Remote work for SEO’s — Elaine Richards // Basecamp

Elaine Richards, COO of Basecamp, discusses embracing remote work. The pandemic basically catapulted many of us into remote working. And, while many of us loved the idea of skipping the work commute, as SEOs our willingness to reach out to cross-functional patterns unfortunately decreased. Today, Elaine talks about the future of remote work.
About the speaker

Elaine Richards

Basecamp

 is a little camera shy

Elaine is COO of Basecamp

Show Notes

  • 03:38
    37 signals and remote work
    37 signals, Co-Founders of Basecamp, is a fully remote company with 50% of its employees in the US and the 50% outside. So, its optimized for people in different time zones, less meetings, and more asynchronous communications.
  • 05:24
    The price of asynchronous communication
    To be successful at being completely remote, you need the right processes and technology. Employees must be willing to read and write a lot in place of weekly status meetings.
  • 09:07
    Integrating in
    In person meetings are still important. 37 signals does two sub team meetups per year. But, its also about taking a creative approach to online team building as well.
  • 13:08
    Onboarding new people in a remote environment
    Set up Zoom calls with an onboarding buddy, managers, etc to get them acclimated with company culture. You can also send new people company swag to provide a first day wow moment for them.
  • 17:36
    Reaching out to cross
    Data from Microsoft indicates that when office employees went remote, the frequency of reaching out cross functionally decreased. Even though they were still doing a good job of working with their teammates.
  • 18:50
    Overcoming the challenge of SEOs not reaching out to cross
    Research indicates that we are predisposed to making our circle of contact smaller, not bigger. So, many of us have to work around the mental blocks we have against reaching out to someone outside our everyday circles.
  • 20:32
    How SEO leaders can help to encourage communication with cross
    Include making friends from other departments in peoples development plans and quarterly objectives. People can choose to go out for coffee, have a phone call, etc.
  • 24:17
    Assessing what your leadership will support
    Its important to ensure that theres alignment between your leadership and your organizational culture. So, you must ensure that leadership is willing to support remote working so that everything can flow smoothly.

Quotes

  • "We are a fully distributed company. We're actually about 50/50 employees in the US and out of the US. I don't think there's a single city with more than eight employees in it." -Elaine Richards, COO, Basecamp

  • "Even when we talk about remote versus in the office, we're not necessarily talking about just two things. We're talking about four to five different kinds of scenarios." -Elaine Richards, COO, Basecamp

  • "Organizational culture drives so much of employee behavior and drives so much of our ability to collaborate. That's really important. " -Elaine Richards, COO, Basecamp

  • "If you tell employees, it's three days in two days out, but you pick which three and which two, and you pick a certain set and I pick a certain set and we're on the… What did we really just do here?" -Elaine Richards, COO, Basecamp

About the speaker

Elaine Richards

Basecamp

 is a little camera shy

Elaine is COO of Basecamp

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