How to Implement a Hybrid Workplace Model Post-COVID with Brian Abernethy | DistantJob - Remote Recruitment Agency

How to Implement a Hybrid Workplace Model Post-COVID with Brian Abernethy

Gabriela Molina

Brian Abernethy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Service Direct, an online advertisement, and technology company that offers local regeneration solutions specifically for home and professional service-based businesses. Brian and his team serve a thousand plus on-service businesses across North America. He has a background in legal and business with a focus on sales, team building, and operations.

remote entrepreneur

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Luis:

Welcome. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the DistantJob Podcast. This is your podcast about building and leading awesome remote teams, and I am your host, Luis. Today, my guest is, Brian Abernethy. Brian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Service Direct, an online advertisement and technology company that offers local regeneration solutions specifically for home and professional service-based businesses. Brian and his team serve a thousand plus on-service businesses across North America, and he has a background in legal and business with a focus on sales, team building, and operations. Welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian Abernethy:

Thanks, Luis. Thanks for having me.

Luis:

Did I miss anything?

Brian Abernethy:

No, that was a pretty good summary.

Luis:

Okay. Let’s get onto it then. Remote work, obviously it’s the year of remote. It’s been more than a year of mostly everyone that could being remote, but then I want to know specifically about you, how has remote work made your business possible or made it better?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. We have a pretty interesting story or I guess life cycle of remote work. We’ve been around for 15 years now and we started pretty much fully remote and then slowly over time built a team in Austin and most of our team was actually local. And then when the pandemic began we went fully remote, which actually inspired us to make some additional remote hires, even in some key positions. So we had an evolution I guess you would say as far as remote work goes.

At the beginning when we were just starting there was just myself and a few other founders and two of us were in Austin and two of us were in Dallas and most of our team at the time were part-time remote workers. We had folks in Argentina, India, Eastern Europe, other places, and that’s how we got started as a bootstrapped company. We were on a budget, we we’re testing our concepts and doing things that way.

Over time we were able to hire some folks in Austin, starting with some developers to really help build our product and then we hired some customer support folks and some sales folks in Austin and moved away from being so remote-focused, though at all times we still had remote workers both abroad and here in the States. And we grew to roughly 30, we’re actually about 30 people right now. Currently we are about one third remote as far as not being in Austin and two thirds in Austin, but due to the pandemic for over a year we’ve all been remote working that way.

The transition for us this last year was relatively painless in the fact that we’re a technology company, we don’t host people in our office really. We have clients all throughout North America, so we were able to transition to remote work relatively well. It was of course a stressful time for everyone. I wouldn’t say we made all the right moves necessarily but overall looking back we transitioned to a fully remote company relatively well, which gave us the confidence to hire more people remotely, including some full-time folks in some key positions.

One position we had open for probably a year and we just couldn’t find the right person in town. We were primarily focusing on someone in town and then we eventually did find someone remote and it’s been going great. And even our next hire after that was another remote hire. So like I said, it’s been an evolution and hopefully that’s a good recap of how we started remote and then how we ended up still being remote with a little bit of change in between.

Luis:

A couple of very interesting things there. Did you feel any… I mean, it’s a hard question because obviously when the world is burdening around you that’s going to impact your performance, then the performance of your employees, the performance of the team that works directly with you. And that of course it’s hard to understand how much of that is from people being remote or how much of that is from people just having all the extra stress coming from the pandemic that’s happening around them. How do you feel that going remote effected the performance of the business at all? I know it’s a tricky question, impossible to answer with 100% accuracy, but what do you think? What’s your feeling?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. I know for the first three months we were remote I just don’t even count that it was stressful and everyone was trying to keep their head above water and we would try to do some remote events. They were a little bit buzzkill or bummer, it was different, it was tough. But as time went on and things stabilized, I guess, where people just got used to the situation, I thought it went pretty well in getting feedback from employees. Many of them, even the local ones who want to stay remote. There are some who really are itching to get back into the office so it’s almost a question you have to answer on a person by person basis.

But I think as a whole being remote has actually really helped us be more organized and get better at meetings and get better at product management. There’s less everyone in the same room brainstorming, thinking of ideas, that is still important, that’s something that we sometimes we miss, but being a remote team we’ve really leaned into our like project management tools and make sure that everything is on schedule and I’ve gotten better at planning. It’s we’ve just been forced into that. It’s obviously it doesn’t happen by accident, it was very intentional and it’s a lot of work to get better at those things. But I think being remote maybe it was a catalyst to get that going, accelerated the need for that, for sure.

Luis:

Oh, yeah. I have a friend that usually tells me that it’s not that going remote means you need to up your management game, it’s more that it exposes your weak spots as a manager, in the management-

Brian Abernethy:

Sure.

Luis:

Things that you can usually get away with if you’re in the office you can’t get away with in remote.

Brian Abernethy:

Sure, I would agree with that. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Luis:

Yeah. I’m wondering, you said that some people have figured out that they prefer to go remote. What percentage do you think? Before the pandemic you had a 30%, let’s say 33%, one third people remotely, do you think that’s going to change by how much now that-

Brian Abernethy:

Sure.

Luis:

… We’re going back to the offices? Some people at any rate are going back to the offices.

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. I think like many companies we plan to have a hybrid model for the folks that are in town. We actually downsized our office space and we’re redoing remodeling our primary office space to accommodate for renting rooms for meetings, having some hot desks, less of everyone with their own desks, more of the hybrid work environment. And then also recently some of our hires, our most recent hires have all been remote. I anticipate that we will be both more remote, as in there are full-time head count, we’ll probably add some folks in town and here in Austin and then some folks continue to add remote.

And then for the folks locally, I know many of them, we have some folks writers, for example, they like peace and quiet. They’re looking to probably stay remote. Some of our sales team may be a little more social group, a little more team atmosphere. They are looking maybe to get back in the office and have that comradery. It’s probably going to flex based on the teams but we certainly having been remote and seeing success with it it’s really opened up our possibilities as far as hiring and we’re certainly open to continue to add remote workers to the team.

Luis:

Yeah. For sure I was going to ask about the hybrid model. This is something that I’m somewhat controversial in the remote within my remote colleagues, my remote evangelizing colleagues, let’s say. Because especially now at the time of the recording Apple is making the headlines because they’re saying that employees are expected to spend three days a week at the office, but really when it’s not Apple it’s some other big company that’s recalling people and they’re enforcing a strict percentage of time in the office.

And obviously the remote work community in force has come out against it and saying that they’re stifling the future of work, et cetera, et cetera. And actually I’m not such an extremist. I personally believe that for some people the office is the way to go because I compare it to standing desks. I know that sending desk is great for my health. I know scientifically I should be using a standing desk. I’ve tried it, it’s just not for me. So it wouldn’t be cool if everyone was like… If now we stopped making normal desks, you can only get standing desks from that one. That would be terrible. I wouldn’t be at work. Believe me, I’ve tried and it’s not for me.

And I do believe that remote work is not for everyone and I’d like the people who want to work in an office to be able to do that. I’m definitely not one of those people that are getting all upset because some companies have decided that the the hybrid model is what works for them. At the same time, I do feel that that is the most challenging model, because that really means that it’s very easy for the remote employees to become second-class citizens in the business. Have you thought about this, and if you have, what is your strategy for dealing with it?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. We have thought about it and really that was triggered by some of our remote employees. Their happiness level with work really went up when the whole company was forced to be remote, because they felt included, much more included than they had previously. And maybe they expressed that beforehand or maybe not, but it made us realize, the leadership realized that we weren’t necessarily doing a great job with our remote employees before we were forced to all be remote. So we have a plan to keep remote folks engaged even when some of us are able to get together in Austin.

For example, next month we are doing a company-wide wellness challenge. We did one last summer and it was a good success. People like it, it’s a good way for people to build camaraderie and talk to each other about non-work-related things. Wellness could be anything from mindfulness exercise, healthy eating, just anything that’s wellness related that… Every everyone wants to feel well, so it’s something that different types of people can have great conversations about.

We are doing another wellness challenge this year coming up next month and it’s going to be four weeks and each week we’re going to have a virtual gathering. So maybe it’s meditation led by one of our team members that anyone can come to, remote employees or local, that’ll be on Zoom. And then we’ll also have some local meetups to do a hike or something like that. Of course remote employees will be missing out on that but we want to foster both our local community here in town and the remote community. It’s a challenge and I’m not saying we’ve got to figure it out but we’re going to be very deliberate on scheduling events, company events, both virtually and in-person.

Luis:

Yeah, yeah. Well, that makes absolute sense and I don’t think anyone has got it figured out, but there’s definitely some things out there that seem to be working reasonably well. I mean, that’s part of the fun of it. It’s that we’re figuring out how to make it work. But, yeah. And probably I would say that the systems that you built while you were working fully remotely, everyone remote, if you just maintain them, it’s what they called the one remote, all remote rule. Even if people are in the office, if they work using the systems and processes as if they were remote, that’s probably going to go a long way toward making the fully remote people feel more included.

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. And then we also plan on having them come visit. We think here in the next few months that’ll be happening and then I think everyone’s excited about that, but it’s going to be a challenge. We’re talking about the hybrid office model that we’re going to be employing, but that really hasn’t started, we’re fixing up our office to make it fit that model. And I am confident that we can make it work but I certainly realize that it’s different. Most of the team has not worked like that before and we’re going to have to be cognizant of making sure that our remote folks aren’t feeling, just like your question, aren’t feeling left out now that much of the team is able to get together in-person, at least occasionally.

Luis:

Yeah, for sure. You told me that when you started the company a lot of people were doing part-time remote. And I personally find that extremely challenging when I have part-time people working on the remote team, because it’s already challenging enough to work with time zone differences when someone is full-time but on different continents, but then when that schedule is slashed in half it seems to be even more challenging. How have you figured that out, how have you managed that? And then I assume that the people you liked eventually transitioned to a full-time role. How was that decision made? And I guess, how do you feel about that general juggling that needs to be done?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. Early on, in the early days of our company, we were doing that out of necessity more than choice. We were bootstrapped and we needed to outsource some work in an affordable way and the best way to do that was part-time remote workers. And it was challenging. Some of them were half a world away so things move slowly sometimes. It took a lot of… There’s a lot of us putting our thoughts and notes in a document and then six hours later or 10 hours later that the worker would chime in and so it was taking a long time and that was difficult. But like I said we just made it work because we had to, and I think that was a catalyst to starting to build a more local team because it was challenging.

But at the same time we’ve had success with… I feel time zone, you mentioned time zone, that’s a huge consideration. When we’re looking for remote folks now we’d like to keep them at least some overlap with our time zone, so not completely on the other side of the world. That’s just something that we found and we don’t have too many meetings but sometimes it’s nice to have everyone together, at least virtually. And then, like you mentioned, we definitely have part-time remote folks who have become full-time and that’s been a success. I agree with you that it’s super challenging. We started that way out of necessity and took some learnings from that. And I think our biggest one was time zone.

And we also found that certain positions lean themselves to that part-time versus others. Some of our support positions, for example, the part-time is nice. They can come in and handle support tickets anytime they need to. Our clients are submitting them all time at all different times of hours. So having someone working at all different kinds of hours is really great versus maybe someone who’s on a key technology project that we’re really on a deadline that we need to have running like clockwork, that might not necessarily fit the part-time remote worker as well as the customer service position I just described.

Luis:

Oh yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure. I want to jump a bit to sales, because I’ve been in touch with a lot of people in my area of marketing specifically during the pandemic. And by and large marketing teams they’re fine, nothing much, nothing much changed apart from again the ambient stress caused by the pandemic. But my friends managing sales teams and sales forces have really, really taken a blow. It does seem that making sales remotely, moving the face to face things, especially people who used to hit all the tech conferences, all the cryptocurrencies, all the conferences about this and that, those people took a huge, huge blow. I’m not sure if that’s your case, but I’m wondering how have you felt that the change in your sales team and some strategies that you figured out that you used to cope with independently?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. I would agree with you that our sales team felt the move to fully remote more than most, mostly because the sales team they’re cheering together when someone closes an important deal. There’s a lot more, I guess, comradery in that team than some of the other ones. They’re more social, it’s just the nature of the sales teams. And those are the folks that are actually looking to get back into the office. That they’re ones that are bugging me saying, “When is the office going to be ready? I’m ready to get back in there.” So it was a challenge.

And our sales team, it’s changed a little bit. Pre-pandemic we had a larger sales team, we downsized it a little bit once the pandemic started and are starting to grow it back up now. And we’re taking a more marketing-centric approach then than the sales-centric approach. Obviously there’s no face to face opportunities. People are busy and don’t really want cold calls. I think like many things the pandemic accelerated some change and I think that really was shown in the way we do sales. We went from cold calling, let’s get in front of people, let’s meet with people, to, okay, how do we fill our funnel with marketing and figure out how to best serve folks who are needing our services, obviously through Zoom and other things like that.

But, yeah, I would agree with your statement that sales teams have struggled with the move to remote more than most. I think that was definitely the case with us and I know that some of our sales folks are certainly excited about the opportunity to work face-to-face again soon.

Luis:

Well, that makes a lot of sense. Now, I want to talk more about you and your influence in operations. Now, you’re the CEO. My CEO friends usually when I ask them what the CEO does either they tell me, “Whatever needs doing, really, it really depends.” What have you been up to, let’s say, these past six months as we are near the end of the pandemic and starting to transition a bit away from it, how has your work responsibilities and the way you manage your company changed due to that move to mostly remote?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. That’s a good question. What I do has changed so much over the years going from a small company to… Still relatively small, around 30 people. I’ve done a little bit of everything over time and I think the move to remote, the thing that probably changed the most was I got a lot better at meeting one-on-one, having subsistent and efficient one-on-one meetings with my direct reports. When we were in the office it was easy to be like, “Hey, we’re working on this big project, we’ll just skip the one-on-one meeting because we’re hanging out anyway.” That happened probably more frequently than it should have. And if we did have one-on-ones maybe it was super quick, “Oh, hey, hop into my office real quick, let’s just go over a couple of things and then get back to these projects we’re working on.

Going fully remote we became a lot more rigorous with our meeting schedule and as a company we try not to over-meet. And I think that might have been an influence on why we would skip our weeklies or our monthly meetings. But being remote and not spending with someone, those meetings became incredibly important. And we would oftentimes go into a meeting previously with not much of an agenda but if we’re remote it’s easier to… We’ve found that it’s more likely for us to have a nice agenda when we go into the meetings and make them really productive. So if we’re only spending an hour or two face-to-face with someone per week, when we might have been spending 20 or 30 hours with them in the office, then it makes a big difference. That’s something that we’ve gotten a lot better at and something that I think that we’ll certainly continue regardless of our hybrid remote model.

And then also what I’ve been doing the last few months, we have a few open positions so I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting. We’re still at the size where we don’t have the HR department so a lot of that falls on me. It’s something I enjoy. I like trying to find folks that fit our culture and it would be mutually beneficial to join the company. So as we grow, continue to grow, that’s where I’ve been spending a lot of my time.

Luis:

Oh, nice. What have been the challenges? While you’re doing that in-person hiring, so to say, how have you been looking at this. Especially because I assume that you’re searching worldwide, I assume that you’re hiring mostly remote now.

Brian Abernethy:

Yep.

Luis:

So how has that been going? What have been the challenges in finding good people as you were there in Seattle but actually anywhere in the world?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure, sure. Yeah. We’ve hired a handful-

Luis:

Mostly in Austin. That’s in Austin.

Brian Abernethy:

In Austin, yeah, sure. Yeah. We’ve hired a handful of folks over the last 6, 9 months that I’m yet to meet in person, so that is different. Usually we’d have a couple phone interviews before we would set up an in-person meeting, but obviously that hasn’t been happening. So, yeah, I won’t lie, it was pretty weird the first time we hired someone in a really key leadership position that I had never met, but that’s the spot we’re in and I feel it’s gone relatively well. It is challenging.

And I think it’s great for job seekers really, it really opens up a lot of possibilities. You can find a company that fits your skillset can be anywhere. I think if someone remote agrees to join your company and they’re happy being remote then ideally you’re off to a great start there because they have lots of options both locally and worldwide, and once you find that good fit I think it can be great, that’s what we found so far this year.

But again, it’s totally different, it’s challenging. We don’t have it all figured out but I think the key to remote hiring that we found is that you have to be maybe a little more meticulous than maybe with in-person hiring with skill assessments and really making sure you’re in the right fit. You don’t get the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee or sit down and have a beer with someone to really feel them out, I guess. And I’m sure the same could be said for the future employee in that situation. They want to get to know their employer and have that level of comfort. That’s hard to do over Zoom so I think you have to be a little more deliberate and if it takes four or five Zoom meetings before the offer goes out, that’s okay because you really want to make sure that you’re finding the right person and I’m sure they’re feeling the same way when they’re looking for their new position.

Luis:

Yeah. It’s so rare, it still bugs me how hard it is to find someone who actually wants to work with you rather than just wanting a remote job, that still bugs me. I get a lot of people that are applying to a remote job, not to a job with my business, it really bugs me.

Brian Abernethy:

Yeah, I totally agree. And when I’m talking to folks with our initial quick interview, if someone is asking more questions about the work hours, or the flexibility, or the remoteness, versus the actual company, that’s a red flag to me. To your point, they’re just looking for a job where they can work from home not necessarily this specific role.

Luis:

All right. Let me ask you some rapid fire questions. The questions are rapid fire but the answers do not need to be, feel free to expand as much or as little as you’d like. First off, you’re starting your day, you open up your computer, open your browser window, what browser tabs do you have open right away? What’s your starting point, your virtual office for the day look?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. We use Asana for project management, and I’m certainly looking at that. I’m just looking at my browser right now, I have Indeed open because we’re doing a lot of hiring. Obviously, we use G Suite, so Gmail and Google Docs and Calendar. And those are the main things and then also we’re on Slack, so I’d see if I have any emergency Slack messages. Those are the first thing in the morning to make sure that everything’s going well. And then we generate leads for our customers, that’s what we do here at Service Direct, so I check on making sure that the leads are coming in and that everyone’s taken care of there.

Luis:

All right. Let’s say that you had $100 to spend with each person working for you and the rules are you can give them the money or the money equivalent like a gift card and you can’t choose individually, you need to buy in bulk. But you can give the anything, software, a tool, an experience, et cetera. What would you give them?

Brian Abernethy:

$100 to everyone on the team and it can’t be cash…

Luis:

Flexible $100, it can go anywhere.

Brian Abernethy:

Yeah, roughly. That’s a good question. I’ve been really into audio books lately and really enjoying that, so maybe a year-long subscription to an audio book, Audible or something like that. That can both be great for getting a break from work and getting deep into a story, but also maybe some nice business books to help advance their career and their knowledge there.

Luis:

Well, I mean, since you asked, this naturally segues into another one of my rapid fire questions, which is, what book or books have you gifted the most?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. Currently the book that our team is reading is Radical Focus and that’s talking about OKRs, objective and key results, getting our goals aligned throughout the team. We’ve been using OKRs for a while and it’s easy to do OKRs average, it’s not too hard to come up with an objective and key results, but if you really want to do it well, it’s actually quite time consuming. It seems like a simple concept finding objectives and key results and making sure all the objectives are aligned with the main company objective. To do it well is difficult so we need to, even though we’ve been using OKRs for six or seven years, we need to be on the same page, so Radical Focus is a good one there to help.

Luis:

It’s really worth it. By the way, people underestimate, they think that it’s like writing smart goals. You can write a smart goal in something like 10 minutes if you really put your heart to it and OKRs aren’t like that, it’s real work. And then you start feeling, “Shouldn’t I be doing real work instead, things that grow my company?” But that’s a mistake because long-term and even medium-term the OKRs will pay for themselves in time.

Brian Abernethy:

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s definitely worth, we do it quarterly. We reset the goals obviously throughout the quarter where we’re talking about them as well, but the bulk of the work comes as you approach the start of a new quarter and we spend a couple of weeks making sure, creating and honing in on each OKR and it’s all we do for those weeks, but we definitely don’t just do it real quick in one meeting together. We meet individually as teams over the course of a couple of weeks and then at the start of the quarter all our team managers and product and tech folks get together and finalize them and make sure that we’re all rowing in the same direction.

Luis:

All right. What about purchases for yourself? What purchase, what things have you bought, let’s say in the last year, that has significantly improved your work life, made it easier, more balanced, in any way you want to measure improvement?

Brian Abernethy:

I got an awesome new monitor. I have a good setup here with an iMac and a big monitor, actually a couple monitors. It took me a while. When we went fully remote I had my laptop on my desk on a little laptop stand and it was fine. Maybe I was in denial about how long I was going to be in my home office. And then it didn’t take too long to where I got a more comfortable chair and a nice monitor, a couple monitors and a new computer, a big desktop computer. So that would be, I guess it’s an obvious thing that you need in your home office but I didn’t have it before. Yeah, I didn’t have it before and even the first few months of being fully remote I was still just on the laptop and then finally after realizing, hey, this is going to be my workspace for quite a while, I got it all set up nice it has made a big difference.

Luis:

No, it’s not so obvious. I mean, I have a mentor that I respect enormously. He was the CMO for some very big companies and I really listen to all he says when it comes to marketing, but he kept pushing me to get a second screen. You want to improve your productivity and managing your team, get a second screen, yeah. And it felt like it can’t make that much of a difference, at the end of the day it’s just some more real estate, how much different? And it really does. Just being able to have a main screen and then a reference screen, just the minimizing the switching, maybe it’s just the way my brain works but it’s just so incredibly impactful. It definitely makes much more of a difference than it makes sense for it to make.

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. It’s just those micro moments that add up to a lot of time over the course of a week or a month or a year. Small increases in efficiency can really add up over time.

Luis:

All right. Let me ask the last question. This one has the better for longer set up. But in essence imagine that… Well, it can probably be a reality quite soon, we can all get together for dinner. And you are hosting a dinner where you’re inviting the people, the execs the top tech companies from all around the world. You are hosting this dinner in a Chinese restaurant, so as the host you get to choose the message that comes inside the Chinese fortune cookies. What is the message that comes inside their fortune cookies?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure. I would say that… If you just asked me a message to send to any old person it would be have a no-limits mindset. You can do anything that you set your mind to. A lot of people have self-limiting thoughts, myself included. It’s very normal and you have to cognitively work through the process to make sure that you have a no-limits mindset. I guess some people are lucky and they just are born with that no-limits mindset, but I have a feeling even those tech leaders some of them sometimes need to work on making sure they have a no-limits mindset. That’s something that I tried to-

Luis:

You need to remind them, right?

Brian Abernethy:

Yep. Yep, absolutely. And having a no-limits mindset doesn’t mean that you’re going to be creating something brand new out of thin air every month, it just means that if you set a goal, if it seems challenging, that’s a normal feeling, and if you really truly believe that your team or you can accomplish the goal you’re so much more likely to achieve it. You are likely to achieve it and so much more likely to achieve it than if you were having those self-limiting thoughts.

Luis:

Yeah. And I mean, and this is where I find that coaches or even peer groups are so valuable. Because I can just set that reminder on my mobile phone, have a no-limits mindset. I can have a notification pop up every day on my phone saying that. But when it’s someone reminding you of that, either a coach or a peer group it’s different. There’s something about the human element in that. Yeah, that’s a great message to give your fellow diners, so thank you so much. All right. Brian, it was a pleasure having this conversation with you. When our listeners want to continue the conversation, where can they reach out to you? Where can they find you and where can they learn more about your business, about Service Direct and what service it provides?

Brian Abernethy:

Sure, absolutely. You can check us out at servicedirect.com. You can also find us on Facebook @ServiceDirectHQ and Instagram, same thing. You can get in touch with me via email and that’s a pretty easy one, [email protected]. That’s [email protected].

Luis:

All right. Well, Brian, it was an absolute pleasure having you, thank you so much for your time and for your insights. Ladies and gentlemen, this was, Brian Abernethy, Co-Founder and CEO of Service Direct, and this was the DistantJob Podcast. I am your host, Luis, in this podcast that’s all about building and leading awesome remote teams. See you next week.

Brian Abernethy:

Thanks, Luis. It was great.

Luis:

And so we close another episode of the DistantJob Podcast. And if you enjoyed the episode, please, you can help us out by sharing it on social media. That would be great, it’s how we reach more listeners and the more listeners we have the more awesome guests I can get in touch and convince to participate in these conversations that are a joy to have for me and I hope they’re a joy for you to listen to as well. You can also help a lot leaving reviews on iTunes or your podcast syndication service of choice. Reviews are surprisingly helpful in helping the podcast guests to have more listeners.

Now, another thing that you might want to do is go to distantjob.com/blog/podcast. Click on your favorite episode, any episode, really, and subscribe. By subscribing you will get a notification whenever a new episode is up and whenever we get the transcripts of the episode up so you can actually peruse the conversations in text form.

And, of course, if you need to find a great employee for your team, a great remote employee, you should take the whole world into consideration and not just look to hire locally, not just look to hire in your country, look around the whole world because that’s the talent pool that contains the best talent. And to help you with that, again, distantjob.com is the perfect place to start. You will tell us who you need and we will make sure that you get the best possible candidate, 40% faster than the industry standard. And with that I bid you adieu. See you next week on the next episode of the DistantJob Podcast.

 

 

Most companies took some form of remote work because of the pandemic. Now that things are getting back to normal, remote will continue to be part of most businesses working structure.

During this podcast episode, Brian Abernethy shares how his company plans to implement a hybrid model after the pandemic. The main reason is that most employees have enjoyed working remotely but collaboration and socialization spaces continue to be a priority on teams.

 

Highlights:

  • How the pandemic impacted their business model
  • Implementing a hybrid model post-COVID
  • How shifting to a remote environment changes the way you lead teams
  • Leadership tips for hybrid teams
  • Insights about remote sales teams
  • Remote hiring tips

Book Recommendations:

 

Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE so you won’t miss all of the other interesting episodes that we have coming up in the next few weeks!

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