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SALT LAKE CITY — With Utah moving to the yellow, or low-risk, phase, KSL.com reached out to multiple companies to see how they handled the transition to working from home and to see if that’ll be an option moving forward. Some answers have been edited for length.
What are your general thoughts on working from home?
Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO, Podium: Overall, it has been surprisingly positive. One of the biggest blessings in our field of work is that we can effectively do our jobs from just about anywhere. I credit the success of WFH to our incredible team and how hard they have dug in with everything that has been going on, but I have been pleasantly surprised how well it has all worked for Podium. I think that it has highlighted a couple of things that we have taken for granted on a social level. We have had to work hard to replicate that in a remote environment. ... I feel like despite all the distance, somehow we have grown closer through this process. Seeing your coworkers (and their families) at home shows a new side that you don’t see when we are all in the office.
Josh James, founder and CEO, Domo: Working from home is helping us do our part in protecting the health and safety of our employees and their families.
I’m grateful that our business is well suited for a remote-work situation. We’re still able to provide great care and service to our customers, as well as sell and easily deploy and scale our cloud-based technology to new customers.
Jared Turner, president and COO, Young Living: I never believed in widespread working from home. I have always found it important for employees to be together for company culture and for productivity. However, I’ve become a convert after our company pivoted immediately to remote work in light of the COVID-19 crisis and I see it staying long term.
Scott Beck, CEO, CHG Healthcare: Over a two-week period, we moved all of our employees out of the office and into their homes. This was a huge undertaking and we were pretty nervous about how well it would work. Would our employees be productive? Did we have the right technology to allow people to communicate and collaborate efficiently? Would we be able to maintain the people-centric culture we’ve cultivated over the past 20 years? There were a lot of unknowns and it was scary. The good news is that it has gone much better than we expected and we’ve found that, generally, not only have our people adapted to their new work situation, in many cases, they prefer it. Even when we open our offices again, I think there will be a lot of people who will want to continue to work from home, at least part of the time.
Meghan Tuohig, Chief People Officer, and Carter Lee, Chief Administrative Officer, Overstock.com: We had a successful transition to working from home as a company! It took a few weeks to get all of the details ironed out. While it is a different way of working, we have not seen a loss in productivity or a major impact on our goals as a company. Today’s technology makes working from home more than doable, it makes it efficient.
What advantages have you seen from employees being able to work remotely?
Rea: I think one of the biggest discoveries I have had in this process is that there are way more benefits than I originally thought. Sometimes it is challenging to balance work and child care, which I can personally attest to this with a new set of twins, but we have seen some incredible benefits as well when it comes to being effective and getting work done. Some of the concerns I had about dips in productivity with remote work have definitely been resolved.
James: Because there are no physical silos — like the specific building each person works in or the particular breakroom in which they eat lunch — I’m seeing much more cross-functional collaboration. It’s interesting to observe the dynamics of a 100% digital workplace vs. a physical one. ... I’ve recognized for myself, and several employees have also shared with me, that being home 100% of the time, is giving us the opportunity to better understand and be more involved in the day-to-day of our family lives.
Turner: I have seen more productivity and camaraderie in the past couple of weeks from our employees that I wasn’t expecting. ... Our employees also exhibit the same ingenuity they always have, they just aren’t in the office. It has been amazing to me to see the level of engagement amidst all that is happening.
Beck: We recently surveyed our people to see how they are feeling about working from home. Around 80% said they’re having a positive experience. They also shared that not only are they more productive at work, they are also getting more sleep, taking better care of their health, and spending more time with family. It was amazing to hear such positive responses, given all of the stress and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.
Tuohig/Lee: Working from home has helped employees focus on family and their personal needs while still being able to attend to their job responsibilities. Unproductive time spent on commuting or dealing with other distractions in the office can now be spent on things that our employees value most. Also, in a strange way, working from home has brought us closer, and has created a level of connectedness that we don’t always get in the office.
What's been the biggest challenge of running a company being away from employees?
Rea: I think it’s difficult to separate the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis and our current phase of work-from-home. There is a lot going on in people’s lives right now. They are worried about keeping their families healthy. They were going out and seeing bare shelves at grocery stores. They see everything that is on the news. We have to see our teams as people first and right now those issues they are facing are by far the biggest challenges right now.
James: I miss the energy of being in the same space and collaborating in person. We’re applying more digital tools to help us all stay connected, which in some ways is providing a real-time pulse on how people are doing. However, it’s also easier for people to downplay some of the challenges they are facing such as juggling new responsibilities like homeschooling and child care — or just trying to be productive in a home environment.
Turner: I’m a very social person and my leadership style is working alongside employees to help mentor and guide them. But I’m seeing now that as the office culture changes, there are new and exciting ways for me to interact with my employees that also offers the balance they need to be effective at their work and to address their wellness.
Beck: First, fostering connections between coworkers is harder in a virtual world. I’m a guy who likes to get out and talk to people. I walk the office floors and I eat lunch in the cafeteria every day with different employees. I miss interacting with people face-to-face. But I’m proud of all the energy we’ve put into keeping the connections between our people strong through virtual team celebrations, social hours, and recognition activities.
We’ve also had to change the way we communicate. We’ve always focused on open and honest two-way communication, but with all the uncertainty around the pandemic, we knew we needed to communicate more frequently and more directly. ... Another challenge has been leading people remotely. Leading people while working from home is a new frontier for most of us and we’ve had to adjust the way we approach leadership, including how we recognize people, how we structure team meetings, and how we support our people through these uncertain times as well as ensure we take time to take care of ourselves.
Tuohig/Lee: The biggest challenge for us was making sure that employees didn’t feel isolated or disconnected from their team, manager or important company information. We have stepped up our efforts in this area to ensure the flow of information did not stop while working from home.
How has your mindset changed when it comes to the need for a physical location?
Rea: I think that there are undeniable benefits to both situations. I think that this process has given us an opportunity, whether we were looking for it or not, to test out whether or not work from home is doable. I think for Podium it certainly has shown that it is. That being said, I do think there are some cultural benefits and efficiencies of an office that are hard to replicate in an exclusive work.
James: I’m in no rush to re-open the office out of concern for the health and safety of our employees and their families. Most of our employees agree that we need to proceed with caution. That said, I strongly believe there will always be incredible value in having a physical space to gather and work.
Turner: Through this crisis, I’ve been able to reflect on the pros and cons of having a physical office. I think it is still important to give employees an area to collaborate and be together. But I’ve also considered the positives of working from home and how a more hybrid approach makes sense. Without the need to go to a physical office on a daily basis, we cut down on commuting and waste which we’ve seen improve Utah’s air quality and environmental impact overall. Working from home more literally has shown that it will help make us healthier and help protect the outdoors.
Beck: I still think it’s important to have a physical space. But it’s going to look a lot different, especially in the near future. We’ll have to reconfigure workspaces and shared spaces to make sure we’re social distancing. Certain amenities won’t be available right away, like the gym, the kitchen, and our fun rooms. We’ll return back to the office in phases and I anticipate it could take up to a year from now before we're all be back together again.
I think that face-to-face interaction is important, as are in-person gatherings and celebrations, as well as all of the usual daily interactions. I’m definitely looking forward to being back in the office when the time is right, but the top priority is the safety of our people and we won’t make any decisions that would put them at risk or make them uncomfortable.
Tuohig/Lee: The world has seen how important personal connections and interactions are to our collective psyche. Physical locations still play a vital role in driving company culture and face to face interactions. The pandemic will change the way we operate physical locations, but the need will not go away.
Will you give the option of working from home even when things return to a sense of normality?
Rea: I think that the work environment has certainly been changed. I definitely think that work at home optionality, depending on role, will certainly go up once things go back to normal. I think after this it is more test-proven.
James: No, but the option does provide more flexibility for employees to schedule potentially longer vacations or getaways around the holiday season and summer vacation. So that is an option/application we’ll look at more closely.
Turner: Our team is already looking at incorporating a long term work from home policy. I’m finding that work from home is not just a nice business practice, but that it’s also reflective of our values in our state: family, health, work/life balance and overall wellness.
Beck: Definitely. Again, one of our goals has been to become more flexible in how we do our jobs. This experience has accelerated that work by leaps and bounds, and we want to continue to build on the momentum. Right now, we’re asking for our people’s feedback to understand how they want to do their work moving forward — whether that’s from home, in the office, or some combination of both — and we’re starting to plan how to make that happen in a way that works for our people and the company.
Tuohig/Lee: Yes, we likely will, but the details are still to be determined.
