The challenges of building culture in a remote workplace 

If you need to physically see your staff to know they’re working, you have far more serious problems as their employer than whether you can trust them to do the work. That was the message from Easy Crypto founder and CEO Janine Grainger – one of the speakers at the Canterbury Tech Summit in Christchurch this week.

Siblings Alan and Janine Grainger set up their company in late 2017 and it has since become the country’s biggest cryptocurrency marketplace. More than $2 billion has been traded on the exchange, which has more than 250,000 global users.

Grainger coordinates her teams across several countries with a range of time zones. While that poses some challenges to building workplace culture, she says, it’s by no means impossible. It often feels hard for employers to trust their staff to work remotely, but as a successful business owner who established her company to be a remote workplace from day one, she says it’s entirely doable.

The first step is to re-tune your mindset to see the good in people, says Grainger.

"I usually start from the view that my staff want to do a great job. I've hired good people, they are talented, they want to turn up to work, they are passionate about doing well and they want to deliver."

Besides, we probably need to embrace remote working - Grainger thinks it's unlikely New Zealand will do away with it altogether. While big overseas companies like Apple and Amazon might be forcing staff back into the office, remote working can actually be a great success, she says, if it’s given the right focus.

Of course, if it’s not managed well it can cost a company due to a lack of cohesion, teamwork and collegiality amongst workmates. But if done well, staff feel empowered, valued and eager to succeed, she says.

‍

Grainger recalls dreading Monday mornings in a previous life when she would trudge off to work at a place she didn’t want to be. She vowed she didn’t want to similarly destroy souls with her own business, which is why culture is a high priority at Easy Crypto.

"Culture is so important. It drives or undermines everything else," she says.

Morale at Easy Crypto is impressive: employee surveys show more than 95 percent of staff feel proud to work for the company. And while it may sound trite, and was not something Grainger feels super-enthused about, she ran a workshop to identify the values of the company – and now those values are at the forefront of everything they do.

After these values comes a focus on the team – even if they’re spread across all corners of the globe. At Easy Crypto, Grainger points to online escape rooms, a weekly ‘yay’ session, daily check-ins and more. While it’s important to get the team physically in the same space from time to time, just because they’re remote, it doesn’t mean they can’t feel connected, she says.

Having clear expectations is paramount, she says. You will know whether your employee is in bed gaming all day or actively working if you establish clear expectations and an effective system to measure outcomes. 

Empower staff to deliver, feed back to them regularly, and intervene promptly when issues arise, she says. Often you’ll find the reason staff aren’t meeting expectations is that these haven’t been clearly identified, or they’re lacking feedback to help them improve.

"There is nothing more disheartening that turning up to a job and not knowing what is expected of you," she says.

And finally, Grainger advises all businesses still using email as an internal chat system to stop right now; real-time chat options – such as Slack, Jira, Loom or Miro – are a far better tool for team chats and planning, she says, and will help your remote team flourish.