I Didn’t Feel Great About Remote Work. My Team Proved Me Wrong.

When we started Saatva, everything about it was built for the future. We were the model of a modern e-commerce company, with a national logistics network, 24/7 online customer service, and all the technology and data any business could ever want. But in one very important area, I was strictly old-school. Success on the job meant putting in the hours, being in the office, sitting in a room together sharing ideas, feeling the energy of other people. I truly believed that was the only way. 

I’m sitting in the office—minus the people but not, as it turns out, the energy—as I write this. It took the Covid crisis to make me realize I had some pretty outdated notions when it comes to the way people work. Don’t get me wrong. I’m never going to be the person who thinks everybody should work from home. Face-to-face interaction is too important to me, and to the successful functioning of our business, to give it up entirely.

But the past few months have taught me a few things about what it means to be a truly modern company. 

Creativity knows no bounds. When the pandemic forced us to close our facilities in New York and Austin, Texas, I knew our logistics and finance teams would be just fine working remotely, since so much of their daily interactions already take place online. And we had always had a contingency plan for our customer service representatives to work from home in case anything happened to our building, so that was an easy transition as well. But what about our creatives—the digital and UX designers, copywriters, photographers, and others who work on the website and produce our advertising and marketing materials? Without being in the same room together, how could they possibly collaborate and produce work of a high caliber on tight deadlines? As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Between March and July, while spread out from New York to California, our creative teams not only completed ad sets for four separate holidays but also snapped into action with a series of hilarious Zoom videos and undertook the beginnings of a major rebranding campaign—all while continuing day-to-day “run the business” activities. Seeing the quality of the output gave me a new appreciation for the focus and discipline that go into producing great creative work. 

I don’t need to know everything. I am a little reluctant to say this out loud. But the truth is, if you’re responsible for getting through a specific set of tasks in any given day or week, should I care where and when you do that work, as long as the goal is met? Personally, I don’t like to work at home. I’m the kind of person who, if I’m home, will watch “Ellen” at 4 o’clock. But the past few months have shown me that I don’t need to be looking over everyone’s shoulders all the time to assure that they’re meeting expectations. I would be screaming about getting back to the office if the evidence of employees’ productivity was not right in front of me. 

I can’t wait for everyone to be back together. All of this notwithstanding, I can’t wait for our teams to be together again. I love the family feeling, the energy, and the shared sense of purpose among colleagues. I am a firm believer that office camaraderie, communication between departments, and onboarding and training are simply better when they happen live and in-person. This way of working is novel for us, but there is something essential to Saatva—our culture, our way of thinking, our personal relationships—that can’t be experienced via videoconference.

A hybrid approach is the way of the future. During the shutdown, we’ve reconfigured and expanded our offices to allow people to be together at a safe distance, and some amount of remote or staggered work hours will likely continue for the foreseeable future. This sort of hybrid approach will be the new normal, as people like me who run companies see that we’re living in a different world, enabled by Zoom and Google Hangouts and taken for granted by the modern employee. I wouldn’t have chosen for it to happen this way, but now that I’ve seen the tremendous work our teams are capable of, wherever they are, I’m even more excited about our future.

This article has been reposted on LinkedIn.