The foreseeable future — remote work
By: Jeremy Fabatz
Tags: Startup, Slack, Remote Working, Technology, Future Of Work

Virtually no one feels comfortable returning to the office. As more and more people have transitioned to working from home for the past five months, we’re getting used to it, and we like it. The normal workday is now fully remote, full of new tooling and behaviors that weren’t as familiar earlier this year. Each person is individually dealing with the realities of COVID-19 and how it impacts their daily work responsibilities, but the overwhelming sentiment of returning to the office seems to be a unified front — we are in no rush.

The pervasive use of video conferencing and messaging platforms has skyrocketed during the pandemic. End users now leverage these tools several times per day, all day in some instances, in order to stay connected with their distributed teams. With new processes and ways of working virtually, we will continue to see less and less of a business case for returning to the office.

Recent stats show that 42% of the U.S. labor force is now working from home full-time. About 33% are unemployed, and the remaining 26%, mostly essential service workers are working onsite. “Working from home is not only economically essential, it is a critical weapon in our fight against COVID-19 — and future pandemics.” — Stanford University

Team members are now joining new organizations fully remote, reorgs are happening with new reporting structures — how do team members find others with in-demand skills who can help and problem solve? The reality is it’s tough; tough to know which team member knows what, and who to turn to when questions inevitably arise throughout the day.

This was the sentiment from our early customers as they transitioned to a fully remote workforce — how do I find team members with specific skills across my company who are available to help me, right now? There isn’t an accessible marketing department on floor 3, or an espresso machine down the hall, or a weekly all-hands meeting in the atrium, nope it’s just you and your internet connection with the barking dog in the background.

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We launched Giraffe with a product that centralized and captured the behavioral traits of team members and made this information accessible for team members. This helped teams learn more about one another, but the true pain was not necessarily capturing the behavioral traits of each team member — it was a nice to have but not a need to have.

Under the same theme of capturing traits and making them accessible within Giraffe, our customers wanted to see one another’s vocational skills, business process knowledge, and subject matter expertise. They wanted better ways to identify who could help them with tasks that inevitably popped up throughout the day. Not knowing who to go to for help, and spending time tracking down the right resource is a challenge they face several times per week. This was a great finding that we landed on with our early adopters.

In light of this feedback, we wanted to be objectively minded, and listen to our customers to help steer our ship — helping companies bring their skills and capabilities online for team members to access and action this information across the larger organization. So that’s what we did — made user profiles with skills and process knowledge accessible by team members.