Nearly every startup begins as a lean, scrappy team that works closely in a central hub — it’s an interesting time when each team member is wearing multiple hats, likely working across several different job titles and is hands on with all aspects of the business.
But as your company grows, you’ll quickly discover that scaling has a unique set of challenges, from hiring those who are the right fit, to transitioning a multi-functional team into specialty areas, to expanding offices cross-country or overseas. I’ve found the latter is a particular challenge for most.
There are numerous benefits to building a team across varying offices and locations — drawing from a larger talent pool being number one. Tapping into major markets across the world opens your startup up to more potential applicants and in turn, helps gain the talent you need to grow.
But these benefits also come with potential challenges, including overcoming communication and language barriers, time zone differences or lack of alignment, just to name a few. Some employees may feel they’re out of sight and out of mind, which can quickly impact culture across the company, particularly if the newer, smaller offices feel like headquarters is dictating the terms.
My co-founders and I have worked through these very same challenges as we’ve scaled our company and have put a lot of thought into how we can best approach office expansion and integration to alleviate these issues and ensure our employees feel seen and connected to the company – whether they’re based ten feet or thousands of miles away.
Create opportunities for team members to connect in person
I can’t stress enough how important it is to invest in face-to-face time, enabling your employees to get to know the people behind the online and phone personas that they work with.
You can do this in numerous ways, whether that’s bringing everyone together once a year or throughout the year for special projects _ face-to-face time gives your employees an opportunity to build a connection and understand one another’s interests, work style and strengths on a deeper level. While this is achievable to a certain degree via email or phone, meeting face-to-face expedites this process significantly. In fact, research has shown that face-to-face meetings are 34x more successful than email thanks in large part to the boost from non-verbal cues (which are lost in phone and email interactions).
While Druva is headquartered in Silicon Valley, the majority of our employeesa are across the globe — with 300 employees in the U.S., and more than 500 spread across APAC and EMEA. What’s more, each region houses a variety of workstreams, so we’ve found it’s best to tailor our approach to each team:
- Hosting an annual kick-off: At the start of every fiscal year, we bring our global sales and product teams together for a multi-day meeting near our headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. This gives us an opportunity to not only ensure that everyone is aligned on the company’s strategy and objectives, it also helps create a sense of camaraderie. These are teams that work across the globe and as a result, often communicate over email. Being able to meet in person or meet other members of the team builds connections that are vital for a healthy organization.
- Setting aside budget for site visits: It’s not always practical for employees to travel to other offices regularly — whether that’s due to tight travel budgets or personal commitments — but I encourage every company to allocate travel budget for office visits that empower both headquarter and remote employees to travel and get to know team members. Whether it’s flying someone to London to meet with their new team lead or sponsoring an extra night stay so an employee on personal travel can visit another office while they’re in the city, encouraging team members to take the opportunity to meet face-to-face — outside of annual events or product launches — not only creates a greater culture but fosters collaboration, which can lead to greater productivity long-term.
- Offering a company apartment for extended periods: To help bring employees to our headquarters throughout the year, we’ve found that people often appreciate the ability to stay in a company apartment. With the chance to stay in the same place for up to four weeks, it offers a more comfortable setup than living in a hotel for weeks and also offers some additional flexibility for an extended stay. While our engineering team is largely based in India, the rest of our business operations, like marketing, sales and finance are based in the U.S. so during these stays, traveling employees have an opportunity to have casual conversations they don’t normally observe otherwise. They can better understand how their individual contribution fits into the larger puzzle, see how our finance team operates and get a better sense of our business operations overall. It can be a bit of an eye-opening experience, coming from an office with a more focused directive.
Show each region they’re top of mind
Regardless of where they work and live, employees need to know that they’re a priority to you and the executive team.
This comes through building a great company culture within each region and affording the same opportunities across offices — from group activities and outings to special perks and interactions with the executive team. Our Pune office, for example, hosts a number of events that are tailored to its culture. Whether it’s the annual mango festival or Diwali celebrations, they embrace the local aspects and of course still enjoy the same perks as our headquarters with complimentary daily lunch, for example.
I recognize that those who work at headquarters have a regular opportunity to engage with myself and others on the executive team — as such, we’re each committed to visiting the regional offices on a regular basis. Additionally, every year, our entire executive team travels to India for a week where we have a chance to meet with the local team members, work through priorities and reconcile product roadmaps with financial and marketing goals.
You can also build a sense of direct leadership within each office by instilling key roles and making priority hires across each market — in fact, Druva’s co-founder and chief technology officer operates out of India, which naturally creates a sense of direct leadership and empowers the local team to make decisions without feeling they require constant oversight from our headquarters. And finally, I make a point to be available and online in the early morning and late evening at least a few times a week to ensure teams across various time zones can get in touch with me on a regular basis.
Encourage an ongoing dialogue with the right tools
You can continuously look for opportunities to further integration between headquarters and regional teams. We hold a monthly global all-hands call in which our executive team walks through the latest updates and upcoming news for the entire company — we encourage all employees to submit questions via Slack, which we answer in real-time in the room. With so much happening across the global team, these meetings have become a perfect way to share the latest successes and inspire each other.
This is just another way to make sure teams feel heard, regardless of location.
From collaboration tools, to video, to real-time messaging, today’s technologies have helped teams, regardless of location, work together more seamlessly than ever before. Global expansion brings a stream of benefits and is the natural progression for any expanding business, but it’s important to make a commitment to do it right. Instead of simply checking the box, invest the resources, time and money to ensure your global team is set up for success.
The collaboration that will result — and in turn, the business results — will be undeniable.