Sarah Lovelace describes how to build trust in order to foster effective communication in remote work environments. She also emphasizes clarity in the remote hiring process and how to be upfront with your expectations of potential employees.
Today Claude speaks with Sarah Lovelace, VP of People at Airbase. Sarah describes how to build trust in order to foster effective communication in remote work environments. She also emphasizes clarity in the remote hiring process and how to be upfront with your expectations of potential employees.
Join us as we explore the significance of transparency, organizational values, and managing expectations for a great remote work environment.
00:30 - Quick Hits
05:27 - Creating an employee experience
09:20 - Building the ideal remote environment
17:03 - How to build trust
19:54 - Measuring organizational health
26:36 - Creating remote culture
Find Claude on LinkedIn
More about Office Libations
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
Subscribe on Spotify
[00:00:14] Claude Burns: Hello and welcome to Office Libations Unwrapped. I'm your host, Claude Burns, and I'm here today with Sarah Lovelace, the VP of people at Airbase. Sarah, welcome to the show.
[00:00:23] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me, Claude. I really appreciate your time today.
[00:00:27] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation and learning from you. Uh, but to start, we got to get to know you a little bit. So we're going to hit our quick hit segment. Um, so coffee or tea?
[00:00:38] Sarah: both, um, both. Heavy, yes, heavy on the coffee pre noon, post noon, um, which we're recording this, it's at, you know, 12, 13, um, PM, PT. Um, I have now switched to tea, um, and I'm really into a ginger tea at the moment, so
[00:00:57] Claude Burns: can you hold that cup up a little bit more? Who's who's this?
[00:01:01] Sarah: It's a yellow, it's a yellow lab. This is Frank.
[00:01:04] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Frank. Is that, is that your dog, Frank?
[00:01:06] Sarah: Yes.
[00:01:07] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: No,
[00:01:07] Sarah: Yeah, he's the most handsome gentleman ever. So Frank will be joining us today.
[00:01:12] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Excellent. I have a German shepherd, so big, big dog guy. Um, what's your go to work snack? Okay,
[00:01:20] Sarah: okay, well, so this would have been different, when I was physically going into an office every day, um, and when I was physically going in, okay, office every day is going to sound like just really boring and I, I understand that this is not a snack. I was a really big gum person. Um, I was like, physically in an office every day, and I actually had this realization a couple weeks ago when I went to take a flight. I'm like, I haven't had any gum in like, 4 years now. And I'm very well aware that gum is not a snack, but, it was something I was thinking about recently.
[00:01:53] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: We sell lots of gum, so I would disagree with you. Did you like spearmint, juicy fruit? Like, you know, what was kind of a,
[00:02:00] Sarah: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's get specific about it. I like the dark blue trident. I don't know what flavor that is, but dark blue trident, and I preferred it when it was like the old school packaging, where it was like all the little pieces like stacked on top of each other, and then you did the, the wrapper. They were a little bit smaller. Like pieces of gum, they were a little bit thicker and I always felt like they were a little tiny bit stale. So they had a really nice sort of like bite to them.
[00:02:30] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: You are a gum connoisseur. That is, that,
[00:02:32] Sarah: thing
[00:02:33] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: impressive.
[00:02:34] Sarah: I'm really not. It's just like the, did you try, try that? You know, it was the gum that, it was the gum that my grandparents always had and my grandpa always had the, the cinnamon trident. So it's just, it's more about like, yeah,
[00:02:47] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah. The nostalgia behind it. Okay. You're retired. Money is no object. Where do you live?
[00:02:53] Sarah: Can I live in two places? No,
[00:02:55] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah. Money's, money's no object, so
[00:02:57] Sarah: it's no objects. I can, I can live, I can live in, in, in two places. Okay. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do like mountain and beach. so my mountain place I would live, I would definitely live in, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Like, for sure, hands down. Absolutely stunning there. Amazing skiing, amazing things to do in the summer, and it's just like, beautiful, fresh mountain air.
[00:03:20] and then I think that I would also do Um, something along, like, the beach, but not a, like, bright, sunny beach. I would do, like, something along, like, the Northern California coast or, like, the coast of Ireland, something like that where you have, like, the beach and the weather and it's, like, it's cool and brisk.
[00:03:43] I think I would do that. All
[00:03:45] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Um, last book you've read.
[00:03:49] Sarah: right. This is low brow, but, I'm in a book club with some friends. We're very casual about it and we use it mostly just to catch up. And sorry to my, my book club friends, but we just read the Love Boat series. I don't know if I would recommend it or not. Um, but it was really fun and it was a really good chance for all of us to, to get together.
[00:04:11] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: I mean, anything with friends is usually, uh, up like two, three notches at
[00:04:15] Sarah: Yeah. Anything with friends. Yeah. Yep.
[00:04:17] Favorite historical figure dead or alive.
[00:04:21] Okay. Well, I have to go with, um, with Ada Byron Lovelace. Um, she, um, she was the, uh, the grand dom of computer science. Um, Lovelace, there's a little relation there, I'm sure, like, you know, down the line. Um, and I just think it's really effing cool.
[00:04:38] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: That's awesome. All right. So now we're going to get into a little bit of about employee experience, um, and specifically, like, how does Airbase sort of think about creating that employee experience sort of, you know, through the employee life cycle. So let's start with hiring. I know you guys have, uh, kind of a unique hiring process and sort of what you're looking for.
[00:04:58] Can you sort of talk to us a little bit about that initial candidate interview, uh, period and, and sort of how do you find the right people for your team?
[00:05:06] Sarah: Yeah. So, this one is interesting. I'll kind of rewind it a little bit as well. So, just as far as, um, you know, as my background goes, pre joining Airbase, I had always been a part of, I think like a lot of people pre pandemic, I had always been a part of very strong in person, you know, work cultures.
[00:05:25] I was an early employee of Bucks. I was there for about seven years. Grew the team from, you know, 60 to, you know, post going public and 1200. And then I was part of a, vertical farming indoor company, called Plenty. We hired like 600 people in the course of like three years and raised like half a billion dollars.
[00:05:43] It's tech, but it's also like, you know, very much like you have to be there in person to do it. And I think so much about. Creating employee experience, at least when I came into this job at Airbase. I really question, can you create a good employee experience, even from, like, hiring, um, and, you know, experience sort of like day to day, if you're not actually physically sitting across the desk.
[00:06:08] it's, from somebody. And you can't see them and they can't, you know, read like tone and body language and, you know, Slack is the best form of communication, said nobody ever, right? And so, like, how do you, like, how do you sort of get that, like, magic and, and sparkle? And so, I was really, Like, I was really hesitant, about, about joining and thought, like, well, can you be a VP of people and do that really well in a remote environment?
[00:06:34] And then how does that translate down into all the different functions? And, you know, I think the high level is like, yes, you can, but like, there's definitely pros and cons to it. Then to answer the specific question, you know, kind of around like the hiring side and how do you create really good experience, you know, a lot of it is about creating different touch points along the way with your candidates.
[00:06:56] You have to be, I think, in a remote environment where you have a less traditional, you know, quote, unquote, like on site interview sort of format. You have to be really clear with people what you're doing, why you're doing it and what the process looks like, and how they should think about the process, right? Like, otherwise, you feel like you end up like chopping together a bunch of random interviews and people feel like they interview for about like five years, right? Versus, you know, maybe just like a couple of hours. So you have to be really clear and intentional about it. You have to communicate very actively up front with candidates, and then you have to have a lot of like touch points along the way.
[00:07:34] And so for us. One of those touch points is for every candidate that we're interviewing and then make an offer to, we always do a values round, where we go through our company values and. You know, basically to make sure that candidates know what they're signing up for because we're also clear about who we are and who we aren't.
[00:07:53] Right. And if someone is wanting a lot of like water cooler talk and, you know, to sit across, a desk from their boss, we're probably not going to be the best place for you because we're 300 person company. We're globally distributed. We're in 16 different countries. We're not going to be able to meet what you're looking for.
[00:08:09] Claude Burns: Yeah, and I thought one of the things, in our pre conversation that was unique was you guys have always been sort of distributed. You've always been a, what we call now a remote first company. And so when people are looking for, you know, what that experience is, like every company has an employee experience, whether it's remote, hybrid, in person, how your employees, how you interact with them is that experience. When you guys are hiring, like what makes that ideal remote employee or that ideal person to come to work for Airbase?
[00:08:40] Sarah: So I will just say sort of like outside of like, you know, the values, and, you know, a lot of the things that, you know, you would maybe like look for in someone in a startup environment, right? Like, okay, like they're hardworking, you know, they're detailed oriented they're nice.
[00:08:56] That's one of our values, like be nice. But a lot of, I think for us, what we have found works really well, um, for people. To be hired in a remote environment, is going to be people who are good at prioritization. They're really good communicators, , and they have good internal boundaries. So on the prioritization piece and the internal boundaries piece, to me, those two really they go together.
[00:09:23] And what that means for us is, like, you're in 16 countries, and the majority of, for us, we have about 50 percent of our team is based in India, and works predominantly, IST hours, about the other 50 percent of the company, while maybe not physically located in North America, does tend to Support more North America based hours.
[00:09:45] And so depending on like the time of year, you know, our two core zones of working, it can be somewhere between 12 and a half or 13 and a half hours apart from each other. And it creates an environment where like, you could feel like you're always on. And so you have to be able to like, you know, again, prioritize things as they like, as they come in, because you're always, you're always going to be getting a slack.
[00:10:11] You're always going to be getting a notification, but you have to be able to prioritize and like, you know, okay, this is something that, you know, is a really big deal. And I probably need to adjust my schedule and work on. Or this is something that can go ahead and, and wait. And I think that for, you know, individuals who can help create some of those like boundaries for themselves, communicate it with their managers, get the support from their managers to do so, you have to be able to have that, like that separation.
[00:10:36] But it's really, really, really hard to do. And obviously it goes without saying a lot of it comes from like your manager and like the, the top two.
[00:10:44] Claude Burns: Yeah, that's really interesting that you brought that up because I think as a lot of company move to like kind of a hybrid. Some people work better in the morning. Some people work better in the evening. It feels like work is all the time for some people And I think those boundaries that you just sort of talked about, can you kind of give some advice on how do you set those boundaries, you know, as an, uh, as both as an employee and like as a manager.
[00:11:06] So your team knows that, Hey, it's, it's okay if you don't answer my email at 5 PM. Cause I know you're up at 6 AM supporting, know, we're on coast, like East coast time. Is that something that's documented? Is that something that is a conversation with the manager?
[00:11:21] Can you kind of just walk me through that?
[00:11:22] Sarah: Yep, so, I will say it's a conversation with the manager, and it's also always role specific, right? Let's say
[00:11:29] Claude Burns: Got to support the customer.
[00:11:30] Sarah: Well, it's for the customer, right? Like I think, you know, if you're in a, oh my gosh, and our support team is, is amazing. So if someone in support listens to this, it's just, it's an example, but our support team is phenomenal, right?
[00:11:41] Like, but let's say that your job is, you know, on support and you decide, you know, what, like the North American hour is just not going to work for me. I'm going to work in these like different hours. Okay. Like, right. That's not going to work. So always starts with, okay, well, what's the business need and what's the, like, what's the objective.
[00:11:59] And it always has to, again, as you said, it has to start with supporting the customer. And then it really comes down to like communication with your manager. So I'll like give some examples of things that I do with my team. So I set like very clear guidance with everyone on my team, especially my directs.
[00:12:15] Actually, we'll do it about, I feel like we probably do it about once a quarter, and it's more so like reminding, so that I give them the space that they need, but I'll, I'll say, hey, here's generally like what my work schedule is like right now. I have 2 little kids, I have a 6 year old and a 4 year old, the mornings can get a little bit dicey, then I always have this period, you know, between like 5 and 8 PM, you know, where we're doing dinner, bath time, bedtime.
[00:12:44] And I don't want to miss that stuff. It's amazing, right? But That also means like, you know, for me, that's something that I have, I still have other responsibilities at work. So I always try and set with my team, like I might have some off hours, right? Like I might need to catch up on some things. I'm not advocating this, but for everyone, it's different.
[00:13:03] I might need to catch up on some things on the weekend. I might be doing like some pretty late emailing. I don't expect you to respond to that, and I always tell them that, I also, every time they go on vacation, every single time, we always agree like upfront, Hey, here's the things that are going on.
[00:13:21] I always say, how can I help support you while you're out? And then I set the expectation with them. I don't expect them to check their slack. I don't expect them to check email as long as they have, you know, properly delegated and communicated like work and tasks. But what I do say is, if anything is urgent. I will text you or I will call you and I think especially, the people on my team that report to me who are managers, like that's really important, right? Because there's just some institutional knowledge they have, there's things that they're going to want to weigh in on and it also gives them the freedom to know they don't have to be checking slack in this thing because they know.
[00:14:03] The direct line that their manager will call 'em on. And I've never had to call anyone on vacation like ever. And I also set the same expectation with the weekends as well. But I think again, sort of being clear about like my expectations with them, when I can work, when I can't work, and what that may or may not mean for them, but also I think that path of escalation and defining that is also really important.
[00:14:27] Mm-Hmm?
[00:14:28] Claude Burns: Yeah. And I think that creates a, you know, an employee experience where people feel that they can take time off and not get cut out of the loop, right? Because people usually take pride in work and they want, they want to be part of the process. And then of be like, sorry, we're not going to put you in for, you know, the, the game winning play.
[00:14:44] It's like, no, I, I, I want to be there for that.
[00:14:47] Sarah: What I have found is it's those communication paths outside of the normal communication channels. Because also when you're on vacation, yes, you may take pride in your work, but like, you also need some like time away and reflections. You can be a better employee. You don't want to be checking your Slack or your email to see if like, you know, your manager has like escalated to you. So, you know, that's where, you know, Having phones, it's amazing, right? And you have a different way that you can communicate with somebody.
[00:15:15] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah. And I think that what I, what I'm pulling out of this, it's really comes down to trust, right? It's like trusting your manager will take care of you, um, trusting your employee will, you know, sort of separate work from what, they need to do personally, but also to make sure they're doing what needs to be done for the business.
[00:15:33] I think it comes down to trust. So now the question is, how do you Build that trust and sustain that trust. Not just on the onboarding and someone's like excited, right? How do you do that continually at Airbase? Do you do any sort of, weekly meetings with teams? Do you bring the whole company together?
[00:15:51] What do you guys do to help build those trust bonds?
[00:15:55] Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think, look, a lot of the trust bonds, like, at the end of the day, I think you can do a lot at a company level, but a lot of the trust bonds, they practically come right between the employee and the manager and helping them build connection. That being said, we do help employees and managers, build some of that cadence in as well.
[00:16:15] So, we give them, we give them some tools. One of those tools, something called like 15. 5, um, similar to like a lattice, right? A lot of like, you know, performance engagement, but there's a couple things, that it does. Like the first is it allows, employees to go in every week, and just put in one through five, how are you feeling this week? And it can be work related, it can be non work related. But what that does is it allows everyone a point of reflection every week, and it allows the manager, you know, to sort of like see what the employee has going on. I don't want to use the word dictate, but like strongly encourage one on ones every single week, um, you know, between managers and employees, because I think sometimes so often, like with trust, it just comes down to like, lack of communication. Either the manager doesn't know what the employee is working on, the employee isn't clear of the manager's expectations. So it's, it's really about helping, you know, managers, employees connect on a very, very frequent basis to make sure that they're both clear on expectations.
[00:17:19] And, you know, that's an obvious, but sometimes I think it gets missed. And then, you know, the last thing, um. I mean, ultimately it also just comes down to like company results as well. I don't care what role you're in, in the organization, there are something results oriented that absolutely every single person can measure. Whether you're doing it on a big scale or a small scale. Pulse checking, you know, those types of things, whether it's around. Delivering revenue, delivering quality of code, delivering, you know, sort of like a certain number of signed like quality offers. A lot of, I think, trust just comes over time when you start to see like a lot of those results stack up.
[00:17:56] Claude Burns: No, that totally, totally makes sense. You kind of mentioned collecting a little bit of data to sort of see how the organization is doing. What data do you use to sort of see how the organization health is, whether from a employee experience happiness or retention. What, what are you looking at? I think you guys did some interesting stuff on compensation recently. What do you guys look at
[00:18:16] Sarah: Oh,
[00:18:18] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: now? You're excited, right?
[00:18:19] Sarah: I love this.
[00:18:22] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Mm-Hmm.
[00:18:22] Sarah: this question. I think that, um, I think that, like, overall, like, organizational health, right? You can measure it in a, like, you can measure it in a lot of different ways. And so for us, we do it in a few ways. So the 1st is, um. Obviously, you know, first and foremost, we look at attrition.
[00:18:39] We also look at attrition type, um, attrition type by tenure, location, role, department, , you know, and I think the reason that we try and break it down, you know, so granularly is that every single, every, all departments have their own sort of attrition type. You know, rhythm, right? Generally, you see sales organizations, there's a higher rate of turnover. Sometimes engineering, you see sort of like longer tenure, but that can also depend on, on country. And so we definitely will look at, you know, organizational health through retention. But we also look at like, regrettable and non regrettable attrition as well. And having some conversations with like a few other people, leaders recently one leader was telling me, Oh, we haven't had any attrition, you know, in the last year.
[00:19:23] And I was like, Ooh, like, that's not great. Like, you know, I think you want. Don't know if sound like a little like woo or not, but like, to me, I always know that an organization is doing really well. Like when you can see it breathing and part of like seeing it breathing and like seeing it move is sort of like the ebb and flow of, you know, of coming in and, and out and, again, I know it's like a little bit woo, woo, but like, I always like to see like an organization sort of. Breathe. So that's one way that we look at organizational health. Um, we also will look at organizational health, through engagement surveys. And we try not to do them very often, uh, because I need to think that, you know, not a whole lot changes. But also I think you have to be like realistic about where you are as an organization as well.
[00:20:08] Like, if you're a 300%, you know, startup organization, you may not be able to take action on a bunch of things in an engagement survey. Okay. That even sort of like, you know, warrant employees, you know, giving a lot of, you know, time to it. Whenever we do look at engagement, we also will look at engagement, again, by like all the different, you know, breakdowns in terms of class centers and departments and teams and location and age and tenure.
[00:20:36] But then we also will overlay it with employee demographic information to help give some, like, some context. So like an example of something like that, um, you know, we had a There was like one part of our organization, like some very specific questions about what's my career growth, like what's my long term path?
[00:20:59] And by overlaying, you know, tenure, department, location into it, like the answers. And I think that's where a lot of, a lot of these questions became very clear and not scary because it was a part of the organization where the average 10 year was well over three years actually at that point. And when you looked at the data, it was mostly coming from people who were starting to even get like, closer to the 4 year mark.
[00:21:25] And those are very, very reasonable things for employees of that tenure to be asking. I don't know. Does that answer your question? Mm hmm.
[00:21:33] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: I think, you know, how organizations use data around sort of people management or, um, I think it's really interesting because
[00:21:41] Sarah: hmm.
[00:21:41] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: of this art and science, right? Because it's really hard to put a number on a page. You can put number on output or like activities, but there's so many things that people bring that can't be measured a lot of times.
[00:21:53] And there's also, I think the point you just brought up, it's like everyone's getting to this point where there may not be a path in your organization that they can really get promoted to or advance. So maybe there needs to be a different path for them. And if you start to identify that you can either, you know, help them realize that. You kind of need to go somewhere else, right? You got to find
[00:22:13] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:22:13] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: job or hear different opportunities within the organization. So you don't lose your, you know, good people that have all those intangibles, all those core values that you really want to represent your company. But there's just unfortunately, because of the needs of the business, not growth for them where they're currently at.
[00:22:30] And that trust and that communication is paramount to having that conversation to say, Hey, I need you to step back maybe even a little, maybe even to cut and pay. To have opportunities, you know, further down the line.
[00:22:42] Sarah: Yeah. And I think that that, like, that piece of it, like, around growth, um, I think back to some other companies I've worked for and, you know, and, and sometimes it was like, it's like you brought someone in, like you, you had to make it work as like a people organization, right?
[00:23:02] And it's like, you had to find that path and you, you know, and, and I think, yes, like the organization, like if you're gonna hire really good people. They want to grow, like, they're ambitious, like, you have to, you have to help open the doors for them. But I also think that as an organization, you don't have to be all things to everybody. And I think sometimes where organizations get into a trap with their people and where that, like, that trust and that communication and that, like, goodwill can kind of, like, break down is when you're also not honest with employees, right? Like, I mean, there, like you said, you might get to a point where maybe.
[00:23:38] The employee is ready for the next thing, but the business need isn't there, or maybe you're adjusting and changing your hiring strategy and you may not have a promotion path for like, for a few years. And like, that's okay. You try and limit that as much as possible, but you also as an organization, you cannot, you cannot be all things to everybody.
[00:24:00] And I think when you're really clear about that with yourself and your employees, much less frictionless. Process overall, and a lot less like contention and like angst and anxiety.
[00:24:15] Claude Burns: For sure. And I think it comes back to your point on just good communication organization. So I want to switch gears a little bit because I think you can have a unique perspective having sort of worked in a very, in person sort of culture building and now in a very sort of remote centric culture building role. What are the sort of advantages and disadvantages to both?
[00:24:38] Sarah: I think that definitely, like, you know, the pros on the, the culture building to the remote side of the world is that, you have to be very specific and intentional about it. You have to spend a lot, you have to spend so much more time on Zoom. You have to spend a lot more time. And I think it's harder for some people to do than others, but you have to spend, you know, time at the beginning of a meeting, doing a little bit of rapport building, getting to know people, you know, on a personal level, because those things aren't going to naturally happen, you know, sort of on like the moments in between, you know, where you're going to get, you know, a snack.
[00:25:17] Like some trident gum or, you know, a cup of ginger tea or, you know, something like that. So you have to be really intentional about it and you also have to, you know, set out time for it. I'm honestly like, you know, I think the cons of it overall, like again, you're never going to be able to fully recreate an in person work environment and that's also okay.
[00:25:36] I think the thing that's made it really successful at Airbase, we know that there's pros and cons. Like we, like, we're also clear about who we are and who we aren't. And we know that that's not going to work forever. Like remote doesn't work for everybody all the time. And that's also okay too. But I just think you have to be really clear about like what you're signing up for and know that like, there's going to be some trade offs.
[00:25:59] But again, we think that at least for the employees who are here and I can, you know, say for myself, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.
[00:26:07] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: If you were to give kind of like one sort of like, you have to do this. If you're building a remote team, remote culture, what would it be?
[00:26:15] Sarah: You absolutely, like, absolutely have to have a few moments in time where people can get together. there isn't anything that's going to replace, like, a little bit of in person connection. Whether it's you decide, like, once a year, you're going to do a full, Company retreat, or maybe you're going to do, um, some very light sort of like geographical, like something in person, you know, very, very once in a while.
[00:26:43] I think that's a really important thing to do clearly separating out time for managers and employees to get to know each other. Also adding a little bit of like fun and sparkle into your all hands Zoom meetings. I think it's really, really important to get some fun music going, you know? But then I think the last thing is, clearly write down and articulate your values. And again, be really clear about what you can offer and what you can't offer. Like most of the time, I think, again, companies, employees, like you kind of end up missing the mark when you think it's something else and it's not what you thought you were signing up for. Follow
[00:27:22] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: True. I think I have this theory, and I'm curious to get your take on it. That theory, it's a theory, for remote companies, I think one of the most important things, and I think you're going to agree with me, so I'm just going to put it, put it out there right
[00:27:37] Sarah: Ooh, both statements! Okay,
[00:27:39] Claude Burns: I know, I know.
[00:27:40] Well, you've said a couple of things that make me comfortable feeling, sharing theory with you,
[00:27:45] Sarah: I'm really excited now.
[00:27:46] Claude Burns: is that remote companies need to be even more intentional about what they're looking for and who they are during their hiring process compared to a traditional in office or, you know, traditional sort of company, because you can kind of adjust that person, you know, as.
[00:28:01] Behaviors and those people kind of conform to norms a little bit more naturally in person. Are you a t shirt office, a suit office? Like people kind of get that vibe and sort of, you know, assimilate a little bit. Whereas if you're remote, you don't have as many of those sort of, subtle sort of, things to get everybody on the same page.
[00:28:21] Sarah: you don't. So, yes, I would, I would agree with that. Um, and,
[00:28:26] Claude Burns: that as a win.
[00:28:27] Sarah: take it, take it as one. No, I definitely, I definitely agree with that. And again, part of how we do that at Airbase is every single person who interviews at the company, they read our company values beforehand. They do a values round. Because again, like, we're.
[00:28:42] Thank you. You know, we're a seven year old company, you know, we're a, we're a first grader at this point. A lot of our like, you know, behaviors are, um, you know, they're already, you know, kind of in some sort of a rhythm. I think also you should have to, like, it helps to sort of build that trust with people because again, like 90 percent of the time, like you don't know what your employees are doing every day.
[00:29:05] And like, you don't need to, um, as long as they know what they're signing up for in the kind of environment and what's expected of them.
[00:29:12] Claude Burns: And so another thing I like to get your, opinion or feedback on is sort of the, the trends and things that have changed from sort of, you know, pre COVID to, to now in sort of hiring and employee experience and just the, just generally the employee experience for companies. Have you noticed any changes?
[00:29:32] Sarah: I think that just in, in general, there's a lot less emphasis and this, I would say, I'll answer it kind of like ununiquely to Airbase, but, there's a lot less emphasis on, you know, all of this, like, in office perks, I think that in the, from my experience, right in like the 2010s, I felt like this like sort of like a rat race, like who can have the coolest office, make sure when the person comes in, you're, you know, you're showing them, you know, a box, we had a slide, you know, from the first floor to the second floor, it's like, make sure just on the side, like the kitchen, the cafeteria, like, is there, you know, is there a laundry service pickup that comes, you know, are there, is there a pool table in the office?
[00:30:14] Right. And I think that if anything, I think that what the I don't know, my, it was my opinion, but I think if anything, like, what a lot of, you know, COVID, but then really sort of the transformation to, like, remote work, you know, taught us is that, , Work doesn't need to be all of those different things.
[00:30:35] It doesn't have to create and sort of like fill this entire void in your life where, you know, you can find all of your social things to do at work. It's, they're going to take care of absolutely everything for you. You're going to have, you know, an office with a slide in it, which was really effing cool at the time.
[00:30:51] Claude Burns (2): Your kids probably love the slide though.
[00:30:53] Sarah: they would, they would, the slide did get a little dangerous at one point and it didn't get better. It got that like, it got the, it got the caution tape on it, but like, we got a lot of years out of that thing and it was really, really, really fun. But I think that also, you know, what maybe more people are looking for, and maybe this is, you know, just me in my late 30s now, um, you know, I feel like people want to go to work.
[00:31:16] They want to do something meaningful where they feel appreciated. But at the end of the day, it's also work and they want to make sure that they're taking care of themselves outside of work and, you know, and having lives that aren't just fully centered along, you know, the workplace. Um, and that's one thing I've seen change.
[00:31:35] It's something I've seen dramatically change for myself. Could also be the introduction of having kids too. That definitely helps. I think, you know, work can be work and can be absolutely amazing. And I love what I do, but it doesn't also need to be the place where I go and play pool and go down the slide either, and that's okay.
[00:31:51] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Makes sense. I appreciate you sharing. I got one more question for you. So I gotta make it a good one.
[00:31:57] Sarah: Okay.
[00:31:58] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: When you think of like what your. What you're building at Airbase and this multinational sort of thing, how do you really try to get everybody aligned with all the different cultural differences and sort of people differences, not just sort of the, you know, logistical challenges of communicating across time zones, but how do you get people who are probably very, very different all to work together on the same page?
[00:32:20] Sarah: Yeah, I think that I will say this like this sort of like getting people aligned and on the same page and sort of understand understanding this is something that is true for a global company and this is something that's also true of, you know, people who have, you know, are coming into the same office every day.
[00:32:37] Like the examples I that I give, and this is kind of answering your question, but I will answer it at some point, but when you get to a certain size, let's just call it like a hundred people, even if you had sales and engineering sitting right next to each other, like sales would still say engineering doesn't understand my problems and engineering says like sales doesn't know how to sell my things, right?
[00:32:57] Like, and so I think that you, there are just certain things like that, that exist. And then sometimes in a global workforce, they just get really heightened. One of the things that at least we have done at Airbase, and try to be successful around that is a lot of communication and over communication.
[00:33:16] We have a weekly all hands, we have this sort of, you know, cadence and schedule where we make sure we're sharing our company priorities, why we're doing them, right? Employees have to hear things. Actually, everybody has to hear things at least 10 times before it sinks in. So we always try and do that.
[00:33:32] But then we also, again, one of our values is, you know, is be nice. And, Slack is not the best form of communication. And we always encourage people, if you have to have like a big discussion, um, or you don't feel like You're getting anywhere on Slack. Don't just keep sending the Slack messages, get on a zoom, get on a phone call and, you know, and, and see, see someone.
[00:33:55] And then I always give people this example when I first started, it was the first time I was managing a team outside of the U S and, um, you know, one person on, on my team, Maggie, I've told her this story many a time, but she, I think it was like my first week or I, I maybe hadn't even like started yet, like officially.
[00:34:16] And, I sent her a Slack message and something, it was like something about like meeting. And she replied as she's based in India. And she replied, sure,
[00:34:26] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah.
[00:34:28] Sarah: sure. There's no period. There's no exclamation part. Like, where's like, where's the smiley face. And, I get on the meeting with her and I'm, I'm so nervous.
[00:34:39] Like, I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I have this employee, like, who I've heard amazing things about. She already hates me, like, Oh my God, this is going to be really awful. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to win her over. And I get on and everything's fine. And then I had a conversation with her later and I realized for her, sure is my version of okay, X on her smiley face.
[00:35:03] Right. And so part of setting people up to have a lot of those, you know, like sort of those like cultural differences, we talk about it a lot, right? Oh, Hey, when you said this. Like that's that, Oh, I get that. Oh, that's a colloquialism. Like where you are, this is where it is for me. So we really encourage a lot of it, like open, like open dialogue and open communication.
[00:35:25] We are going to be doing some, you know, some trainings. I think, you know, everybody could just use a little bit, you know, more understanding. Um, we also do like these country celebrations where every quarter, people from around the globe talk about, and, you know, and share and celebrate different holiday that they have, but it's like, it's hard, but a lot of it is exasperated through.
[00:35:48] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yes, text communication is not the best way to get everyone on the same page.
[00:35:53] Sarah: It's really terrible. Yeah.
[00:35:55] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Sarah, I want to thank you today for joining me. And, uh, I see more and more of our clients using AirBase every day.
[00:36:01] Sarah: I love that. Excellent.
[00:36:04] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: plug. That is actually a fact. Um, so,
[00:36:07] Sarah: excellent.
[00:36:08] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: yeah, I saved that to the end. So you didn't, you didn't know anything about it, but yeah,
[00:36:11] Sarah: I didn't, I didn't, I didn't even say yes to this knowing, knowing that. All right. I'm going to take that as a win. I'm going to put that in our Airbase's love channel.
[00:36:21] riverside_claude_burns_raw-synced-video-cfr_office_libations un_0024: Yeah, well, uh, but it's true. So you guys must be doing something great, but really appreciate your thoughts on sort of building that remote first team and, what you're doing and, sharing just your general experience with me today. So thanks again.
[00:36:32] Sarah: Yeah. Thanks so much. This is fun.
[00:36:34] Claude Burns: Thanks for listening to my conversation with Sarah Lovelace on Office Libations Unwrapped. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for future episodes with inspiration, ideas, and strategies to optimize your workplace culture. And remember, happy employees make happy customers. Until next time, I'm your host, Claude Burns.