remote work is the rule rather than the exception, the easier it is for each employee to feel valued as part of the team.”
Built In Colorado spoke with leaders from three remote-first teams to learn more about virtual best practices, pitfalls to avoid and the future of remote work.
From a Necessity to a Choice:
A business-class text messaging platform for real-time communication, TextUs is designed to improve how businesses communicate with their prospects, staff and customers.
What is the biggest challenge to establishing a virtual-first company culture? How is TextUs working to overcome that challenge?
Individuals now work in silos and are often silent sufferers when challenged. Working remotely in various time zones — where we do not get the day-to-day interpersonal interaction in a social or office setting — can be very isolating.
Employees have to be intentional about connecting with others. People managers have to be skilled at building virtual inclusivity through team meetings, remote tools and regular check ins. At TextUs, we work with each team member to understand how they can be most productive in their role while also contributing to the organizational goals.
Our role as leaders is to facilitate and enable productivity, and this looks different for everyone.”
What’s your number one tip for fostering connection and collaboration among virtual teams?
Be human. Learn to adapt to how each of your team members works best, which tools they need and how you can support their efforts. Having empathy toward their work and personal lives builds an enormous amount of trust so that, when things do get challenging, they feel comfortable asking for time to discuss it. Our role as leaders is to facilitate and enable productivity, and this looks different for everyone. This could involve bridging relationships cross-functionally to reach outcomes or removing blockers to efficiency and innovation.
What remote working tools do you lean on to reinforce culture?
Our teams use a lot of different tools depending on which department is involved. The most common specifically for culture are Slack, Notion and Google Forms for surveys.
Within Slack, we are using the Donut app for random “water cooler” topics to foster fun discussion and to create one-on-one introductions for team members across the entire organization. These are 15-to-30 minute meetings to just get to know each other or check in; this helps a lot when cross-functional collaboration is necessary.
We use Notion for a company knowledge base that includes both functional and social content — including individual bios to learn about the non-work passions of our teams. We also regularly use surveys to get feedback about our programs, tools and culture committee topics — keeping everyone involved in developing and living our company culture.
BombBomb’s one-to-one video communication software makes it easy for people and organizations to record, send and track video messages from a laptop or smartphone using Gmail, Salesforce or other common platforms.
What is the biggest challenge to establishing a virtual-first company culture? How is BombBomb working to overcome that challenge?
Prior to 2020, most of the BombBomb team was located in our downtown Colorado Springs headquarters. Our in-office culture was one of our main strengths and reasons for joining the team. Maintaining this strong culture has definitely been a challenge.
We made the transition to 100 percent virtual in March 2020. The transition was relatively smooth as our video email platform helped us effectively communicate with our customers and employees. We’re now a remote-first workplace with a smaller office in that same downtown building.
Since pivoting to a remote-first workplace, we’ve provided training and shared best practices on how to build connection in a virtual environment. Our leaders have been creative and intentional in building fun into daily interactions and meetings. It’s easier to focus on the work at hand, but you have to actively carve out time for the fun and social exchanges that happen more easily in person. We’ve added good news and icebreakers to most of our meetings, which has made it easier to get to know team members personally, especially new hires. We also use a Slack feature called Donut that randomly pairs employees for virtual social meet ups.
What’s your number one tip for fostering connection and collaboration among virtual teams?
“Relationships” is one of our five core values. Building connection through communication has been the best way to maintain our culture and core values. We build connection through daily syncs, weekly team meetings and regular one-on-ones between employees and leaders.
Our president provides Friday video updates to keep us all apprised of what’s going on in the business and with other teams. Departments release quarterly updates to spotlight achievements and developments in each area. We hold monthly leadership meetings to explore learning topics together and participate in breakout sessions. All-hands fireside chats switched to virtual as well, and employees have the opportunity to ask questions directly to our CEO and president.
Since 2020, we have become more open to hiring talent where they live and have more remote employees now than at any other time. Because we operate in more than 17 states, we’re flexible when current employees need to relocate due to personal circumstances. The more that remote work is the rule rather than the exception, the easier it is for each employee to feel valued as part of the team.
Even when there are teams that meet in person at our headquarters, we still maintain best practices to have each member participate virtually.”
What remote working tools do you lean on to reinforce culture?
We use our own product to build relationships when we can’t be there in person. Even prior to the pandemic, we utilized BombBomb for our recruitment, onboarding and training processes. We use video to introduce new hires to our core values, senior leadership team and processes throughout the organization.
Like other tech companies, we use shared workplace applications and video conferencing. Even when there are teams that meet in person at our headquarters, we still maintain best practices to have each member participate virtually. This encourages connection and doesn’t take us back to the time when only a couple of people were remote and felt like they were missing out. Our diversity, equity and inclusion team created inclusive meeting guidelines, and our people team also created remote work guidelines to ensure we’re respecting boundaries and differing time zones while being as inclusive as possible.
From a benefits perspective, we continue to expand healthcare options outside of Colorado and have promoted telehealth, which has been very effective in a remote environment. As we continue to hire outside Colorado, we’re becoming a stronger remote workplace.
Digital wealth management company Personal Capital offers free financial management tools and personalized advice from more than 200 registered financial advisors to help its customers grow their net worth.
What is the biggest challenge to establishing a virtual-first company culture? How is Personal Capital working to overcome that challenge?
The biggest challenge with establishing a virtual-first company culture is recreating that connection we almost naturally or subconsciously form from simply seeing someone every day. For example, in person you might find yourself in an elevator with Andrew from finance whose desk is two floors above yours, and who you would have otherwise never met if it weren’t for the fact that you both come in early on Tuesdays.
Personal Capital is working to overcome that challenge by encouraging and planning activities that give people a chance to have those everyday in-person interactions. Activities include our hackathon, in-person team and companywide gatherings, virtual happy hours, casual watercooler talks and book clubs, to just name a few. Moreover, the employees foster and encourage it. One colleague of mine shares cute and funny pictures of his cat every Monday to brighten people’s day. He calls it “Mookie Monday.”
There is nothing harder than making that first bid for connection and not knowing what you’re going to get in return.”
What’s your number one tip for fostering connection and collaboration among virtual teams?
For me, it starts with building a safe space where people can be open and vulnerable. We encourage employees to message their chief technical officer, chief information officer or chief financial officer for advice. We encourage them to reach out to a colleague, whether they’ve spoken or interacted with them before or not, and in return be met with that same openness and vulnerability. There is nothing harder than making that first bid for connection and not knowing what you’re going to get in return. As long as a company keeps building that safe space and encouraging that openness and vulnerability, it will continue to not just foster connections but thrive.
What remote working tools do you lean on to reinforce culture?
I rely on Slack and our various channels, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and even email. I’m always available via any means of communication. So is most of the team. I find that to be really beneficial.
