Drift: In a digital world, put community first

Our editor gets some time the chief people officer of Drift, a key client of Globalization Partners, one of this year's UNLEASH World headline sponsors. Looking at scaling internationally? Then read on or listen in...

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Jon Kennard: In this kind of new environment, what behaviors and skills to leaders need to lead remote teams in the future of work?

Dena Upton: This is one of the topics that I love. And I enjoy watching organizations navigate these new times and the movement to digital first, it's being prevalent through a lot of companies is encouraging for me and to watch. So I'm really happy to talk about it. I love talking about this. You know, it's interesting, because there's that definition of leaders and I think behaviors and skills that leaders need to lead their teams in the future of work is important for leaders of an organization as well as anyone that is technically a people manager.

Leading a remote team

So I think, the responsibility of being a people manager is that much more important. When you're leading a remote or disparate team where you have individuals in the office, or as we call it conversation space, and then you have team members that are not located near any office and are fully remote, I think the important component is ensuring that you have a solid communication strategy, so you are the champion and leader of those individuals that you're responsible for.

So check ins, one-to-ones, you can't really manage by walking around anymore, because that digital office is in your computer. And so you've got to be a bit more formal than you had been in the past with one-to-ones acting as a personal coach, and ensuring that the company culture and leadership principles or values are really understood by the company.

So some of those things that you took for granted before that individuals could watch or absorb by looking around the office, you have to put those into words and be pretty formal with how you're running meetings, so that you ensure that your team feels really connected.So some of those things that you took for granted before that individuals could watch or absorb by looking around the office, you have to put those into words and be pretty formal with how you're running meetings, so that you ensure that your team feels really connected.

And I think that building community is ever more important now in a digital-first world than it was before. And this idea of remote or digital work isn't new to us. But I think it's being adopted and prevalent through many organizations. So it's becoming a lot more popular than it used to be, when you were on a call, there were five or six people that were in the office and one remote person, and that remote person was the afterthought, e.g. we've got to make sure we've got a document that they can see ahead of time. Well, now it's more normal to have everyone remote with maybe the minority of people in a physical location or physical office. So there's a shift there. It's not anything that we haven't experienced before but the intentionality of it and making sure that you're formal with your practices and your rituals is really important, to make sure there's a sense of connection and community.

JK: I couldn't agree more. Obviously, these initiatives often come from the top down. So if you're experiencing resistance from the C-Suite and rolling out a hybrid work strategy, what data do you think would most compellingly convinced them that it was the right thing to do, and to move forward with your ideas?

DU: So the increase in shifting to remote work, you can get a ton of external data: remote employees are happy, Owl Labs just released a state of remote work report that found that remote employees stay with their company longer, and report being happier at work 20% more often than in office workers. CNBC workforce survey is another data point, McKinsey just released a report.

So there's a lot of external data that people leaders can present to the C-Suite to reinforce the importance of hybrid work being part of your overall talent strategy. But then there's a lot of data that can be gathered internally, by your organization, engagement surveys, you can actually specifically do a digital-first or remote-first survey of your employee base. And that data can be really helpful to inform the C-Suite of decisions that are made going forward and recruiting data.

What's your acceptance rate in the recruiting process? Are you losing candidates because of your lack of digital-first workforce strategy? So you can get a lot of data externally that can inform those decisions. And then internally, within your employee base, when you think about engagement surveys, you can find a lot of information and data that you can share with your C-Suite on what's happening with your current employee base, as well.

JK: Okay, so you've presented the data, got the go-ahead for the initiative to go forward. But you have to mitigate against challenges, of which there obviously will be some, so what challenges does this new world of work present, that leaders need to be aware of, in order to mitigate against and make sure this new paradigm is successful?

DU: There's the cost strategy, right? It depends on how expansive you want your digital footprint to go. There's the real estate savings that you can realize, too, if you're not worried about putting a real estate footprint or an entity footprint in a location - because you don't actually have to do it. There's a lot of ways to mitigate that cost. I think the other thing, too, is, are you technically ready to adopt a digital-first strategy? Do you have those technical components that would enable a team wherever they are, to be collaborative and work together effectively?

Globalization Partners and Drift

I think the beauty of where we are right now is the challenges when it comes to international expansion. I think about the way we expanded at my previous company, internationally. When you expanded internationally 10 years ago, eight years ago, you had to set up the entity, worry about payroll costs, worry about compliance issues in those locations. Now, with the benefit of someone like Globalization Partners, that can be done in seven days with an organization that is already in region, and the only thing you're worried about is talent, attraction and employment brand, and those things that would actually get the best and the brightest to work for you.

So I think it's daunting when you think about digital first and global expansion, because, as an HR professional, 10 years ago, global expansion meant a lot of immigration challenges. And many of those things can be avoided if you have the right partnership to make the international strategy easier to embark on.So I think it's daunting when you think about digital first and global expansion, because, as an HR professional, 10 years ago, global expansion meant a lot of immigration challenges. And many of those things can be avoided if you have the right partnership to make the international strategy easier to embark on.

JK: A perfect segue to the last question, and this is where we'll finish I think, which is, aside from the quick turnaround. How else has working with Globalization Partners impacted Drift's growth globally, then?

DU: To get into the real details, we have a mutual partnership with Globalization Partners; they use Drift to help with their marketing efforts and we use globalization partners for our international expansion. And, we had embarked on opening up a tech hub in Mexico specifically in Guadalajara, but setting up payroll and employment contracts and onboarding tasks were too much for the small HR team that I have in place right now, as well as our small legal team and finance organization. That's when we turn to Globalization Partners to rapidly enter the Mexican market within seven days - the turnaround was really expansive. So, we could focus on finding the right leader in the region, making sure that we had tech meetups and tech hubs that were happening. We were focused in on the talent that we wanted to attract, and didn't have to worry about the administrative components to getting individuals live and running in that region.

We could really focus on why Mexico, why Guadalajara, and talk about the strategy specifically around diversity, equity inclusion for us at Drift which was really important and we could double down on focusing in on that challenge strategy instead of worrying about the administrative components to getting that entity set up and running. And so it made it really easy. We have a team of 14 in place right now, we're continuing to add additional Drifters every month in Guadalajara and we've been focusing in on meetups and employment branding work in that areas and don't have to worry about, the other components of HR.

JK: Glad to hear it's working really well. And Dena, thank you so much for your time today talking to UNLEASHcast. If we don't see you in Paris, maybe we'll see you in America.

DU: Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.

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