Wethos Remote Talent & Organization Development

MY ROLE:

Research lead, overall solutions architect - organizing people, process, and executing documents to reach project goals.

PROJECT BACKGROUND:

We lived by the advice we gave our own clients: hire based on skill and team add, not geography As our team grew across timezones, so did our challenge in scheduling meetings and creating connections across departments. Duplicative conversations clogged calendars and created longer working hours.

CHALLENGE:

Define what remote work looks like for Wethos.

USER RESEARCH:

Individual interviews with members of our team turned up key insights:

West coast team member were working earlier hours than they were comfortable with.

Newer team members felt like they didn’t know their team, in spite of meeting clogged calendars.

The most senior and most junior employees alike didn’t have the time for the heads down or deep focus work for solving hard problems .

Employees had varied preferences for meeting times - some feeling most productive in the AM, some in the evening.

Co-founders were clogging calendars with meetings (earnestly) seeking to understand work and management styles / department.

Our team has grown but the way we operate has not. It is absolutely critical to product success that we get solutions to support a fully remote team, unique from the tools in person offices.

HYPOTHESIS

Create a framework for day-to-day operations for a fully remote team that supports increased collaboration, reduced redundancies, and improves both collaborative and deep focus work time.

RESULTS

Clearer expectations of goals across new hires and existing team members, as well as opportunities to talk about those goals and how to meet them

Alignment on management among co-founders and directors

Create Operations Guidelines that set standards for a team working across borders, timezones, and beliefs

On-board to a tool that will integrate more face-to-face and less message-to-message (sococo)

Create an “AMA” time with the founders in order to reduce confusion in management, however still give all employees the opportunity to communicate with founding team

Schedule monthly digital happy hours, coffee breaks to build team culture