How we manage to work 100% remotely and increase our MRR every Quarter
Tools and strategies help enable the growth of a company. However, leadership, culture, and team commitment to the vision are the ones that really make it happen. Here is how...
Freedom. Appreciation. Excitement.
Thinking back to the inception of Scaleflex, it was unpredictable how this remote working model would pan out. We had heard about companies having a remote workforce but never without a central HQ.
Regardless of these unknowns and uncertainties, we decided to try and see where the journey would take us.
Nowadays, with the pandemic situation keeping people at home, this model seems even more relevant and successful than ever before.
As a tech start-up, we know that our team members will need to do a lot in order to drive growth. That’s why, from the very beginning, we asked ourselves, what makes a person go the extra mile?
After 4 years of immense growth (we’re now a team of 30, spread across 12 countries, 5 time zones and possessing 13 different nationalities within the team), we came up with 3 main guidelines we would like to share with all of you.
- Connection to the Company Vision
- Culture and Employee Vibes
- Opportunities to Grow
Let’s dive in!
Connection to the company vision
Why are you here? Why not work for Facebook or Apple? Why Scaleflex?
The vision we, as a company, promote draws employees towards us.
In order to maintain the drive a team member has at the beginning of their journey with us, we always dedicate entire virtual sessions to explain the founders’ vision.
This session features an open dialog, roadmap discussions, brainstorming about social value, and finally the way every single employee contributes to that vision.
These sessions allow us to connect our employees’ professional development goals with our company vision.
As a result, every single one of our employees takes full responsibility for how the company is progressing.
When you get to this level of connection, the employee will go all in to make sure the company can prosper.
You know where your place is in the big picture, your expectations are set, and most importantly you feel a strong sense of BELONGING.
It is important to emphasize that the connection phase starts from the moment someone applies for one of our openings.
We are keen on hiring people that know what needs to be done. We don’t hire people to do what we tell them.
Moreover, candidates are tested by receiving a challenge (not a task) with as little information as possible and give them access to a certain employee they can ask questions to.
We move our communication to Telegram as soon as they pass stage one and the whole process takes off from there.
Next to Telegram platforms that we often use is google hangouts and zoom for external webinars. You can check out the list of useful software to make your remote work trouble free here: https://financesonline.com/remote-work/.
When you propose something, you naturally feel the ownership of it and want to do the best you can. Right?
Exactly!
The bigger the personal relationship with a project means better results and outcomes.
"Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work." --Seth Godin
Culture and employee vibes
Organizational culture may be the single most important tenet in the remote working environment.
It shapes the way employees work and engage with each other. If the culture is positive so is the engagement. This directly influences the performance and customer satisfaction.
Our team is built on core value that goes beyond typical start up mindset.
There are numerous things you can do to develop a positive organizational culture, what we consider to be the most effective is the culture embodiment by the company leadership.
Our founders drive a thirst for continuous improvement and learning.
They start with themselves.
How, you may wonder? The following testimonial from one of our employees will give you a thorough insight.
“A while ago, I was explaining to my CEO the potential Instagram as a social media channel can have for a SaaS product.
One day later my CEO asked me to show him how everything works. He was involved in making the strategy and is constantly interested in seeing the results.
He even sends me articles he found interesting on this topic.
It is one simple thing like this that can inspire you to outdo yourself. If the CEO of your company can learn something out of his job description so diligently, fast, and even with excitement, what stops you from doing the same.”
To go even deeper into this topic, what works great for us is the diversity we got from hiring employees in 3 different continents. The multicultural team and the diversity of backgrounds (large corporations, freelancers, startuppers, industry experts...) is a big asset to go challenge ourselves and make the most out of it.
Furthermore, we integrate every employee into the group. We really strive to behave like family and nurture friendly vibes.
We learn by doing - together!
Recently we made a fitness challenge: be able to do at least 2x20 push-ups on our next physical team building event.
These kinds of things help build the culture we wish to have.
This may be why after 4 years no one has left us!
*NOTE: As a good case practice we recommend sharing music playlists, having separate communication channels for things that are not work-related, playing special games - we play Tamalu! (it's an amazing card game, for more info, ask us in the comments), celebrating employee birthdays, doing cross-team projects, and, in this virtual time, having virtual afterwork drinks once per week.
Opportunities to grow
“Experiential learning boosts retention scores by 90 percent and embodying the concept that mistakes provide opportunities for education and innovation inspires employees to develop existing and new skills.” by Forbes
By cultivating a learning culture, we enable our employees to constantly engage in something new and, as a consequence, never get bored with their work.
Most of the features of our products were developed this way. Someone sparks the idea, we try, fail once, fail twice, succeed the third time.
We really allow our employees to get creative through our projects.
An implemented RnR system stimulates our team members to strive for outstanding contribution and performances. Quarterly bonuses when you reach your KPIs, extra bonuses for projects of great importance, customized budgets for growth of each employee, as well as test budgets which allow our employees to experiment with different initiatives and tools.
Stay assured, tools and strategies are not the things that drive MRR growth in Scaleflex.
Tools and strategies help enable the growth but leadership, culture, and team commitment to the vision are the ones that really make it happen.
This is the first of many articles we aim to share on this topic, so if you wish to receive our blog articles straight to your email, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter below and be the first to know when new article is published.
