Jack Altman is the CEO & co-founder of Lattice, a performance management and engagement platform.
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I recently joked that I can’t imagine spending the next 30 years of my life in virtual meetings, awkwardly speaking over other people while fighting malfunctioning microphones.
Obviously, I mean this more figuratively than literally. I love doing phone calls, and I try to have fewer meetings in a remote setting and instead focus on asynchronous writing wherever possible.
But still, I stand by the sentiment. Remote work, while wonderful in many ways, misses so much of the in-person goodness that an office provides. We’ve got the industry-wide employee engagement data to prove it.
So that’s why Lattice is moving to hybrid work. Let me explain how we got here.
When we launched our company in 2015, our first order of business was building a strong home base. We imagined our HQ as a hub for collaboration and a keeper of our culture. For the first five years, we reaped the benefits of that vision.
Working shoulder to shoulder with great people on an inspiring mission felt rewarding and energizing. We were all part of something meaningful.
Being physically near people meant information could flow easily. A new breakthrough was one impromptu conversation away. Every couple of weeks, I’d meet a new employee and invite them for a coffee. It’d be a quick conversation, but enough to kickstart a relationship. We learned and communicated as a team. Our company felt like a living organism.
That was my life for five years. We created the HQ of our dreams, built a strong business and supported thousands of clients around the world.
But in 2020, everything changed — twice.
A Baby And A Pandemic
In January 2020, my wife gave birth to our first child. With a new baby in our house, my personal life changed entirely. I felt my IQ dip and EQ spike. My sleep schedule went up in smoke. It was life-altering but manageable.
Three months later, following the rapid spread of Covid-19, San Francisco issued its shelter-in-place order. Like most other companies in the Bay Area, our company went from being 100% in-office to fully remote. Suddenly, things weren’t so manageable anymore.
We spent the first few weeks in crisis mode. We redesigned how we worked as a distributed team. We relearned how to collaborate and communicate while scattered hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Balancing a new baby, a global pandemic and a wholesale organizational rethink was a little chaotic — but we got through it.
After a few months, I was shocked when things started to feel normal again. To my surprise, I realized I was really starting to enjoy my isolated working environment.
In my home, it’s just me, my wife and our baby. There’s no one else around to distract me. I can get a coffee, walk about and just think. If I need to concentrate, I can grab a laptop and block out the rest of the world with headphones. Despite all the massive changes, I felt alert, engaged and productive.
But as weeks turned to months turned to quarters, the shine began to wear off.
Zoom, Slack And Donut Meetups
In the fall of 2020, I began to really miss the wider team.
For months, the only people I talked to were colleagues I had meetings with. So unless I had a work reason to reach out to someone, I wasn’t interacting with them. I wasn’t asking about someone’s weekend plans. My connectedness dropped off a cliff. Across our company, it was the same story. Our engagement scores dipped because everybody felt isolated and detached from the organization.
Reflecting on our past year as a remote company, we’ve done a lot well. We’re working in a whole new way across video calls, Slack messages, Donut meetups, virtual happy hours and many asynchronous Google Docs. While we’ve learned to emulate some of the in-office goodness, there’s a lot we can’t recreate.
We have a tradition at all-hands meetings where employees celebrating their “Lattiversary” share their favorite company memory. I recently heard some employees joking, “What is an employee who joined in the pandemic going to name as their memory — a screenshot of a Zoom call?”
For many of us, work sucks without deeper, real relationships. I’ve often spoken about the three pillars of company culture: purpose, growth and community. This year of quarantine has challenged that need for community — to be around people that you like and know and feel a connection with.
Last year, I felt skeptical about remote work as the future of work. As we head into the second year of the pandemic, I’m even more certain that our future needs to have elements of both worlds.
It’s Not All Black And White
During our company’s early years, I experienced the value of an in-office culture. Through the pandemic, I enjoyed the advantages of a remote-first lifestyle. I want to harness the best of both worlds.
As we’re thinking about our return-to-work plans, I know there has to be a balance that we lacked before. We don’t have the specifics yet, but we see a hybrid model as the optimal way forward.
If you’re hoping to adopt a hybrid work process, imagine your offices as “hubs” where teams can come in on designated days to maximize connection and serendipity. But don’t expect them to be there 40 hours a week. Complement in-office collaboration with remote work from home or wherever else helps each individual do their best work.
Some days, I wake up and feel highly outgoing. Today, for example, I wish I could go to the office and see everyone. But other days, I’d rather be heads-down. Instead of forcing people into a fully remote or fully in-office routine, hybrid work empowers each individual employee to work however is best for them.
In the future, companies that can be adaptive and create setups that favor individuality flexibility will be the ones that ultimately win out. I can’t wait to see what that world looks like.
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