Over the last two and a half years, remote and hybrid working has become the norm — a majority of employed Americans have the option of working from home for all or part of the week, and 87% of workers who were offered remote work embraced the opportunity heartily.
While some companies are pushing for a return to the office, today’s strapped labor market is giving employees more power to push back for remote, or at least flexible, jobs. This isn’t just a pandemic response anymore — it’s a way of life, and it has the potential to make some businesses better. People who work from home have been reporting an uptick in their productivity levels without the distractions that come with an office — Oh, it’s Beth’s birthday. Cupcakes in the kitchen!
But both employers and employees have reported some downsides to remote work. Isolation can make people feel lonely and disconnected, leading to mental health issues. Learning and collaboration have taken a hit without the human element of being in the same room. And it can be difficult to create and maintain a company culture remotely.
Luckily, some seriously smart people have thought hard about how to address these challenges and make it work. We put a few of them onstage last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, and while you can watch the whole video, here are some of their best insights.
Be hyper-intentional when coming together IRL
Two and a half years into the pandemic, people are “actually clamoring to spend more time together,” said Adriana Roche, chief people officer at Mural, during a panel discussion at Disrupt.
Ironically, one of the main solutions to the woes of remote work is finding ways to bring staff together IRL. That might mean a couple of times per week in the office if everyone lives in the same city, but if the team is fully remote, companies have to be more intentional with how they plan monthly or quarterly off-sites.
“If you’re going to be spending all that time, all that money, bringing all these people together, you want to make sure you get the most out of it,” Roche said. “Intention is the biggest thing that we’re keeping in mind. Trying to understand really what is it that you’re trying to get and really build an event based on that.”
There are two main goals that companies should consider for off-sites: The first is ensuring employees connect on a human level in ways that will carry over to when everyone is back behind a screen. The second is using the time to be productive and advance workflow.
“The biggest learning for us over the last three years was that it’s very difficult to really build expertise in a domain or a subject through Zoom learnings,” said Deidre Paknad, CEO and co-founder of WorkBoard.
WorkBoard has been bringing together teams for deep immersion learning at headquarters for a few years now, but the company also just had its first big off-site, cutely called “Homecoming,” which involved more hands-on learning during the day and celebrations at night.
“It’s literally the difference between taking the elevator to the 48th floor and taking the stairs to the 48th floor; like you just get there so much faster,” Paknad said. “And after one of those we said, OK, that’s the new formula. We don’t care whether the CFO doesn’t like it, that’s got to be in the budget and we can’t afford not to bring people together, and right now… all we use our office space for is enablement.”
In response to an audience question about how to cater to the more introverted among us, Paknad stressed that a gathering doesn’t have to be a full company thing. It’s often more effective to bring one or two teams together where the relevance of information and the stakes of being there are higher for every participant.
Building social capital remotely
Depressed and isolated employees aren’t good employees. They may be able to stay productive, but they don’t bring to your company the kind of innovation and creativity that pushes boundaries. Ensuring that human connection from afar can be tough, but it’s possible.
Roche said that before team meetings, Mural employees do next-level icebreakers. One called “life line” involves telling a group four or five events in your life that impacted you as a person.
“It’s really incredible what comes out and people just get to know each other as human beings,” Roche said. “And then you’re kind of like, oh, now I understand why you respond the way in which you respond, and it just creates this familiar environment.”
Another idea out of Mural’s handbook is sessions offering both positive and constructive feedback, which Roche said builds a lot of trust and vulnerability.
Allison Barr Allen, an angel investor at Trail Run Capital who previously founded Fast and headed product operations at Uber’s money team, said companies should also be aware of where different employees are in their careers. Younger employees will want coaching and mentorship opportunities, and companies need to figure out ways to accommodate that remotely.
“We’re gonna have to reinvent how we do a lot of coaching and mentorship [ … ] and part of it, too, is figuring out how we rethink some of these models in the remote environment, where you as a junior employee may not just be able to sit next to a more senior person and just learn a lot by observing how they’re working,” she said.
Give every manager one framework to drive outcomes
Middle managers are not always great at translating long-term strategy into short-term strategy. Paknad said when a company agrees on the long-range strategy and defines what part of that strategy they want to execute for the next quarter, they should use the same framework with every manager across the organization.
“What’s their contribution? What impact are they going to make in this quarter? One framework for articulating that, for defining it, aligning it and measuring it, as opposed to what I think lots of us did in the past, which was to say, OK, each manager will figure that out. They will not,” Paknad said.
Paknad said that framework can be revisited and evolved every year as a company changes in size and scale, but that there should always be a common framework.
“Not only does it give you the same language, but it just makes it a lot easier,” agreed Roche. “And everybody’s on the same page [ … ] it’s a company accelerator.”
Measuring diversity, equity, inclusion
There’s no shortage of studies showing the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce. It becomes trickier to establish what that looks like when everyone is remote, and it becomes easier to check out during Zoom meetings where you keep getting talked over.
Companies need to be clear about what inclusivity and equity mean to them before they can track the metrics, Paknad said.
“We mean inclusion in the dialogue; we mean ideas are included, right? We mean opportunities to excel are equitably distributed, and we mean opportunities to make an impact are equally distributed,” she said.
One way to make sure everyone’s ideas get heard is to start meetings with a whiteboard where ideas are first and conversation follows. But ensuring everyone is heard is not enough. Instead, companies should be measuring who owns the key results. If there are just as many women on your team as men, but men own 80% of the OKRs (objectives and key results), then you’ve got a problem.
“The data has to inform what your culture really is, regardless of what you say it is,” said Paknad. “I think that inclusion and opportunity, inclusion and impact, is where our heads should be at when we talk about diversity and inclusion. [ … ] Coming to the company to be a spectator is not inclusion, and getting locked out of opportunities to excel and grow and impact and rise up in your career is not inclusion.”
Getting asynchronous workflow right
“I think time zones may be even more important than the particular country or location because it’s much more difficult to work with teams that are on the other side of the world if you only have maybe one or two hours of overlapping,” Barr Allen said. “While the goal is to minimize meetings, they still happen, and employees in another country may not feel included if they’re not able to make the all-hands.”
Barr Allen said one fix for that can be setting up your company’s org structure so people feel like they can work with others in similar time zones to them.
But whether employees are scattered across the continents or all in the same city, working from home has allowed a level of flexibility that helps people achieve work-life balance.
“I think asynchronous is actually about liberating our time and giving us control back over the one thing we have to give at work, which is time,” Paknad said.
For some companies, gone are the days of adhering to a strict 9-to-5. If I want to start work at 5 in the morning because that’s when I’m most productive, take a break to drive my kids to school, work for a few more hours and then hit the gym, then great … until you have to sign in for a 9 a.m. meeting with your team.
To do asynchronous work in a way that doesn’t hinder everyone’s autonomy, the company has to have systems in place that provide transparency on direction, action and progress. Otherwise, you’ll have to schedule yet another Zoom call to confirm that direction again and decide what actions to take.
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