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When Talon.One launched its targeted marketing API in 2015, marketing teams around the world suddenly found themselves sleeping a little easier at night. As disruptive marketers themselves, Talon.One knows the immense power of freeing up engineers to focus on product and marketers to focus on strategy.

In fact, this ethos of taking care of workers so they can better serve the business and customers runs deep in Talon.One’s own culture — which is why when Talon.One decided to double its headcount in a year, company leaders knew they had to do it not only compliantly, but holistically.

Country-specific benefits, compliance, and contracts were just the beginning. Talon.One needed a global expansion partner who could be a reliable consultant for every international hiring question. Keep reading to see why Talon.One entrusted Remote with the monumental task of building their team.

Remote helps Talon.One take care of employees so they can take care of customers

If your organization works in the digital space or has remote workers, there’s a cybersecurity company you’re going to hear about if you haven’t already: Chaleit.

Since 2021, Chaleit has made waves in the tech industry, but not just because of its strategic cyber advising or top-tier penetration testing. Chaleit goes the extra mile to form partnerships and deep relationships with their clients, which lives up to their motto of “Making it Personal; Making it Count.” On almost only word of mouth, they grew exponentially — and needed to add talented international team members to handle the growth.

Chaleit needed an expansion partner that had country-specific benefits expertise, a stratospheric level of scrutiny when making decisions, and a customer service experience as personal as their own. Keep reading to see why Remote became the perfect match to help Chaleit with global expansion.

For Chaleit, 'Remote is a peer, not a vendor.'

In the short time since its founding in 2018, Checkly has revolutionized developer monitoring and testing tools. Its active reliability platform is just what cross-functional DevOps teams need to effortlessly monitor and perform end-to-end tests on their critical APIs and UIs. But even though the company has a code-driven platform that puts development tools all in one place, the bright minds behind Checkly are all over the globe.

International organizations like Checkly deserve global HR that’s transparent and robust. Find out why Checkly partnered with Remote to tackle its global workforce expansion.

For Kaylie Boogaerts, director of people at Checkly, the surface-level benefits of hiring internationally have always been obvious. The company’s 100% remote policy gives her team access to a bigger talent pool, which leads to a more diverse workforce with unique perspectives and culture. But she saw an unexpected advantage develop over time — Checkly’s internal communications became refreshingly transparent.

“I strongly believe that remote work uncovers culture,” says Boogaerts. “Topics that are more easily ignored in traditional office setups require more intentionality in remote setups. For example, you need to be clear as a company how you expect communication to flow or what it looks like to take ownership of something.”

Checkly was in the enviable position of having a tight-knit, transparent workforce that was also entirely remote and spread across 14 countries. But even with these advantages, adding new global team members as a startup without international entities was difficult — as they would discover when they found an incredible software engineer candidate in another country. To keep this dream hire from slipping away, Checkly needed an international hiring partner who could move quickly without sacrificing compliance.

Empowering Checkly to hire whomever, wherever 

What did Checkly do to hire a perfect software engineer who happened to live in a country where Checkly didn’t have an existing entity? Boogaerts and her team looked to Remote and its employer of record services.

Checkly gets unexpected help to expand its global team

When leading enterprise automation platform Workato wanted to expand its team, its leaders needed a rock-solid guarantee they would be compliant when hiring in new countries. See how Remote’s fully owned global infrastructure gave Workato’s leaders the confidence they needed to hire abroad.

Workato’s platform enables business and IT teams to integrate their apps and automate workflows without compromising security and governance. Founded in 2013, the company now has over 900 employees around the world.

Workato uses Remote to access global talent outside of the core markets where the company already has its own entities. With the help of Remote's user-friendly platform and hands-on customer service, Workato enjoys stress-free hiring — without the time investment and cost associated with opening a new entity — allowing the company to onboard qualified international candidates quickly and easily.

How Workato accelerates international onboarding with Remote

Workato currently has 10 employees hired via Remote in Israel. Because Remote makes it so easy for Workato to hire without opening new entities, the company is already looking to expand its talent acquisition efforts into other parts of Europe.

Yearit Schneider, head of people operations EMEA at Workato, says Remote’s global presence is key to Workato’s talent-first, location-second hiring strategy.

Workato trusts Remote for stress-free compliant hiring in new countries

In 2021, Seatti set out to solve a problem all hybrid workers face when they show up in person to HQ: where will they sit when they get there? Seatti’s software manages office space for employers so their employees always have access to a dedicated working area and can see when relevant team members are present. Their platform was a hit — which meant this remote-first company needed to expand its international team.

Compliance, country-specific expertise, and prompt support are critical for companies growing their global footprint. Read below to discover what made Seatti choose Remote for this pivotal time in their international expansion. 

Industry: IT Services and IT Consulting (office management, collaboration, meetups, flexdesk, workspace)

Total employee countries: 5, with 16 nationalities represented

While working for Tesla in Amsterdam, Seatti co-founder Chris Bieri often found himself making the hour-long commute to headquarters only to find a lack of desk space (and the colleagues he needed). In short, it was a huge waste of his time. 

“Sometimes you arrive all sweaty from your bike-commute and you realize none of your colleagues are there, and you're like ‘Oh, I could have worked from home today.’” But then other days, the office would be so full that you couldn't even find a desk anymore. In the worst cases, people would cram up next to each other and share one small desk with each other.”

That’s when the idea materialized: create a solution where you can not only see the availability of offices and space, but also where your colleagues are planning to work from so you can create meaningful connections.

Seatti’s platform immediately resonated with companies in the new world of work, solving three critical issues:

Efficiently managing office real estate so employees always feel they have a space and employers aren’t wasting money.

Fostering culture and collaboration with their employee meetup dashboard.

For companies, analyzing and integrating booking data in a fully GDPR compliant manner to improve their office spaces, hybrid work policies, and regulatory compliance.

Seatti’s intense attention to compliance was also top of mind when they began looking to expand their workforce. To source international talent, they wanted a partner who knew the ins-and-outs of compliance in whatever countries their prospective hires lived. And with the need to triple their workforce quickly, that partner couldn’t come fast enough.

Harnessing owned entities, not third-party partnerships

How would Seatti address its two biggest concerns — cost and compliance — when partnering with an EOR to expand their global workforce? After Chris did the research, he found Remote offered the best of both.

Seatti leverages Remote to ‘make hybrid work, work’

Since 2020, Seaplane has been a breath of fresh air for app developers. With its combination of public clouds, bare metal providers, and edge resources, Seaplane delivers a planet-wide software platform for businesses to run entire application stacks globally, wherever and whenever users need. And it’s not just Seaplane’s services that span the globe — the company itself is 100% remote.

Every global team needs dependable, transparent, and employee-friendly global HR. See why Seaplane trusted Remote to help scale its international workforce.

Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States

Seaplane’s founders hail from Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and the American Midwest (and their employees live everywhere in between). According to CEO and co-founder Niall Dalton, Seaplane’s distributed team strengthens its business.

“We know just by looking around the room that a deeper and more diverse well of personal experiences and professional insights would make for a better product and a stronger organization overall. Our technology is global, so it’s only natural that our team should reflect that.”

Even after Seaplane built a strong remote culture with a team spanning multiple time zones, the company still experienced resource-draining logistical headaches when onboarding workers in different countries. With their Series A financing right around the corner, the company’s leaders knew that rapidly hiring international workers would soon become a critical need. Seaplane needed to streamline its global hiring — immediately.

Future-proofing HR for Seaplane’s global team

How did Seaplane ensure it could quickly hire internationally while navigating compliance with confidence, bolstering its unique company culture, and managing payroll in multiple countries? The solution, according to Niall, came via Remote’s international employer of record solution.

How Seaplane went from compliance challenges to stress-free global growth

When you’re a German-based intelligent process automation company, you need access to great talent — and a lot of it. How did Automation Hero use Remote to fill open roles more quickly, convert international contractors into full-time employees, and solve compliance challenges? Read on to find out.

Headquarters: Germany (European) and United States (Global)

Company Size: 100 employees, 20 contractors

Automation Hero chose Remote to accelerate global hiring plans, unlock new talent markets, and convert longtime contractors into full-time employees with benefits.

Automation Hero is now experiencing more freedom and flexibility in its hiring process. 

The company has been able to convert several longtime contractors into full-time employees, including best-in-class local benefits and time off.

Employee referrals have increased due to Remote’s easy onboarding process. 

Remote’s account services have provided high responsiveness, helpful resources, and constantly evolving tools that have streamlined Automation Hero’s HR processes. 

Automation Hero’s HR team never has to worry if the company is compliant in specific countries, and Remote’s seamless international payroll services ensure everyone is paid in full and on time.

Employees truly feel like they belong, thanks to Remote’s global and dedicated team.

Saving thousands of hours of productivity

Automation Hero began as a German-based company. However, only being able to hire within Germany stunted their recruitment efforts and limited the company’s talent pool. To alleviate the situation, the company decided to expand to the UK first.

According to Jessica Hernandez, head of HR at Automation Hero, the first mistake was trying to go it alone.

How Automation Hero hires across Europe with Remote

See how payments automation company Primer leverages Remote’s global footprint to hire quickly in countries around the world. 

Primer is the world’s first no-code automation platform for payments and commerce. Since its founding in 2020, the company has seen remarkable growth. Today, Primer has over 150 employees (or Primigos in Primer parlance) in 30 countries building sophisticated, end-to-end payment flows and universal checkout. But just as impressive is the fact that Primer has been 100% remote since day one.

Primer’s team is driven by the belief that talent is distributed all over the world, but work opportunities are not. At Primer, remote work enhances the employee experience, as Erin Potter, Primer’s head of people and operations, explains.

Primer trusts Remote to reduce time-to-hire around the world

Discover how headless ecommerce platform Swell is growing globally with Remote.

Swell is hiring with confidence around the world

Swell is a rapidly growing global remote-first software company. As they scale, they're hiring quickly — adding to their small agile team to continue delivering top-tier quality work. They needed to partner with a company that could handle the challenges of a global team's HR, including tricky local taxes and compliance, without slowing down growth in the process.

With the help of Remote's user-friendly platform and hands-on customer service, Swell is positioned to expand their talent pool by hiring the global team they need. As a result, they continue to build their unique company culture with a seamless HR experience. Every employee feels a strong sense of belonging and is greatly invested in Swell's exciting growth, no matter where they're based geographically. 

Why did Swell trust Remote to help scale their global team?

Remote’s speedy onboarding processes makes life easier for Swell’s team. Now, Swell has more time to focus on growth and building a healthy environment for their employees.

According to Swell, the team at Remote is more helpful, friendlier, more knowledgeable, and most importantly, more transparent.

Partnering with Remote gives Swell the help needed to build trust with their global employees. With Remote by their side, Swell employees all feel like part of one great global team.

Managing 400% growth while planning for the future

Swell's story is inspiring. The company originally launched as a five-person stealth-mode company in October 2020, but onboarded 26 new employees in 2021. With that level of growth comes a need for structure and stability. Stefan Kende, Swell's COO, knows how important those advantages can be.

“Being at pre-seed level is a different type of challenge because you're constantly trying to scrape things together, and yet there are only three or four other people in the company who can contribute,” says Kende.

Swell saves time with stress-free international hiring

See how Loom, one of the largest video communications platforms in the world — and a favorite tool of Remote! — leverages Remote’s global infrastructure to grow their team in new countries.

How Loom is growing internationally with Remote 

As a robust and revolutionary video messaging platform, it’s no wonder Loom is experiencing rapid growth. But their booming, remote-first business needs to expand quickly with access to the world’s top talent. How could they keep their personable customer support and enviable employee equity while adding headcount globally?

By partnering with Remote, Loom got exactly what they wanted in a global HR partner. Loom has raised their high standard of employee experience by turning many of their former contractors into full-time employees. Global hires receive a similar experience to domestic employees, allowing the company to maintain its legendary customer service quality during its rapid growth.

What made Remote the right choice for Loom? Several factors came into play:

Remote offered coverage where Loom currently had international employees, as well as entities in other countries where Loom was looking to hire. See Remote’s Country Explorer for available countries and roadmap.

Partnering with Remote provided Loom the value they needed for the fair and transparent cost associated with Remote's EOR service. Learn more about Remote’s Fair Price Guarantee!

Loom says working with Remote has been incredibly easy, and the process for onboarding and managing employees is simple. Read some expert tips for onboarding remote employees!

Supporting Loom’s growing remote workforce 

Loom has a great problem on its hands. The video messaging platform grew exponentially over the last few years as more people transitioned to working remotely. In 2021, Loom’s user base grew at a rate of 900% year-over-year.

However, as a remote-first company, what's been most important to Meghana Reddy, Loom's VP of People and Operations, is employee equity.

Loom converts contractors to employees and creates equitable employee experiences

Learn from the success stories of other growth-focused organizations who have managed to build and scale distributed teams. We help you understand how others in your shoes have built a remote-first business model, and how Remote makes it easy to onboard, pay, and manage a truly global workforce.

Use this guide to establish the processes you need to successfully find, recruit, and onboard remote employees (and stay compliant while you're at it).

Learn how to build a process to onboard, pay, and manage international contractors at scale while you minimize misclassification risk.

Work through this checklist to help determine if a new hire should have a contractor or employee relationship.

Thinking about hiring international employees? This checklist will help you stay compliant. Building a global team doesn’t have to be complicated.

Checklist For Hiring International Employees

Hiring in other countries offers competitive advantages, but you can't afford to neglect your IP and data in the process. This guide gives you expert advice to keep you protected as you scale.

Remote's experts reveal how to offer benefits that are locally relevant, globally competitive, and always compliant!

Learn how to simplify your planned relocation. We outline the key steps needed to enable a compliant and hassle-free move.

A resource bundle to help you pitch Remote within your business (includes our Remote Services Overview, EOR Checklist, Remote Onboarding Guide and Remote Onboarding Checklist)

These are the resources you need to download, bookmark, and share with the rest of your team. Our collection of practical global HR guides and checklists are designed to be used in your day-to-day processes to help you stay compliant, minimize risk, and manage a remote team.

SafetyWing CEO Sondre Rasch joins the show to talk about the challenges of offering benefits to contractors around the world and to discuss his philosophies on remote work leadership.

Remote Talks: Episode 13 with Sondre Rasch - Freelancers, Nomads, and Benefits

Remote Talks

Remote Talks is a series of video interviews with the brightest minds in remote work and global employment, hosted by Remote CEO Job van der Voort. This week features Sondre Rasch, CEO of SafetyWing and an expert on all things global contractors, insurance, and remote work.

To see the full interview, watch the video on this page or view the Remote Talks playlist on YouTube.

And don't forget to subscribe to the Remote Talks podcast!

Sondre: SafetyWing is building a global social safety net for remote workers and teams. We are for today in health insurance for nomads and also remote teams and workers worldwide. 

Before this, I ran a platform called SuperSide. Today, it's still active, and we wanted to provide benefits for the freelancers on the platform, but we needed to do it in a way that was worldwide because they were spread out worldwide and nobody offered it the way we needed to buy it, which was global. But also we needed to make it easier to buy, ideally an API and flexible to turn on and off. That was sort of the problem discovery moment, and because I had previously worked with the Norwegian social safety net.

After trying for a year to get someone else to start this company with, I said, OK, someone has to build this. There's this infrastructure that needs to be built for remote work, and the social safety net is a big piece. That was the genesis for the company. 

Why do you think no one had tackled this problem of benefits for global freelancers before?

Sondre: It is surprisingly difficult. Every company has their complexity. This one is it's the legal barrier to entry, roughly. And the financial barrier to entry as well. So just to get the product to market, you need to figure out licenses on multiple levels in all countries, to make a product that is simple.You also need the backing of an insurance company. And those kind of prove a big barrier to entry, because if you have a vision that is different from what existed before, you have to persuade these very conservative actors to go along with it. This is why we see so few startups in this area. 

Are insurance services through SafetyWing for nomads or all remote workers?

Sondre: The person we work with is the remote worker, I think, the best description of it. Nomads is more a subset of remote workers.

If you think about it in the product adoption life cycle, I myself lived a bit nomadic in the sense of working remotely and living abroad. We started with that group, partly because we knew it well, but partly because as an early adopter, a lot of things nomads do today, everyone else does. A few years later, and we've seen that across multiple product categories, so it's a place to start. However, the user we have in mind in the long run is that most companies will be remote, and everyone who works will be part of an international workforce that has to have this global infrastructure to support. And that's what we're going to provide. The social safety net part.

Are there any areas of the world where you’re seeing particularly strong remote work expansion?

Sondre: Yes. We are seeing some countries that were early in vaccination grow. People I believe are eager to get out, and that's one area of growth we see. As for remote teams and remote workers, that's a pretty broad based growth where you see it. For us across countries and fairly spread out, we haven't been able to discern any particular patterns yet, with the exception that, of course, we see some of those countries that have a lot of people working only remotely, like the Philippines, being a bit ahead of the curve on their end. But this is a worldwide phenomenon. 

What happens when a citizen of one country moves to another, from an insurance perspective?

Sondre: So if you're in the US, even moving to another state would require you to undergo everything from the ground up, because all the infrastructure and the insurance are only legal in one state. And so it is between countries. Typically, we have built our policy from the bottom up to be global, so it's not an issue for us.

One of the benefits we can offer that's a regular kind of national insurance provider is that if you move or if you're abroad for a place of time, you have the same coverage as you do at home. You see some companies like Spotify. When they went remote, they said work from anywhere, and they're working to kind of set up the rest of their company to function in that way as well.

That is a big perk. As people work remotely, they are more mobile. If you work abroad, moving home to your family for parts of the year or to a summery place part of the year, that is now much more possible. 

Learn more: Create your customized list from the best destinations for remote work

What kind of challenges do you experience with local governments?

Sondre: We both are in that area where we are deeply regulated in places and we want to make a simple product that works globally. So we have to deal with the differences between countries and, like you said, in insurance, it is also somewhat invented locally. There are differences between countries. There are some instances where you have to have it in one jurisdiction, like the EU, and then it's illegal in another, like the US, and that's sort of the edge case there.

We look for things that are legal across categories so that we can make something that is legal everywhere and that is broadly successful. It is possible, but it is part of our product development process, essentially. 

Job: What is this one thing that is illegal in the US, but mandatory in the EU? Just very curious. 

How distributed is your own team at SafetyWing right now?

Sondre: We have over 50 on the full team, sort of 80 in total across 60 countries. So we're an extremely international team. It works out really well because, of course, a lot of the people grew up on the internet, and so there is this shared cultural reference that comes from that. But it is more important for our company to have a worthwhile mission and values. Because people have different contexts that they come from. But it is going really well.

We have a remarkable team. It is a lovely benefit to be able to hire from anywhere is that you can find these really rare people to work on your team.

Sondre: Yes, so we would do team gatherings three to four times a year, with a break during COVID. We do have plans to resume in the autumn. Conditional, of course, of that being safe at the time. These things are a bit hard to predict, but that is a key part.

We do those for one week, and we have a great setup. It's not just team building activities. We try to put a lot of stuff that is the long-term planning in those weeks, and it's been a great way for us to work remotely.

What’s your philosophy on providing benefits to people in multiple countries?

Sondre: I'm pretty sure shortly it will be that you are expected to have the same benefits for someone you hire locally as internationally. We're in this odd situation where even among big companies, they think that they can have a completely different set of norms and rules and benefits for international employees. But that is definitely in the middle of shifting. That's roughly how I think about it. I do think that some benefits have to be reimagined. Some are a lot more useful when you do it internationally, and some are a lot less useful when you do.

Obviously, anything that is in the office becomes completely useless and has to be replaced, like things like office stipends. When it comes to big benefits like health and retirement, the issue is usually the international part. Are you able to offer the same worldwide?

Before you had services like Remote, almost everyone, even the most serious employees, would go with a contractor model. Part of that was because it's so difficult to do anything else. But now, with Remote’s service being started, it's starting to make that easier. And for serious employers at least to have a realistic option that isn't an impossible barrier of difficulty. 

Learn more: Onboard your first global employee in minutes with Remote!

What has surprised you the most about the global insurance world?

Sondre: So many insurance policies are hard to read, and it has good reasons because, especially in common law countries, you have these phrases which have documented precedent, and the insurance policy is a collection of those. But the underlying thing it's trying to say is often very simple, and it could almost be said to be programmatic. Like there are events and then there are conditions and then there are limits. But you're finding yourself living in this history.

I also find that the entire insurance industry is one of the least digitized. It is changing, but there are significant parts of the insurance industry, both in the sort of distribution and product side which exist almost like the free software era, not just pre-internet, but like pre pre-digital. I wouldn't have guessed that. So that was a surprise to me. I would have guessed that it was behind, but not that it was the degree that it is. This explains a lot about what is odd about the insurance industry. It is just a very deep and broad need for renewal and becoming digital. But it's a very conservative industry, and they're very bound in rules and regulations, which has made it sort of a bit of a laggard. So a lot is going to change in the decade ahead. 

Learn more about SafetyWing and Sondre at SafetyWing.com.

Remote Talks: Episode 12 with Ellen Pao and McKensie Mack - Creating People-First Remote Workplaces

Remote Talks is a series of video interviews with the brightest minds in remote work and global employment, hosted by Remote CEO Job van der Voort. This week features two very special guests: Ellen Pao, CEO of Project Include and former CEO of Reddit, and McKensie Mack, anti-oppression consultant and founder of MMG, a social justice organization based in Chicago.

You recently co-authored a report on harassment and mental health in remote work. What did you learn?

Job: Regular listeners know that I care very much about the intersection of diversity, inclusion, and remote work. Project Include, you recently published a harassment report with that alone. 

I have been reading that with great interest and a bit of shock too, to be honest. Could you give a slight overview of what were the findings of the report? What is it about? I'm also very interested in all these, beyond just interest. What gets you started on something like this?

Ellen: Project Include has always been very data-oriented. When we learned during the pandemic that there were more people who were experiencing harassment and hostility working remotely, we decided to take a data-based approach and survey remote workers, and see what we found. 

We ended up surveying almost 3,000 people. I want McKensie to dive into the results. It's been a very sobering look at what remote workplaces mean, and also the presence of all of these biases and problems that are in our offices and our physical workplaces and how they carried through to our remote workplaces. And in many cases were exacerbated.

Job: Having seen the report, what was your response on a high-level overview, high-level thoughts?

McKensie: We talked about a lot as a research team the fact that 85% of workers have been experiencing increased anxiety since COVID-19. That's so important to name at the outset because it speaks to the ways in which all of us are impacted by the global pandemic and the ways in which oftentimes we think of work as being separate from our personal life.

We think of the emotional impacts, the intellectual impacts, the mental impacts of the pandemic being something that we experienced most at home. But the reality is that, of course, that impact is going to follow us at the workplace. And not only is it going to follow us as individuals, but it's had a major impact, for example, on the way that black and brown folks, Asian folks, other people of color, women and non-binary people, folks with disabilities, are being treated within these remote workplaces.

Black, non-binary people, and women are nearly three times as likely as non-binary people and women in general, to experience race-based hostility. Trans people are nearly twice as likely to have experienced increased gender-based harassment since COVID-19. Ninety-eight percent of those folks who experienced increased gender-based harassment were women or non-binary folks.

See also: 8 experts discuss mental health tips for remote teams

When we think about just some of these numbers, because that's not an exhaustive listing of our findings, but what we know from those findings is that the ways in which folks are experiencing harm and harassment in the remote workplace is increasing. Versus what I think some folks might think would be the opposite in that you're not in the office, you're not in a physical space with folks. So maybe there is not as much contact with people. The opposite is true in that. Folks going into these remote workplaces are now experiencing even more harm than previously.

Where should companies be more vigilant about harassment in remote work?

Job: It's honestly shocking to read for me. The numbers are chilling in and of itself. I know it's a stretch, but do you have a personal goal theory? Do you have thoughts on, why is it an accessory of remote work? What is it that changed other than the absence of the office?

McKensie: First I'll start with something that's not a personal theory. These are systemic problems, right? And systemic inequities that existed long before the pandemic. That's not a personal theory. That's an actionable and tangible reality, especially within tech.

We think of systemic inequity as being like water in a pot. And then you add the stress of a global pandemic, where there are a lot of folks that are feeling powerless, as if they don't have control of their environment, because they really are not in control. The pandemic could be, in this analogy, considered sort of like the fire. 

So you have the water that's already been there. And then you add the heat of increased anxiety across the board for folks, regardless of their gender identity, sexuality, race. What eventually happens is you get an uptick in harm, because then those folks who hold the most privilege and power within companies are feeling that sense of anxiety and also feeling a lot of concern for the future of their companies, and potentially then exacerbate those issues, harassment, because now they're creating an environment that's even more controlling and domineering.

One example I heard: there was a remote company where folks were actually required to check in with their managers remotely, at least three to four times a day. Why would you need to check in with your manager that many times in an eight hour period? Of course, that's going to really raise a person's sense of anxiety within the workplace. That's also going to increase the likelihood that somebody is going to be harmed, especially if it's that much control being pushed onto workers in that environment.

We’re strongly against monitoring remote employees. How can remote managers do better without these invasive tools?

Job: One thing that we see in a lot of examples is that employers start to monitor their employees with software that actively monitors employees. You see all sorts of trends on the internet, “I have to make sure my mouse keeps moving,” so that they give a false sense of presence at work. I always find that somewhat of a scary prospect that would be very uncomfortable, working in an environment where someone feels the need to constantly check on me and to look at what I'm doing.

Ellen: A big part of it is also that people aren't great managers sometimes, right? If I don't trust my workers and I don't know how to manage them, then I'm going to use these surveillance tools or I'm going to use these check-ins because I'm not confident that they're actually doing the work that I'm asking them to do. 

I might have too many Zoom meetings or phone calls, or I might have the keystroke checks or the mouse checks, or there are some companies that are using software that keeps the video on and that's watching you work all day. All of these aspects are tied to this problem: that there is a lack of trust between the employees and the companies and the managers.

Part of the reason why we're seeing increased harassment and hostility in all forms, gender-based, race-based, sexual orientation-based, it's because employees don't trust their companies to deal with these problems. So they don't report, they don't bring them up, they don't try to resolve them. And then, the person who's perpetuating the harm continues, and other people might be observing that it's okay and it's allowed.

Sometimes we had survey responses say it was like their head of HR or it was their CEO who had the inappropriate comments or the inappropriate behavior. That just fostered a culture where the harm-doers felt comfortable doing harm, and the people who are experiencing the harm did not feel comfortable reporting it. That's a big problem.

In this pandemic timeframe, we also saw huge protests against systemic racism. We saw a lot of racism in the counter protests. We saw racism against Asians coming from the then-president of the United States. We saw all sorts of issues people were struggling to deal with which caused anxiety to the people from the groups being discriminated against. It was also a threat to the people who have enjoyed these privileges and who feel entitled. All of a sudden they're facing people calling for change, and that change is uncomfortable.

In order to restore the control that they want, that McKensie brought up, they may be more hostile. There may be more harassing. We're fostering this environment where they're allowed to do that. They're also feeling this work pressure and anxiety from all of these additional factors.

Many organizations falsely believe they don’t have these kinds of problems. What should leaders be doing more of?

Job: Many people will be listening to this and they'll be thinking, “Well, that's other organizations. That's not happening in my organization.” One of the things that the report found was that leadership is often not aware of problems existing in their organization, or maybe getting worse through word of mouth through the pandemic. What are some of the things leadership can do? The people that are listening right now who think to themselves, “Well, I'm not aware of these kinds of problems.”

McKensie: I love this question. Thank you so much for asking it. I think it's in alignment with something that Ellen just shared, where she talked about how there are folks who don't trust their companies to actually do something about harm and harassment in the workplace. 

In addition to that comment, I would add that also there are a number of leadership teams within tech who don't trust their workers to actually tell the truth about what the culture is like. Who are like, “If you're coming to me with something critical or negative, it must be because something is wrong with your perception, or you just can't cut it in this environment.” One of the first beginning pieces around that is, are leaders actually developing processes where workers can speak honestly about their lived experiences?

One example of that is through an equity audit, where it's a mixed-methods research process that's held and implemented by an external partner that includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis of what's happening within an organization. That within that qualitative piece offers workers confidentiality, so that they can actually share honestly about their experiences and really talk about the ways in which they are experiencing the culture. Which can happen where they experience not just harassment, but it can also happen where they're sharing experiences around operations and the ways in which, potentially, situations from colleague to colleague that start off as conflict...but because there are no systems and no education as to how to deal with conflict, they can easily become harm and harassment. If left unattended to. It's really about providing those resources, but then also creating some sort of a data-informed strategy for how culture can be evaluated over time.

Job: The idea being that if you start to implement changes, you test again, you measure again, and you see how the organization progresses. Exactly.

Can training, such as bystander training, help reduce these problems for remote teams?

McKensie: What's happening right now in remote working environments, within tech specifically, is there are a lot of leaders who might hear a complaint of harassment and the response is, “Okay, give them bystander training.”

There's nothing inherently bad about bystander training. Bystander training is really good. We're talking about identifying harm, stopping harm, intervening. At the same time...we're providing these resources and tools, but what actually is the state of harm in our organization? What's the state of repair in our organization, our company? In addition to that, what kinds of systems have we put into place so that people can anonymously report their experiences, and then what happens to those reports? 

It's not enough just to provide the space, but then are we actually listening to what people are sharing? Are we actually evaluating that? If we have established it, is it something that actually informs our company strategy in the long term?

Ellen: Part of it is solving the root problem, which is does your company actually value inclusion? Does it actually want people to be treated equitably and to ensure that that's happening? A lot of times you do need training. We have a set of company values that includes these concepts of fairness and equity. We have a set of expectations, whether it's in a code of conduct or in the processes that you run, that incorporate these ideas of fairness and equity and justice.

If there are people who don't understand it, maybe they need to go to training. Maybe they need to understand the history of our country, the history of our systems, and understand this is what we're fighting against and that we need to make sure we're not incorporating into our companies. 

For a lot of companies that means training your leadership, training your CEO, and training your board. It comes from the top and it works its way down. People look to the leaders for their behavior and their statements for direction. If your leaders don't understand it and aren't practicing it, it's not going to happen in the rest of the organization.

Why are companies struggling with inequity in employee benefits?

McKensie: Let's say there's a tech company. Within that company, leaders are saying, “We want to improve the ways in which our employees are experiencing the workplace. We know that there are a lot of folks that are reported experiencing burnout. We're going to provide them with access to a mental health app, a wellness app. That's going to be the way that we're going to solve the burnout issue.”

See also: The best employee benefits to attract top global talent

Again, not inherently bad, but if you're not actually getting to the root of what's creating that burnout, you're just basically putting a Band-Aid on it. So we need surgery.

Something that we recommended is thinking about the ways in which time off benefits are structured, and having a required minimum for people to take time off. Because we know that in the society that we live in, organizational trauma is very real. Even if you have a fairly decent and very welcoming time off policy where people are validated and affirmed to taking time off, depending on folks’ past experiences, they still just may or may not do it. 

Job: The vacation days are very relevant. We hear this a lot in the tech industry, where everybody gives unlimited vacation days, but the reality is if you take more vacation days, you're more likely to leave the company permanently. When we started Remote, we immediately implemented a minimum amount of days off, exactly to prevent this. I think we actually struggle to get people to the point of taking enough time off. I think it's 20 days that we have now, a little bit more than that. We'll start to see that people haven't taken their proportional amount of vacation days off, and we have to start telling them, “You have to start taking vacation days off, or you will have to take the entire month of December.” 

You should actually be taking them off. I think that is so challenging. There's a very different attitude as an employer, where I think in the past it was culturally acceptable as an employer to not. So essentially those days are like a gift to the employees. Whereas now if you're a good employer, it's your duty to do the opposite. To say look, you have to be living life and doing well in your life to be able to do a good job, and we cannot expect it to be the other way around.

How can companies be better about ensuring employees actually take enough time off?

Ellen: You have to make sure that people don't feel pressure that they're missing out on that time to do work. That when they get back to work, they're going to be overwhelmed. One reason people might not be taking their time off is because they feel like they are underwater and they will get even more underwater.

There's already all of this additional anxiety around the pandemic. People are working longer hours. They don't think the work will stop. They have the same amount of work. If I take a day off, then I have to do twice as much work that day that I come back. So giving people a sense of a lighter workload, that during those times off, you're not actually accruing more work. You're given a real day off. You have the same level of work when you return. That part is not happening for a lot of people. They don't feel confident. That day off becomes one filled with anxiety at what they're going to return to.

Job: One of the coolest things I've seen recently was a company where the out-of-office reply was, “I'm out of office. All incoming email will be deleted.” They're like, if you need something from me, I'm available again after July 15, and you will have to resend your email because the email will be deleted. 

If you really think about it, it's a reasonable thing. I think we all know exactly what you're saying. I come back to work from vacation, and I have a massive email inbox. Do I declare email bankruptcy? That is easier to do if you're hiring in an organization, but for most people that is not at all something that you might feel comfortable doing. Although I really hope that the people in our accounts payable don't apply that strategy.

What can companies do to make benefits more inclusive?

Job: So we deal with benefits in every country in the world. What we see is that statutory benefits are all over the place. In particular maternity leave. In some countries it is independent of the parent, whether it's the father or their mother or caretaker, whether it is an adoption or not. In other countries the mother gets maternity leave and the father has to return to work after three days. If you're a modern company, how should you approach this in the first place?

McKensie: Something that I would like to see more from companies is being more imaginative around the ways in which they develop benefits for their workers. I'll give an example of Patagonia in the seventies, and the idea at that time offering people parental leave was considered just so forward-moving and so progressive. 

I'm sure at that time a lot of companies considered it to be something that was completely and totally unnecessary. Now we consider it to be, not in all companies, unfortunately, but in a lot of companies, we consider it to be something that is absolutely required. Something that is a basic necessity for benefits.

It's really pushing companies to think about what it means to be as imaginative as possible. How are you actually listening to your employees, getting a better understanding of what their needs are, and then applying that to the ways in which you frame your strategy around benefits? 

A big one too is being as trans inclusive as possible. For example, there are a number of companies that when they're referring to benefits, they use terms like maternal leave. We know that there are men with babies, there are non-binary people with babies and children, and also parents who adopt children, who foster children. Those who have children in their lives and are caring for children. It's thinking expansively about the ways in which people experience life and understanding that what might've been acceptable and reasonable in the nineties or in the eighties is going to be completely different now. 

As we evolve and grow, we should become more considerate of the ways in which our companies and cultural environments are able to have an impact on our society.

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How to improving the life-work balance of your remote workforce

How to build a Globally Inclusive Recruitment Strategy

Supporting and Connecting Globally Distributed Teams

Managing a global benefits plan

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Permanent Establishment Risk: Debunking the Myths

Managing contractors and avoiding misclassification

IP Protection and Data Security for Distributed Teams

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