Coming from different conferences around the state our host and Director of Accounting, Jamie Nau together with our founders, Jody Grunden and Adam Hale bring about a hot topic that's been making a lot of buzz in the industry. In this episode, they share what they learned and from experience and give sound advice for remote first companies. Highlighting three important foundations that make Summit CPA Group a successful remote workplace — People, Processes, and Tools.
"Just do it. It's one of those things that if you think about it and you try and make it perfect it never will be. No one working in the office will ever be perfect. So (it's always) come out of your comfort zone and step into the risky area and go remote. You just have to do it." - Jody Grunden
The finer details of this episode :
Episode resources
Jamie Nau: Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's episode. I'm your host, Jamie Nau and I am joined by Jody Grunden. Today we are talking through a topic that is really hot right now. So the reason for this topic was we got an email of some questions on the best advice we have for running a remote first company, or even starting a remote first company. So that was a great email we got. And then last week, both of us, all three of us were at different conferences and this was a very hot topic. So we thought it was time to talk through this again. So we're excited, we've been doing the remote thing for a long time and I'm going to let Jody start real quick just to remind people about our history with remote
Jody Grunden : Yeah. We started back in 2002 as a traditional brick and mortar company, and it wasn't until 2013, we started experimenting with remote. We had a client that, not a client, but an employee that moved down to Texas. We were located at that point in Indiana. And we were wondering, how can we do this? Well, coincidentally, we had a client that was completely remote. One of the first remote companies in the world. And for about two years, we learned a little bit of how it worked, what didn't work, that sort of thing. And so we thought, let's go ahead and give it a shot with this one remote employee. It worked pretty well. It worked for a while. I'd say for probably about probably 9 - 10 months. And then the employee felt pretty isolated. And at that time we had to kind of figure out what to do differently. And then in 2014, we ventured into the fully remote world and jumped right into a lot of pushback originally from our team. At the time, there weren't many remote companies. We were actually one of the first 125, according to Forbes, to go remote, which was kind of cool. So there wasn't many other employers we could lean on at the time. But in 2014 we made that switch. In 2015, we were feeling it out, and then from there on it worked and we were like, let's do this going forward. And so, you know, unfortunately I owned the building that we were in and had to figure out what to do with that. But we started hiring outside of Indiana and have not looked back.
Adam Hale: Yeah, I was one of those early dissenters. I was like, I don't know if I'm feeling this. I was not big on hanging out in the office for 40 - 50 hours a week. And the commute in, albeit it wasn't that bad. I just really couldn't get comfortable. Really what it amounted to was, you know, everybody I think is used to working from home and that if that's your experience, you know, working off of your phone or taking your laptop home or doing something like that, that's a completely different experience than actually being a remote worker. I would say once I had a dedicated space with a door, somewhere I could be closed off and I could, you know, walk through and be at home and also be at the office and set up all my technology. I like to use the word nesting. So once I got my computer set up, all my monitors, all my tech. Then when I started going into the office, after I got all set up, I felt the exact same way about the my home office. I ended up really wanting to be home. So, I think first step is, you know, in terms of developing remote workforce is just making sure that you have the technology and kind of the parameters around, you know, what nesting really means and helping your team be successful that way. Because again, if they're working off the kitchen table that is probably going to be a miserable experience.
Jamie Nau: No, I think that's a really good point because I know I was in a similar situation where I'd worked from home maybe once a week and then be in the office. I wasn't as efficient. I wanted my set up at home. Like you said, if I'm ever traveling and I'm in a hotel and I'm working from the hotel, it just feels different. You're trying to get the wifi and other access. So I think that's a really good point. So I'm going to throw the question to you, Jody. So this was the first question we got. So, if you were to give one piece of advice to someone that's thinking about going remote what would that be?
Jody Grunden: Just do it. It's one of those things that if you think about it and you try and make it perfect, it never will be. Working in the office has never been perfect. So, it comes from our comfort zone, step out. You just have to do it. You have to step out. And focus on your communication platforms. That’s a big thing. What I mean by that, you've got to find a way to communicate with your team to make them feel like they're part of a team and not feeling like they are on islands drifting around alone. Look for different virtual platforms. We use a platform called Sococo. But there's many out there. Find a platform that works for you, whether it's Slack or Teams or whatever that might be, and really stick with it and make sure that you're communicating and being really intentional with it. Adam mentions this all the time. Intentionality is the key to being successful.
Jamie Nau: No. Yeah. I think that's a great point as well. So I'm going to throw the next question to Adam because this is what comes up a lot. I know it came up last week at my conference quite a bit. Now that's your teams are working from home, how do you guarantee they're productive? Like, what would you say is the key to making sure people are working when they're at home and not just doing laundry and playing video games?
Adam Hale: I usually like to sit in their office and watch them why they're on. No, we're not doing keystrokes and stuff like that. I mean, if you're super concerned about it, obviously there are those software’s out there that make sure that your computer doesn't go offline for more than 10 minutes or something like that. But we don't do anything like that. I mean it's really about having a good management system. So we use ClickUp, making sure everybody understands what they need to do for the day of the week. That kind of a thing. And then you just got to trust people. So you know, if the work's not getting done, if people aren't being productive, it'll show up pretty quick in their work. We have regular check-ins with our teams. You should have those on a weekly basis. If you can manage it on a daily basis, again, it's about setting up your videos. So, Jody had mentioned Slack and they have a video piece to it. So that's perfectly fine as well. But Sococo our virtual office makes it where you can kind of see everybody in the office. So it just makes it real natural just to walk over and see Jody and Jamie are in an office together. I can knock on the door, go over, turn on my camera, see each other and just say, hey. This is what I'm doing. This is what I have to do. So I think just staying connected is important. And then managing, you know, a pretty comprehensive task list then making sure that everybody kind of knows what they're doing for the week and month.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I think that the key there is being intentional. I think having the check-ins on the calendar is important. I think that helps a lot. One of the things that I've started doing the last couple of months is oftentimes I'll have three or four meetings in a row, but then I'll have a half hour break. I make a point to get a drink of water or do whatever I needed for the first five minutes of that break. Sometimes I just pop into someone's office and am like, hey. Just want to see how things are going. It's a lot more than a check-in sometime. I get three or four questions that they were holding because they thought I was too busy to answer. So I just make sure to try to find people, especially newer people when people are first starting, making sure to connect at least once a week. I think that's worked pretty well.
Jody Grunden: Yeah. I think another big thing is just simply being on camera. You do need to really enforce it. The eye contact is so important, I think in a remote environment, building relationships, making sure you understand and you are feeling a part of something. The phone just doesn't do it. Typing doesn't do it either. We really feel that being on camera is a really big key to our success for how we've made this the work.
Adam Hale: I think the one cool thing and the one advantage, I think a lot of people think a disadvantage for working remote is culture. The reason why I say that is because I think you have to be deliberate about it. I think so many people kind of take that for granted in an office environment Culture just kind of happens. And maybe you got a great culture and that's fine. You have to really think out everything that you want to do in terms of, yeah, we need to be on video camera as a culture. If you turn on the camera and you're making the eye contact you really do create relationships, the check-ins become a lot more valuable. And then Jody, I know, you know, obviously you're big on team retreats. You can kind of talk about that, but I think that's a big differentiator too that you're able to repurpose some, you know, kind of just for lack of a better word, just kind of sunk costs into a building. That's probably not yours. In most instances and repurpose it for something that's a little bit goes towards culture.
Jody Grunden: Yeah. I think the team retreats are extremely important. Working remote you don't get the chance to hang out with people and get to know them a little bit better because you do have to be so intentional when you hop into someone's office or you hop on a zoom call. Whereas a team retreat gives you the option to hang out with somebody and not talk about work. Team retreats allow you to do that. And so what we've done in the past is we've gone to a pretty nice location, whether it's been Vegas or Nashville, or California or Indianapolis, and then have about three to four days for meetings. Maybe a workshop on a new software or something of that nature that you really wanted to cover and get everybody in as a group to work on. But the biggest purpose is just simply to get a chance to get to know each other. So when we structure our retreats we don't actually start doing anything until 11 o'clock. So they start at 11 o'clock and end at 5 o’clock, and from there we have a happy hour and then we have dinners that we put together where we kind of force people to get into groups of eight into which they can kind of mix and mingle with people they don't typically mix and mingle with. And then it seems afterwards, the teams hang out with each other. We usually get someplace where they can congregate. So the retreats give them a chance to hang out with each other if they want to. Then they come ready to go first thing in the morning for the conferences. We try to mix a lot of things in there too. Maybe have a fun day or something like that. So we try to make it fun. We try to make it something that they really want to go to, and we do it at least once a year. So, the team retreats are once a year, and we have mini retreats to break it up so that we are getting together one to two times a year.
Adam Hale: Yeah. Extremely important is the randomized dinners because you work remotely so whenever you meet a team member you are like, oh, I didn't realize how tall you were or how short you were or whatever. And people have a tendency stay with their own group of people they work with on a daily basis and maybe talk to a few people. But by grouping people and making them go to these dinners where they interact with people that they normally wouldn't. You can see new relationships evolve of each day. And by the time you get to that final event, that final dinner, people all across the board are hanging out and talking to each other. And what we see is that carries back to collaboration back in the office. So people that would have never interacted with one another now all of a sudden they're direct messaging each other, asking each other for help, maybe making fun of each other on a general channel, just having fun. So those randomized dinners I think are kind of a secret success because when you don't have them, I've been to events where they've had them and then all sudden they shift them away from. All of a sudden, you see people clicking back up and not being as connected again. It's really kind of a cool thing that you need to be really intentional about doing whenever you put together a team.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, because when you have a brick and mortar office, you can go in and you can see you've got 60 employees and it feels big. It feels like a lot of people, but when you're in the virtual world, like we're in you really only have four or five people that you're working with all the time. Like Adam said, it forces you to get outside your boundaries. Now your five person team grew up to maybe 12 people, you know, then maybe the next retreat it grows to 15 people and it's getting bigger where you can go and ask questions to people that they would never even think to ask a question because they didn't know that person.
Jamie Nau: Yeah. Especially if you do the dinner. Our dinners last for two hours and in that amount of time, you find a lot of things you have in common with people. One thing I noticed at our last retreat, I'm usually one to stay out and hang. And both nights we were adding more people into the late night group. I'm sure there were other groups outside of the ones I was hanging out with that were made of completely different people. So, the other thing we've discovered as a firm that is really important when it comes to a remote workforce is the hiring process. Making sure that you find people that are going to be successful in the in the remote workforce. So I'm going to throw this question over to you, Adam because I know you've been pretty involved in the interviewing process. So what are the things we look for and what are the red flags we look for?
Adam Hale: Yeah, I think the first thing is that we find a lot of people that are wanting to work remote but we need to make it clear and upfront that it isn't a part-time gig. And then the other thing is learning if they have a lot of other priorities. Making sure they understand the flexibility. A lot of us have kids and whenever you have to leave for the day for an appointment it's super flexible that way, but it's not a do whatever you feel kind of flexibility. I mean, it's pretty client-facing for us in terms of what we do. And so we need people dedicated during normal business hours. So whenever I start hearing, oh yeah, I run these other two businesses or I do this and I do that. And I, you know, I just want to be able to fit something in to still use my skills, it's definitely if not red, it's a yellow for sure. It's one of those things where you have to dig a little deeper and say, this is a full-time job. Do you have a dedicated office? Do you have a space that's just yours just like you would in a in office environment. So, that's probably the biggest thing in terms of remote work that I listen for. Whenever I'm talking to people I am making sure they understand again, not part time, and it's not one of those things where you can just kind of pick it up and stop and go all day long.
Jamie Nau: Great. I definitely agree with that. So, on the flip side, Jody, what's the one commonality we've seen in people that are successful in this environment?
Jody Grunden: I would say somebody that can multitask. Someone that can jump from one thing to the next, the next, the next, you know, especially for our type of work. That's very important. Outside of that, you know, just somebody that has the ability to listen. Somebody that can communicate really strong. Somebody that has solid technical skills and can manage video and communicate really well. We use an assessment called EQI, and that's how we look for the different soft skills that a person might have, you know, different emotional intelligence that kind of stuff. But I would say definitely camera readiness, self-awareness and ability to communicate
Adam Hale: Yeah, and sometimes you'll just get people that just kind of fool you. They're great, and then they just go off the grid. I mean, that's just one of those things that happen, but a lot of those soft skills that Jody talked about are the same things that you would look for in an internal person if they were on site somewhere. So I don't think it's really a whole lot different from that, but there's a lot of preparation and training that kind of goes into it once they do get onboarded.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, my takeaway in the hiring process is you know, obviously we gave a lot of good ideas here, but I think going into it with a plan, go into it knowing this is what we think is going to work for our environment because we are on camera all the time. We have a virtual office and we try to make it as realistic as possible. So that way, you know, hopefully the skills translate in a lot of ways. And like Adam has said, no one's perfect. You could hire somebody you think is super motivated and then you find out they're working nine hours a week and not really caring. There’s really no science to it, but I do think having a plan where you can catch the majority of the red flags early is really the key there.
Adam Hale: Being deliberate about the culture. Technology is really important. We do a tech stipend.
Jody Grunden: Yeah can you touch on that tech stipend a little bit? You mentioned that briefly. What does that mean?
Adam Hale: The tech stipend is we give all of our employees a couple hundred bucks on a PEX card, we just load it and they can use it for their office. If they need office supplies for their desk, for their computer, for their internet. And the best part is that it’s tax-free so as long as they're submitting receipts they don't have to pay uncle Sam on it. So it's a nice little tax-free benefit as well.
Jody Grunden: Yeah. In addition to the technology stipend we have an education stipend, very similar idea that employees can use for conferences and workshops to continue their education.
Jamie Nau: So we're right at time here. I'm going to throw it over to you both for one final thought about going remote.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, I would say the pandemic has given everybody a reset option to say, this is something I've been thinking about doing for a long time. I found out it works because I was forced into you over the last year. Is it something I really want to continue? I would really think hard and strong before you make a move to venture back into the office because all the polls out there are saying the remote workforce is going to stay strong. It's really going to be growing. People really want to work from home. I'd hate for you to go back into the office and then lose your team. Not immediately, probably, but over time folks are taking advantage of the remote environment. So I would definitely at least look into the possibility of just going for it.
Adam Hale: Yeah. I think the answer is yes you can. You just have to be intentional. So again, just be really deliberate about all aspects of what you're doing. Taking care of the culture, the technology the finances that are all kind of bring them all into one, put together a really comprehensive plan and you know, again, we can speak from experience. It works. So if you can embrace it and go all in, as Jody mentioned earlier, I think you'll find a lot of success with it in your team.
Jamie Grunden: I've definitely appreciated working at Summit. I know it's made my work life balance lot better, so definitely appreciate Summit working within this model. So thanks for joining us. Great episode.