The future of work will offer flexibility—placing the decision where, when and how to work in the hands of the employees—including hybrid and remote choices. A smaller percentage of companies will call for their staff to return to an office setting on a full-time basis.
Since a majority of companies will have a distributed workforce, I thought it would be prudent to find a business that already tried and succeeded with this concept for a longer period of time than during the last 18 months of the pandemic. It also seemed reasonable to seek out an organization with at least over 1,000 employees, composed of people working in different U.S. cities and other countries.
My research brought Bounteous to mind. It has been frequently cited as one of the best workplace companies. The firm is a digital consultancy that co-innovates with some of the world’s biggest brands to help them digitally transform and become category winners.
Here’s an example of what the company does: it built pizza-delivery-giant Domino’s online-ordering platform. Bounteous took the company from zero e-commerce to over a billion dollars in just four years (it has since famously been called an “e-commerce company that sells pizza”).
I spoke with Keith Schwartz, a former software engineer and now CEO of Bounteous. Schwartz leads a hybrid—leaning toward virtual—workplace for his 1,200 employees. He’s managed this work style over the last 20 years. For the vast majority of this time period, he has maintained a 90% retention rate. It dipped a little during the Great Resignation.
He was a trendsetter in this space, having his people work virtually before it became cool to do so. For him, this seemed natural. Schwartz is a software engineer and liked working remotely to focus on his coding without distractions. As he started hiring other software developers, they worked at home too.
When I asked him about the secret recipe to make this experiment work for nearly two decades, he seemed somewhat surprised by the question. Schwartz said that it wasn’t anything special, and went on to share what I believe could serve as a roadmap for companies going remote, offering maximum flexibility or hybridization.
It starts with talent. Since the company was always remote-centric, he recruited the best and brightest from around the world. To have a best-in-class business, it’s mission critical to have rockstars. He points out, like winning sports teams, the best athletes want to play together. They know that the results of having all-stars on the same team will elevate everyone, and win games.
Schwartz starts with the mindset that his people have “positive intent.” Many supervisors are suspicious and micromanage their staff, as they don’t inherently trust them. This is exemplified by the proliferation of spyware—or “tattleware”—that has been deployed by many companies during the outbreak. The snooping technology is used because managers lack faith in their workers, believing they’ll slack off if they’re not constantly watched and monitored.
He treats employees as adults. The CEO offers team members autonomy, trusts their judgements, encourages the free sharing of ideas and is transparent with what’s going on at the company. Bounteous offers interesting, challenging work that keeps people engaged. He actively listens to his people and takes action on their needs.
It’s also important for his team to feel that there is a sense of meaning and purpose to their work. The goals set are reasonable and not meant to stress people out. He wants people to feel cared for, as they do their best when they’re feeling safe. He asks for input and feedback, and addresses the issues brought up. Schwartz champions “collaboration centers,” where people—if they so choose—can go to an office and brainstorm concepts and work together on projects.
Management consulting firms charge fortunes to analyze companies and make recommendations in long-winded, jargon-filled reports. The lessons learned from Schwartz and Bounteous is relatively simple, straightforward and actionable:
- Seek out the best talent from anywhere.
- Empower your staff to do their best work.
- Trust your workers.
- Treat them like adults.
- Listen to their needs and take swift actions.
- Leaders should be transparent and show their vulnerability.
- Start with the mindset that people have “positive intent.”
- Give your team the space to do their best work.
His democratic, non-hierarchical ways to collaborate enabled the company to scale and succeed in a competitive marketplace—going against the likes of Google. His business model offers a blueprint for other organizations embarking upon the pivot toward virtual work environments.
Source: Forbes
