REMOTE WORKING NO PANACEA: CEOs
It doesn't suit every employee, and communication suffers, executives say
Yishay Waxman had to completely rethink his hands-on approach to running Thriver Technologies Inc., a Toronto-based food and culture platform for businesses, when the March shutdown was announced.
The co-founder and president said the company in March had 170 employees working in 12 Canadian and U.S. office locations, but the pandemic forced him to reduce staff by 50 per cent, with the rest working remotely, though the Toronto office was retained.
The change was difficult for everybody in the early stages.
“The hardest thing is that all that collaboration and family-style atmosphere we had in the office disappeared overnight,” Waxman said.
One of the major lessons he has learned in managing a 100-percent remote workforce for the first time is that the model doesn't work for everyone.
“It's fine for me, because I have a home with a backyard and can get outside,” he said. “But a lot of younger staff are stuck in one-bedroom condos.”
But teleworking is still hard for a leader who thrives on an opendoor policy in the workplace.
“Every employee could come and talk to me any time,” Waxman said. “My challenge has been how we keep that interaction going.”
Waxman makes a point of scheduling a monthly conversation with every employee to see how they're doing on a personal level. Those conversations also help him feel like he's part of the team, too.
He believes a completely remote model is not sustainable for larger-scale businesses, but a hybrid model will continue once employees can return, noting that it would be difficult to ask people who have moved outside the city to come back five days a week.
The energy and creativity of a dynamic office environment is something Yvan Boisjoli, co-founder and chief executive of Bold Commerce, a Winnipeg-based developer of eCommerce solutions, also said he misses.
“I love working side-by-side with co-workers and having that constant back and forth,” he said, adding there are some positives from moving the company's 350 staff members to a virtual model.
“The silver lining is that I am becoming a better leader. I was very hands-on, but had to learn to let go and trust the team with the tasks at hand.”
Indeed, Bold Commerce's entire leadership team had to change the way they operated and connected, which is especially important in getting a sense of who might be struggling with their mental health.
“Some are living alone, others are having to juggle work with family demands, so we make sure we communicate regularly,” Boisjoli said.
Communication becomes even more important if a company is in the midst of expanding, which Brett Belchetz, co-founder and chief executive of Maple Corp., a virtual health-care platform provider in Toronto, is finding out.
One key in managing a remote workforce is training new employees and instilling a company's culture and values.
“That's very difficult given our numbers have doubled since the pandemic began,” Belchetz said. “Many of those haven't met face to face. As much as you try to establish relationships by video, it doesn't achieve the same effect.”
Progress has been made in developing new ways to interact, but the biggest issue is maintaining everyone's morale and mental health during their isolation.
“That has nothing to do with the company,” he said. “Rather, it's the net effect that the pandemic has had over everything.”
Still, Belchetz doesn't see Maple going back to its original office setup in its entirety when the pandemic is over.
“Keeping the positive energy of an office environment is important for many people,” he said. “But there will be the expectation that every company will have a more flexible work-from-home policy.”
A hybrid working model is also in the cards for Clearbanc, a venture-capital firm in Toronto founded in 2015 that operated a 100-per-cent in-office environment for its 250 employees until COVID-19 hit.
“We were a very hands-on, inthe-office-all-the-time culture,” company co-founder Michele Romanow said. “We really saw the power of collisions, where you could grab someone and talk in real time.”
But the shutdown made Romanow realize that the company needed to do things differently for different groups of people. For example, she never used to distinguish the introverts from the extroverts, but, as it turns out, introverts do much better working from home.
Another lesson was the importance of increasing communication, with the company promising to be transparent with everyone every day, something she said the co-founders' virtual morning sessions with staff help achieve.
Something seems to be working, since Romanow said productivity seems to be rising, instead of dropping as once feared.
One other positive is that Clearbanc has been able to nab some major talent from the United States, including a 22-year veteran of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other notables from New York and San Francisco.
“Switching to a remote model has been a huge advantage in bringing in a talent power base,” Romanow said. “As we continue to scale, a hybrid model has to happen, because there's always someone on a video call somewhere.”
I love working side-by-side with co-workers and having that constant back and forth. The silver lining is that I am becoming a better leader. I was very handson, but had to learn to let go and trust the team with the tasks at hand.