The 3 E's of People Ops | An Interview with Ali Greene
Remote Work Leader and Co-Author of Remote Works Book, Ali Greene, shares how to build trust remotely and the critical role of remote work in combating brain drain and supporting diverse communities.
In my interview with Ali Greene, a Remote Work Leader, Advocate, and Speaker, we discussed remote work in depth.
I love Ali's take: "With remote work, you can't hide behind a super cool office with wine, murals, free snacks, or ping-pong. Culture is so much more than values on a wall. You have to think about community building on a remote team; you have to be intentional."
Check out the full interview and hear how Ali describes brain drain:
Read the transcript below:
Mary: Hello everybody! Welcome to People Ops School where I have the great honor of talking with the very people working to make work healthier, more human, and more creative. Joining me today I have Ali Greene. Ali is the Head of culture and community at Oyster, an HR platform for globally distributed teams. She is also the founder of Cohana, where she offers remote work consulting, and she's co-writing a book about remote work right now. All of this is to say, Ali spends a lot of time thinking about how to help teams and humans do their best work remotely. And these are some of my favorite topics so I'm really excited to dive in with you today, Ali.
Ali: Thank you, Mary. I'm super excited to be here and geek out about some of these People Ops topics.
Mary: Let's do it! I always kick off with the same question. People operations can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What does it mean to you?
Ali: Yeah, I love this question I think in the past few years there's been kind of conflicting arguments around Human Resources and People ops. And what does each one mean, and what is the perception of them all? And, is People Ops just a rebranding of HR?
No, it's not. There are enough slight differences that make it this unique thing, and part of the future of work will be to focus on People Operations.
So, with that said, I always think about it as something that's extremely proactive in organizations and not just in service of other teams within an organization. And for me it's all about it satisfying what I like to call the three E's:
engagement
efficiency
effectiveness.
Or, more so, just like how do we make the great people that companies hire really good at their job, do their job in a way that doesn't add unnecessary complexity, and make them really happy to be doing that job and happy to be pushing forward the goals of the organization. And so when I look at it, it's like, how do we have people truly feel those things on a team? And there are lots of different angles that you can then take.
So one is the very human element, the very emotional element of creating a good vibe and a company. Like how do you create trust? How do you make sure an organization is healthy? What does that mean? What is the personality of an organization?
I hate using the word culture but what are - I like to use and set like standard operating behaviors - like what behaviors does everybody want to embrace in the organization? And there's a lot of emotional intelligence that needs to go in that.
And then I also like to think about People Ops, and this might surprise some people it might sound boring but the strategy, the processes, the documentation that goes into place to help people learn how to exist as a community member on a team. So how can leaders create systems to make their employees’s jobs easier? How can leaders create frameworks that help people get to know each other better, especially in remote organizations? How do we structure things so that there's clear company goals and then intentional ways to reach those goals? And sometimes that might fall on a CTO or an engineering director, or a sales director. And it might look different for teams in the organization. But I think the more that a People Ops person can be part of those conversations and create a cohesive nature for everyone in the company, the more the machine is well-oiled.
Mary: I like that analogy. There are two things that you said that I want to pull out.
The first one is around People Ops being a more proactive way to approach organization building, and you mentioned it might be someone like an engineer or CTO or someone in leadership who likes the systems and processes. It doesn't always have to come from someone working in People Ops.
And then the other thing you pulled out that was interesting and very telling of your background and experience in remote work is this focus on systems and processes and how they can really be in service of autonomy and building these things. And so I'd be curious to hear if you can give an example to tie those things all together - what kind of explicit systems and structures are you describing? What do they look like?
Ali: Yeah, definitely. So, again, I think the responsibility of a People Ops person is to go back to those three things: engagement, efficiency, and effectiveness. I almost use them as criteria for anything that an organization does.
So when you think about remote work, a big challenge people often find themselves in is - especially managers which is honestly ridiculous - 'how do I know that my employees are working? Or what they're working on if I can't see the‘
My cheeky gut reaction is always, ‘Well, how did you know they were working when they were sitting in an office?’ And not reading the news online or dreaming about their vacations that they can take once, you know, the world opens up again, or they get their PTO.
And so, first and foremost, it's like yes, trust, and we could have a whole separate podcast about the importance of trust. But then it's things like: how can an organization implement rituals and systems to help people share what they're working on? And there are lots of benefits to that. So, if you have a systemized way for people to share what they're working on, you can make sure there are no duplicative efforts in an organization. You can make sure that people are focusing on top priorities and things that will be most impactful to a company's goals. It also allows people to get to know each other, to be like, ‘Oh, this person is working on this project that seems really cool’ or ‘I don't know anything about user interface design but I love that they're updating this new product webflow in system, and I've been developing the back end for that. I want to go talk to this person in the organization’. And use this as a way to have a really cool conversation about our work and how we could better work with each other. Even though the pieces of the projects that we work on are usually very separate and so one thing that you can implement and like as a people ops person where I see this person helping the organization is really as that internal coach to really figure out how to structure this and what it looks like.
So, for example, this could be just something in Slack where, every Monday, people sort of post:
this is the most important thing I'm working on this week
this is the company goal it relates to
If you have ideas or questions, this is the best time to reach out to me.
It could live in Asana or Notion and include things like people's availability. So, there are lots of different ways to create a structure that streamlines communication.
Mary: Yeah, takes people out of their guest bedroom or, if they're lucky an actual office in their house, and connects them to, 'Oh, we are all working on this thing together.
Ali: Exactly.
Mary: Cool. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the work you're doing with Oyster, and what it means to be Head of Culture and Community? What does that work look like?
Ali: Oyster is super cool. I was really grateful to find them.
I have a bit of a funny, I think, pandemic story where I had, I had left my role as Director of People in February, and I had this like grand sabbatical planned. I was going on a ski trip to kick it off and I get to the ski resort and the country goes into lockdown. I was in France.
I always had this passion that I was trying to figure out. Like, there are so many awesome things about people operations. But as a people ops person normally the impact you have on remote work, on society, on building communities - which are things that are near and dear to my heart - is only within one organization. And granted there are amazing things like People Ops School where people can share ideas and learn from each other but you still have a very like narrow window of impact.
And so I got to know Oyster, which is an HR platform for globally distributed companies to help them make it easier to hire and pay people and treat these people well regardless of the country they live in. So I was like, immediately drawn to this social impact mission. One of my passions around remote work has always been like, of course, remote work is beneficial for people, they can choose where to work, they can have opportunities to work in really interesting companies. Yes it's great for organizations, they can hire amazing talent anywhere they don't have to pay the overhead costs of an office.
But remote work goes so much deeper than that. It can help fight brain drain in developing communities, and send people to like Boise, Idaho and help cultivate the economy of these local places all around the world from Lebanon, to Kenya to, rural U.S. And that's really cool to me and like what that looks like for changing societies.
And then there's like this health impact, this family impact. What does it look like if you're a single parent or caring for the elderly or you have like emotional or physical limitations where an office becomes a really big burden? And how does remote work open up doors for those groups? And so just being able to have conversations with companies that care about that is awesome. So, Oyster really excited me there.
Mary: I'm going to interrupt you really quickly because brain drain is a fairly new term for me. I only learned about it in the last year or so. Can you quickly explain what that is?
Ali: Yeah, so not the textbook definition by any means, but the way I perceive it is that when historically people have had to rely on really competitive, really interesting jobs, especially in the knowledge market those things, those jobs would be in San Francisco London, New York. And so, if you were a potential employee and wanted to work on these opportunities, you would move to those urban areas, away from the areas that you live, whether it's Detroit, Boise, you know, South Africa, or rural Ireland. And so the flux of people leaving those communities to go to these big urban cities leaves what's called a brain drain.
All of these super intellectual, interesting people are leaving these communities to go to big cities where there's already a lot of density of that type. And so by removing that from the equation you give access to people to really awesome jobs, and potentially higher pay and then they can use that to give back to their local community and help people in a community get excited for these types of job opportunities, support the local like coffee shops or studios because they have the money to do so. So, all in all, it's a huge Win-Win solution in my eyes. As someone who's also been there, and done that, I was living in big cities, and it wasn't for me. It's cool to now live somewhere that's off the beaten path. And in my daily life, I'll work at a coffee shop and meet someone who also works for like a tech startup but then someone who's like a reggae coach, and someone who you know works in the hospitality region, or a yoga teacher. So it, I think adds for like just a cooler personal life.
Mary: Yeah, totally. Cool. And to get us back on track, I'd love to learn about the work you're doing at Oyster. What does it mean to be Head of Culture and Community?
Ali: Exactly. So that's the second really cool thing about Oyster. Because HR is such a core piece of their product, how they view people operations isn't just your traditional like "you're going to be a people ops manager or talent acquisition person".
And so, in my role, I'm really tasked with how do I bridge People Ops best practices, and the challenges, and the expertise, and the questions that the people in our circle face and find ways to support that internally inside the organization but also externally offer more outlets for people to learn from each other to have the resources to solve some of these challenges and to help, you know, potentially impact the product.
So, if I had to do the elevator pitch or TLDR for it, it would be basically a liaison between best practices around community building and culture and remote work internally and then evangelizing and sharing them with our community externally as well.
Mary: I love that. I think you and I are definitely biased in terms of being very big advocates for remote work and have been lucky that we've both been doing it for a long time, pre-COVID. And we've covered some of the pros of remote work, especially the social impact on communities.
But it's not all amazing, awesome, perfect all the time. For companies that have not been remote for a long time, just the past year because of COVID, I'm starting to hear more and more people are running into that like, 'okay, we've been doing this for a year. We were getting by on adrenaline for a while, but now things are kind of hard and we're struggling to think about how to build connection on our team and how to hold events that don't feel like forced fun or inauthentic'.
And so, again, you've been doing this for a long time I'd be curious to hear what you've learned around helping people build that connection and community?
Ali: Yeah, definitely. I think first and foremost, like everybody right now just needs to acknowledge that the world is hard. Yeah, you can have the most perfect remote work setup at home and you can have amazing, family members at home, or you could be living alone in a studio apartment and trying to make it work and obviously there's like very tactical challenges that each one of those examples might face but there's the end of the day like life in 2020 was really hard.
Life in 2021 is still pretty hard. And like this type of remote work is not the remote work that you and I have been advocating for and have been experiencing for the past few years. And this is a remote work situation where week-to-week guidelines and rules and laws and restrictions on where you're allowed to go are changing and that creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of uncertainty for the future. It's hard to look forward to things because of that as well. And you have people with like their children at home, people that have medical conditions that have this added fear because of things going on and so like first and foremost, like, I think everybody just needs a little bit of like authenticity and humility to like be allowed to have those vulnerable moments.
Remote work opens up work to be in people's homes. You're gonna physically like be in people's homes because you're doing certain calls. Then emotionally like, as much trust as you can build to let your employees show those, those insecurities and show those vulnerabilities, I think creates a culture of authenticity that it's really important at work. It makes people feel connected to each other, it makes them understand and know that the company is supportive of this and everyone's going through it together and like that they're excited to get the work done and it gives you something to look forward to. So that's my little rant about remote work right now.
But outside of that, I think, remote work is really cool for building community and culture. And this is why I love what I'm doing right now because it's taking away all the fluff. That means making connections real. And so, remote work, you can't hide behind a super cool office with wine, artwork or murals, free snacks, or ping pong. When I was first starting my career, I worked for a startup that had a ball pit. And like culture is so much more than values on a wall.
Community building on a remote team is about being intentional. So, like, what are your goals as a company? What do you want to stand behind in terms of people getting to know each other? And how do you, again create strategies, processes and frameworks to help support those things? So, if it's really important to you that people have a social outlet, how you create rituals around that social outlet? Lots of companies now are using the Donut installation on Slack, and that's a good first step.
I would say a better step is the leadership team dedicating time on the calendar for those donut buddies to happen. And then doing those donut buddies themselves and share it with a screen grab of their zoom conversation in slack. And showing like 'oh this is wonderful about this person'. And that's how you can take something that everybody uses to the next level of intentionality and show your employees that you stand behind this as an organization and that socialization time is important. So that's just one example of that.
Mary: I think we can both acknowledge that 'it takes a lot of work' is kind of the answer. But the return on investment is huge and the place that you can create for people is huge.
What advice might you give to someone who is working in People Ops, building these systems, trying to create executive buy-in, and asking their CEO to talk about how they use Donut? What advice would you give to someone who is meeting some resistance or is having trouble? How do you help the leadership or executive team understand why this work is so important and why it's important that they show that they're behind it?
Ali: Yeah, I think it's really important to earn a seat and have a seat at that virtual table. And so, I mean, there are plenty of statistics out there around the cost of hiring a new employee versus keeping an employee. Like what happens when really intelligent, hardworking people leave organizations and the cultural impact it can have on their teammates? How do you replace not only that person but that single source of failure and knowledge they have? Why do people leave jobs and organizations? It's usually around management and culture.
All of that comes down to areas of expertise that People Ops people have. And instead of reacting to those things, again this kind of goes back to the definition, instead of reacting to those things as they happen pro-actively sit down with a leadership team, and talk about like what do we want to make our organization so that we can set the expectations with potential candidates? With new employees starting from the hire date, starting onboarding? In terms of how do we make decisions here? What acceptable behaviors exist at work? How are we going to recognize people What mental models do we want to use and celebrate in the organization?
And I think even sometimes talking about those things and the impact on the products, the impact on revenue, creates a lot of urgency and a sense of being serious. Naturally, we know this stuff is serious and this stuff is really good. I think sometimes it takes the stark truth of numbers to really shift someone's opinion. It also makes rational sense if your employees are really stressed out and don't feel connected to each other; why would they want to help each other in a bind? Why would they want to work extra hours to get this launch done so that you're ahead of schedule or are surprising and delighting customers? The way you get people to be excited about your company is to be excited about them and treat them right.
Mary: Cool. I love that. One last question to close this out - because you spend so much time thinking about remote teams and culture is - if someone asked for one single piece of advice on working remotely what would you share? What comes to mind for you?
Ali: Set clear expectations always.
Mismatched expectations are the root of all evil. So whether it's at company level or individual level, having people be clear on what they're expecting from their peers, from their managers, from their employees is the most important thing. And you can't just fake it in remote work. You have to be really proactive and intentional about setting those expectations which are keywords I use a lot, but they are really near and dear to my heart.
Mary: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. To sum up some of the things you were saying, those cracks in your culture can't be covered up by benefits, ping pong tables, or ball pits when you're remote. Having those conversations and setting those clear expectations becomes so much more important.
Ali: Yeah, exactly.
Mary: I really appreciate you joining me in this conversation today, Ali. It's interesting hearing how you view both People Ops and remote work and how they work together.
Ali: Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for your time. And I'm excited about this opportunity and hope your listeners can come away with a few pieces of inspiration for their people journey.