85 | Culture Beyond the Office: Nurturing a Positive Remote Work Environment | Camilla Boyer

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

When companies are fighting against the remote thing, it's never going to be successful. But if you look at it as an opportunity, you can evolve just as successfully into that world as if you were built in this world.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. As always, before we get into today's guest, a big thank you to our friend and supporter Workvivo. If you are listening to this podcast in real time, you can go back and have a listen to the last podcast but one where I talk a little bit about podcasting for internal comms. That is something that Workvivo, which is an employee engagement platform, they have that out of the box. So if short form audio or podcasting is something that you're really interested in introducing to your internal comms mix, then might be well worth having a look at them. You'll hear more on them later. In the meantime, uh, if you want to have a little, um, tinkle on the keyboard there, it's workvivo.com, uh, for more information on them. Now, today's guest— I have been doing lots of one-to-ones recently as part of, uh, some client projects that I've been running, one-to-ones with senior execs. And more often than not, when talking about culture and hybrid working, all I've heard is, well, you know, it's going to be good to get back to the office because really, you know, it's really damaging our culture not being in the office. To which I'm going, well, maybe you just have to think a little differently about how you create and you nurture and you manage that culture in a slightly more deliberate way, which is what I'm going to chat to today's guest about, Camilla Boyer, who is the head of internal comms and culture at Hoppin. Now, if you haven't heard of Hoppin, it's quite the story. Founded in 2019. Now, I'm gonna murder this, by the way, Camilla, just, you can come in in a second and tell me what the correct information is. You founded in 2019, you've had $450 million in venture capital, you've got 100,000 clients, you're worth about $7.5 billion at the moment, you've got between 700 and 800 staff, and you've got no offices. As an organization, you are completely, fully, 100% remote. Did I get that broadly right?

That is broadly right, yes. Um, so it's been a wild ride over the last kind of 2 years. Um, I think it's actually about a billion in VC funding now over the course of 4 rounds. So we closed our Series D over the summer, which is $450 million. Um, and so it's been a crazy ride. Yeah, we're closing in on 1,000 employees. Spread across 48 countries across the world, I believe.

Wow, incredible. Well, listen, it's brilliant to have you here, and I'm really excited because I want to hear what it's like to create culture in a remote-first company, and perhaps what some of those more traditional companies who've been forced largely into being remote-first, I guess, during COVID what they can learn from you. So let's maybe kick off as we always do. Maybe it'd be really interesting to hear a little bit about you, where you've from your role, and then anything else you think about Hopin that might be of interest to listeners.

Sure. So first of all, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Um, and a little bit about me, what brought me to my role at Hopin today. So as you said, I'm head of internal comms and culture for Hopin. Um, I would say the common thread that kind of ties my career together is I'm a storyteller. Um, I've worked in internal comms and culture and also in marketing over the course of my career. I've been an executive communication coach, both freelance and in-house. And basically, I believe that building great companies is founded in building great cultures, and building great cultures is founded in telling great stories. And so that's, that's basically what I do. I've been in tech my whole career. I've been at big tech companies like Twitter and Salesforce. I've been at startups and I've been freelance and finally decided to jump on board a high-growth company at Hopin and see if we could kind of build an amazing culture from the ground up. And I was also particularly compelled by the challenge of doing that in a fully remote environment, because as you mentioned, there's so many assumptions around building culture that it is founded in, based in office environments, and what's written on the walls, what the free food is like, what ping pong tables you have, and all that sort of thing. So what is left of culture when you strip all those things away? And that's our challenge.

Yeah, because I guess not everybody has free dinners, and foosball tables, and beanbag lounges in their houses.

Yeah, no, certainly not. And we never interact with our colleagues in physical life, so you can't even depend on those interactions really to build your culture.

So just to clarify, you are fully, fully remote, no offices at all?

That's correct. No offices anywhere in the world. We are closing in on 1,000 employees. We are distributed across Europe, APAC, and the US. And we don't have any physical offices.

So, before we get into the culture stuff, I want to ask just a couple of questions about hiring and onboarding, because I think that's really, really interesting, and the types of people that might want to come and work for a company which is truly remote first, that doesn't have the offices, that doesn't have the water cooler moments. I'm doing that thing with my fingers, listeners, the speech marks thing. What's the benefit of being fully remote first when you're hiring? What benefits does that bring?

The main benefit of being fully remote when you're hiring is that you can hire purely based on talent. You don't have to— you're not constrained by proximity to the office. So if you're hiring a product manager, you're not looking for the best product manager within a 30-mile radius of San Francisco. You're looking for the best product manager in the world. And that's a pretty freeing thing. And we have some really incredible stories at Hopin where we have really been able to source the best talent from places like Indonesia and Tanzania. Because they're the best people for the job. Of course, there are some restrictions just based on like legal things around, you know, hiring laws in different countries. But beyond that, we have much more freedom to just hire the best person for the job. And that's really been able to kind of empower us to bring the best talent into our team, which is pretty cool to see.

Yeah, amazing. And I guess from a cost perspective, you're not going to be paying the same for a top-notch project manager in Indonesia or Kenya as you might be in San Francisco or London. So it has, has a cost benefit as well.

Sure. Yeah, I don't know the nuances of that, but I would assume so. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, cool. So do you look for different things in employees when you're hiring people? So do you look for that? Do you have to hire people that have more drive, that are more motivated themselves, are less about being in a team, that need people that bit less? Do you think about that when you're hiring? Does that cross your mind?

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things that we think about. One is we are very intentional very intentional about hiring for values fit rather than hiring for culture fit, which I'm sure is a distinction you're familiar with. But basically, just the idea that we are a very values-driven organization and we make sure to build our values into every step of our recruitment process because we want to make sure that we're bringing in people who fundamentally align with those values. And it's really important because we don't have the same influences on each other because we're not physically around each other every day. So you really have to be a good values fit as an individual working from your house. So that's one thing. The second thing is we also have to think about making sure that we're hiring people who are, first of all, looking at remote as being an opportunity and a benefit rather than something that they have to like tolerate. That's really important. And then also making sure that people are self-directed enough to know not just how to be really productive at home, but also to know when to turn off. And that's something that we think about a lot too, because the lines are much less clearer when you're working at a desk in your bedroom or in your living room than when you have a whole train ride between your house and your office.

Yeah, definitely. It gives you that breathing space, doesn't it, between home life and work life?

Exactly.

Yeah. I've actually heard stories during lockdowns of people, friends of mine, who would walk from their houses to the train station in the morning and then walk home again and then start work. And then at the end of the day, walk to the train station and walk home again, and then they're done.

Wow. That is some real attachment to a routine. I will say I still have a routine. It's different than when I commuted into an office. But now instead of having to get up and squish my face into somebody's armpit at 8:00 AM on a Wednesday morning, I can go for an hour-long walk. And that's really great. I do have a routine that gets me out of the house and creates division between waking up in the morning and starting work, but it's much more pleasant than my previous.

Your face squished into somebody's armpit. That's a picture in words right there.

Any Londoner is familiar with that situation.

Oh, I did that. I danced that merry dance for many, many years on the tube heading into West London. When you talk about your values being so fully ingrained in your organization, I'm going to put you on the spot now, and I'm going to ask you what your values are.

Yeah, sure. So great question. Thank you for asking. This is a piece of work that I'm very passionate about. We actually did a values overhaul back in February. I mean, I can talk extensively about how do you create values that are aspirational, not performative, and also authentic. But To answer your question, our values are prioritize impact, lead with empathy, hashtag no ego, customer champions, and one step ahead. Okay.

Okay. So always be one step ahead of the competition or the customer.

Yeah, well, it's just one step ahead is about looking around corners and being able to anticipate things as they're coming up. So solving problems before they happen. Basically, just trying to make sure that you're not caught off guard, which is something that's pretty hard to do when you're in a fast-paced environment that's moving as quickly as Hoppin. We really have moved at breakneck speed over the last 2 years. So, it's an important one.

Yeah, for sure. I often say to clients when I'm working on values projects with clients, I'll often tell them that unless they're going to hire, fire, reward, recognize, promote, everything with their values, unless they're going to do that and really embed them in how they do business, then don't bother doing it. Because they'll just be, as has been said a million times, words on a wall. And that's, and that's, that's really pointless. So, so would you literally, if somebody wasn't living your values, would it be a case of, here are your things, maybe there's somewhere better for you to work?

So I think it's about how you factor your values into your evaluation of how people are performing. So what are you rewarding, basically? Are you just rewarding the highest performers, or are you rewarding people who are living and embodying your values? And what of those things carries what weight as you're thinking about who your most valuable people are? And so it's something that we really make a point of doing, of having those conversations around, like, you know, what behaviors you're exhibiting that are in line with our values, that are not in line with our values. And part of the reason we did this big rewrite of the values back in February is because we wanted words and phrases that could become part of our vernacular, that could become things that people could say to each other, that's an understood common language internally to be able to say, "Hey, you know, you need to be a bit more no ego about this," or, you know, "You really need to make sure that you have a lot of things on your plate, make sure you're prioritizing impact." And they're just phrases that are triggers for people internally, that when they hear that, they know exactly what you mean. And also, it's a way of guiding as a manager. You know, I have these conversations constantly with my team of guiding their behavior and making sure that they're kind of adhering to those rules.

Yeah, it is about using them as a lens, isn't it?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, completely. It's a way of framing everything. And I think particularly no ego is an important one that we talk about. Like, hashtag no ego has been One of the things that we said at the company forever, and it really comes from the top, but it's about basically having the humility to share praise and accept constructive criticism without taking it personally. And it's, for a lot of people, kind of an uncomfortable thing to adapt to, to not take things personally and not fight back and, um, and understand that everything is in, in the interest of the team. So it's a cool one.

Yeah, no, I really, really like that. I might pinch that for some of my other client projects. Thanks very much. Just going back to the hiring piece, when we think about taking on people, it can't all be rosy in the garden. It can't all be— you can't win every single time. Are there downsides to hiring everybody remotely? And what might they be?

Yeah, definitely. So I think there's two things that I would point to. One is work-life balance. And when you're— when you're working remotely, you're hiring remotely. We don't have a pro— I know people sometimes say, oh well, if everyone's working from home, how do you know that they're actually working? We don't have that problem. We have the opposite problem. We don't know how to get people to stop working. And so I think that's part of the problem, is we actually have to be more cognizant of potential burnout because It's not as clear to people, and we have people across time zones too. So if it's 7:00 PM in the UK, that's 11:00 AM in California. So you have colleagues who still have a whole day of work ahead of them, and it's pretty easy to just carry on working unless you have the self-discipline to know when to stop. So I think that's one issue that you have to watch out for when you're in a fully remote environment. And then I think the other one is just around making sure that everybody is like, has the information that they need to do their jobs really well, because you can struggle with silos a bit more when you're in a fully remote environment as well.

Yeah. And I guess the time zone thing is a really interesting one, particularly when you're an international company, because you could arguably, I mean, you said earlier, and I think it was for you in 48 countries, be very, very easy to be able to work around the clock, literally around the clock, wouldn't it?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you were superhuman and you had the ability to do that, you could. I don't know how long you'd last.

But interesting. One of the big things, like, last question on the whole hiring piece, because I want to get on and talk about culture. Onboarding has been something that I think organizations have struggled with forever anyway, even when it was normal times pre-COVID. I don't think that HR departments have done a particularly good job with onboarding. It's always been the kind of the formal systems and processes and here's how to 'Here's how to do expenses,' and 'Here's how to apply for your train ticket,' and stuff like that. And it's actually less about the people elements of the company, the cultural or the values-based elements of the company. How do you do that? How do you handle onboarding? What are you doing that's maybe different that other organizations could perhaps learn from you?

So, we do onboarding in Hopin. So, we have a Hopin event that is evergreen. It's open all the time. Hoppin Academy. It's the virtual Hoppin Academy. So within Hoppin Academy, if you are a new joiner who is starting on Monday, we have a week-long worth of programming that you will go through that's live sessions. So those sessions are things like product training where we teach you to physically use Hoppin, live intros to different teams, and obviously introductions to people, team policies, and things like that. My team, we run a session every— for every onboarding class on internal communications, our tools and systems, and culture and values. So we do that live for every class. And then Johnny, our CEO, does a live Q&A and hop in for every onboarding class as well. And then in addition to that, we have an expo hall that mimics a physical expo hall at a conference where you can go and each team has a booth. And these are just videos. They're not live, but you can go in and watch a 3 to 5 minute video from each team where they explain who they are and what they do. And so you can kind of self-guide your learning about the company and about Hopin as well. And then there's also a networking feature within Hopin that basically new hires can go in there, and it's sort of like a chat roulette function where you get matched with other new hires. You have a quick 4-minute conversation, and then you get matched with somebody new. So we kind of COVID all the bases within the Hopin platform, from live sessions, product trainings, Q&As, and also putting on-demand resources at their, at their disposal to get to know the company.

Brilliant. So you're effectively going to a big onboarding event, if you like?

Yeah, that's exactly it. So just like at a physical event, there's, there's live programming, and then there's content that you can consume at your own pace.

Okay, okay, nice. And of course, the lovely idea is as well that everybody gets to meet everybody, regardless of in which of those 48 countries they're in.

Completely. And I always say to every onboarding class, make sure that you're taking the time to get to know the people in your onboarding class, because this is the most geographically diverse and cross-functional group that you will be exposed to for, for, you know, possibly the duration of your Hoppin career. Because once we go off and do our jobs within our teams, your, your world becomes smaller. So it's really an important opportunity for building culture and building connection.

Yeah, interesting.

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Let's talk a little bit about culture now with that beautiful segue right there. You said at the very top of the call, and you said it to me on a couple of calls before, that when you're remote first, and actually I would argue whether you're remote first or not, you have to be very deliberate about culture. Because I think most organizations just leave it to become organically kind of just what it is. Our culture, well, it kind of, it is what it is. Not necessarily the case. If you're more deliberate about it, you're effectively shaping the culture to be what you need it to be in order to achieve your strategy, from my perspective. And people have a great time at work and all that stuff. But I'm wondering from your perspective, what is it when you talk about focusing deliberately on culture? What is it you do at Hopin specifically? What are some of the things practically that you're doing?

For sure. So, I think there's a couple different levels to it, and cut me off. I'm very passionate about this, so cut me off if I go too long in any direction.

I'm hanging over the mute button right now.

Yeah. I'll probably deserve it. So, yeah, I think there's a couple different things. There's, first of all, how you talk about your culture, and that kind of comes through in the values. And then second of all, how you enact your culture, and you have to be more deliberate about both of those things in a remote environment. So starting out on the talking about your culture. So we did this values refresh in order to create those values. We worked with over 50 cross-functional people. At the time, the company was only 250 people. So it was, you know, a much better representation of the whole company to get input on what those values should be and make sure that they were representative of everyone at the company. And since then, we have built those values into our hiring processes, which I already mentioned. We have built them into our product decisions. And we also do quarterly core values awards where we take nominations from across everyone at the whole company. They can nominate their co-workers who they think best embody those values. And then those people are recognized on a company-wide stage. And they get prizes and that sort of thing. And it's a way of really making the values and enacting the values something for people to aspire to on a quarterly basis. So that piece has been really cool. And then when it comes to enacting the values in a virtual world, it's really important to provide people with more frequent cultural touchstones in the absence of just walking around the hallways and chatting with people and that sort of thing. You have to be very considerate about how you're bringing people together and what those interactions look like. So we do a ton of different events. I'll reel some of them off now and we can go into any that are of interest. But we do weekly all-hands meetings. We do monthly meetings— they're not meetings, it's called Connect Fest, Connect Festival— where we do fun things like we play Kahoot, which is an online game. Or we did a session where any musicians that hop in could have their own room within that event and people could drop in and listen to them playing piano or playing guitar or whatever it was. So Connect Fest is every month. We have Main Stage, which is our quarterly kickoff that's every— at the start of every quarter, where our CEO kind of lays out strategy and vision and that sort of thing. We also have monthly Q&As with different leadership members of the leadership team. And we do a series called Hop In Talks, which is where we bring in sometimes customers, sometimes internal people, giving our internal audience a chance to learn about the work that's going on on different teams, and also getting the perspective of customers who are actually interacting with the product every day. So, you know, there's tons of events. We have probably a couple events every week, and we want to really make sure that they're of quality and that we're giving people a chance to kind of come together, connect, and have a conversation about what they're seeing.

And do you find that there's a drop-off in the, the, the numbers of times that people come to those events? So as they become longer tenured, do they tend to drop off? Do you see a drop-off in the attendee rates?

So, no, actually, which is the interesting thing because I think people really crave that connection. So, I would say the best attended is our all-hands meeting, which is every Friday. There's still close to 90% attendance at that meeting at our company of almost 1,000 people. And we are often told that our all-hands meeting is more like a TV show than it is like a meeting. So, I think people come for the entertainment as much as they come for the education.

Nice one. More like a TV show. That's a great, that's a great way to describe an internal event.

Well, it's something to aspire to, you know, because I think as much as an internal event should be informative, it should also be fun and engaging. And that's how you keep people coming back.

One of the things you mentioned earlier on was about silos. And I wonder, and as you said there, you know, you're, once you've done your onboarding with, with people from 50 countries nearly around the world, potentially, and then you get more into your teams, and maybe your world does become that little bit smaller. Is there anything in particular that you do differently to try and avoid that siloing, to try and keep communications more open, to try and keep those relationships more open? What are some of the things you're doing there?

So, a couple different things. We have a Slack bot that's called Donut, um, that basically matches people from different parts in the company with random people, uh, every week, or you can set it up whatever cadence that you want. And you just have a 15-minute meeting with them, you check in, say hi, and it's a good way to just meet someone random at very little time expense to you. So that's kind of a fun way. I know a lot of fun relationships that have kind of built up that way. And then, you know, for us, Slack is our office. We don't have a physical office, so Slack is our virtual office. And we create lots of fun spaces in Slack on different channels and things like that that are kind of interest-related.. So, that gives people a chance to talk about things that are not work and find common ground that are not, that is not just their team. And so, you see people kind of building bonds that way too.

And is there anything particularly you do from a work perspective in terms of getting the work done that kind of gets away from that siloing?

Yeah. So, there's some things to do with like our workflows and our workflow processes that we do. So, we are, and By the way, we don't have this all figured out. Like, we, we are learning as we go, and there's a lot more that we still want to do, but we are heading in the direction of being a documentation-heavy company where we're deliberate about writing things down and sharing them out and making them accessible to a lot of people. So a couple tools that we, that we use that have helped with that is we recently brought in Guru, which is our internal wiki, and we also use GoLinks. Which is kind of a URL shortener, and it basically makes it a lot easier for people to find and share information. And we are trying to build the muscle of getting people to think anytime they make a decision or anytime they create a piece of work, to think, who needs to see this and who might want to see this? And how can I put this in a place that is going to be easily found by, by those people? And again, we don't have it perfectly figured out. This is something to strive for and aspire to for us as a fully remote company. But we do think that documentation and building that muscle is a really important part of breaking down those silos.

Yeah, and I guess it's actually a really interesting one, and you kind of nearly skipped across it, the whole idea of documentation. Because we're not having face-to-face meetings and chats and conversations as much, because we're not actually in front of each other, writing stuff down and making that stuff then very easily findable and accessible, I guess is really critical, right, in order to be able to track what people have said and done or decided.

Definitely. And it doesn't come naturally to all of us. It's something that we really have to be deliberate about. So, you know, we actually did a workshop over the summer that was our ways of working workshop, where we were kind of trying to train people up in these new practices, because we do have to be more deliberate about getting people to write things down in a way that might feel kind of unnatural to them. And to build that muscle and that practice into every time that you're creating a piece of work. And by the way, what you say becomes who you are. What you write down becomes who you are in a way that having an in-person conversation, there's nuance there that you don't get when they're just black and white words on paper. So we also have to help people understand that they need to write in a way that properly represents what it is that they're wanting to say and to be careful with their tone and all of that sort of thing, because We've all gotten that text from our dad or our mom that's just like, "K." And you're like, "Whoa, are you mad at me? What's going on here?" And it can be hard to get the nuance across in the written word. And so helping people understand that that really matters as well is a difficult challenge for sure.

I have a teenage daughter of 16 years old, and I have that conversation with her all the time. Let me just show you the text messages that you sent to me today and how do you think I might have processed those text messages. So yeah, we have, we have a bit of a laugh.

Yeah.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply Visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Back at the very top, I mentioned about I'd been kind of doing some one-to-ones and I'm hearing kind of fairly often, well, you know, it's going to be great to, you know, great to get people back in the office because we, you know, I think this whole remote working thing is really damaging our culture. And of course, Goldman Sachs and a couple of the other big banks have said, well, we want everybody back in immediately because that's just what we do here. What do you say to the CEOs of those companies?

In a word, I think they're dinosaurs. I don't think we're going back there. I think the world is always going to be moving forward and moving on. Much though COVID was traumatic for a lot of us, it was also a forcing function for a change that had been coming down the pipe in terms of how we run our lives and how we integrate our our careers and our professional lives with our personal lives. And I don't think we're going back because people have seen that they can have more flexibility and more freedom. And companies have seen that their employees can be just as productive from home as they can be in the office. And I think both of those things net out to mean that people are going to start discriminating against companies that are requiring them to be in the office when they're making their choices for careers that they that they want. So I think that stance of we're going to require people to come into the office is actually going to harm those companies in the long run, especially as we see the younger generations coming up through the ranks who for them, this is normal.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I guess I'm actually interested in, it's an extension to that question that do you think it was easier for you to build that culture that you've now built and that way of doing things that you've now built because you've done that from day one, rather than trying to— a bit like a Goldman Sachs or a Barclays Bank or an HSBC— that you're trying to retrofit that way of working into what has been a traditional office-based, face-to-face, pod-based desk environment forever. Yeah, that we've always had that. So now we're trying— now we have to do something different, whereas you've come from, you've come from a place of, well, this is how we've always done things and it's just how we work. Do you think that's made it easier?

So I think it's less about did you build from scratch in this time, or did you have to adapt to it, and more about what is your attitude to it now that it's here. And an important distinction that we make is, you know, at Hoppin, we are remote first. We've always been remote first. A lot of companies are remote forced, and it really comes across in their attitude. Because they feel like they've been forced into this position and it's something that they're really just tolerating and trying to tide themselves over until they can go back to the office. Whereas our attitude is we're proud to be remote first and this is something that is an opportunity for everyone that works for us. It's a flexibility and a freedom that you're not afforded in another environment. And I think the problem is When companies are fighting against the remote thing, it's never going to be successful. But if you look at it as an opportunity, you can evolve just as successfully into that world as if you were built in this world, if that makes sense. Hmm.

And is there anything different that you do with leaders in your organization? Because I know that certainly for me, having listened to lots of people speaking, trust has been a huge barrier and a huge amount of— given people a huge amount of stress during lockdowns and during COVID because it was just that whole idea of, you know, I don't necessarily trust that my people are there at their desk doing their job. And you touched on it very briefly earlier. Are you just hiring the right leaders? And because you've always been remote first, that makes that easier? Or are you doing something different with them to give them that muscle, to use your word, of trust so that they just trust the people that they work with?

Yeah. So I think there's— it goes both ways. With our leaders, I work closely with all our executives to be more deliberate. I keep using that word, but to be more deliberate about how they are communicating with their teams and how they're representing themselves and the brands that they're building up for themselves internally. Because when you have fewer touchpoints with a leader, each touchpoint matters a lot more. So we spend time with Johnny, our CEO, every week, making sure that he is expressing himself the way that he wants to in our weekly all-hands. And we help our other executives with their org all-hands within, within their teams and making sure that kind of all of that is coming across the best way possible. And when it comes to trusting their teams, honestly, it is about hiring the right people because they are coming in Knowing that we're in a fully remote environment, knowing that that's kind of table stakes. And for us, no senior leader is coming through the door agonizing over whether or not their team is working effectively at home, because frankly, they just have bigger fish to fry. And that becomes table stakes at a company like Hopin.

Yeah, interesting. The one thing I wanted to just talk about as well was the whole idea of, of the whole water cooler moment thing, and just people learning by osmosis. I heard somebody say last night, anecdotally, that they thought they'd heard that that the accountancy exams scores this year were significantly down on previous years. And perhaps some of that was attributed to the fact that because people weren't in offices learning from the more senior people. When we started our careers, we all sat next to, you know, we were the junior oink, they were the senior consultants, and we learned things just by listening to them and just watching them work and seeing what they did and asking, you know, oh, That's interesting. How did you do that? And was that Ctrl+Alt something that you did there to make that job easier? We all did those things, but in a remote world, that's not afforded to us anymore. We don't get to have those little conversations anymore, those little moments of learning, if you like. Do you think that's going to be an issue going forward? And how do we get around that?

Yeah. So, there's two things I would say about that. One, One, that I'll come back to in a second, is the role of in-person. And two is there's a fallacy that we need to kind of disrupt here, which is the idea that the water cooler moment is spontaneous and unplanned. It's fundamentally not true. Water coolers are there so that people will have conversations. That is a manufactured moment in a physical environment. So all it is is how do we manufacture that same moment in a virtual environment? So the water cooler example is something that people bring up to me all the time, but I always say, look, it's just deliberate. Like, if you think it's not deliberate, then you're the fool because it is deliberate. And so how do we replicate that in a virtual environment? How do we create moments where people can chat with random people and have those kind of conversations? And I think it is harder to replicate in a virtual world. There's some things that we do at Hopin to, to try to create those moments, But that leads me to my second point, which is about the role of in-person. And I think even when you are in a fully remote company like Hopin, there is a role for, for in-person. And I had mentioned, actually, I'm here in New York this week meeting my team for the first time who've flown in from a couple different places to meet me. We did that of our own volition, but it has really been rejuvenating and it feels like it has kind of filled up the, the energy tank of our team to to be in person and understand each other on that level. And when we go away back to our fully remote environment, we will carry that new level of understanding with us. And at Hopin, we're doing— starting to do that on a company-wide level as well. So we have a program that's called Hopin Hangouts, which is that at any city in the world that has more than 3 Hopin users, they're entitled to a stipend that allows them to plan any event that they want and bring a little group of people together and get to know each other a little bit. And we don't think that being remote first means that you should be forbidden from ever meeting each other. Quite the opposite. We just think that those in-person moments become more valuable, more impactful.

Yeah. And it's about having those stories. And I guess you'll go back from your time in New York, and I know that you met some colleagues in London a few weeks back as well. Not that I'm stalking you. You put it on LinkedIn. It was, it was, it was on there. But that whole— it's just, you know, those little connections and touchpoints and stories and, oh my God, you remember that waiter in the restaurant? Or wasn't that burger dreadful? Or I can't believe somebody recommended that place for us to go. Or we missed the last train and what a nightmare it was getting. Those little stories are the things that bond us together. So I do think that, to use your word, we do have to be a little bit more deliberate about those. I think there is still a role for the in-person for definite, because that does bring color to relationships.

Definitely. And I think those moments just become richer and more valuable when they're more infrequent. And I don't think that you need to be standing by a water cooler for half an hour every weekday to have that same moment and that same value.

And have you ever had any thoughts as an organization? I know lots of organizations certainly here are talking about perhaps using hubs, maybe in in suburban towns or in towns further out in the country where maybe there's a, there's a coworking space and we'll take 4 or 5 desks there and people can come in and use them to create that sense of togetherness and a bit of, a bit of people connection. Is that something that you guys have looked at or done?

It is something that we've thought about, but something that we are very conscious about is equality of experience, um, in our remote-first environment. And I think that this is something that increasingly hybrid companies are going to face. How do you make sure that the experience of being in a meeting or working on a project is equal for those who are physically together and those who are experiencing it virtually? And in addition to that, we have to think about how do we make sure that we're offering equal opportunities for the, that physical interaction to people who are spread across 48 countries, which, which is where we have Hoppini is, because if we were to offer offer a hub in London, cool, that's great for the Hapenese that work in London. But what does that mean for the Hapenese in Nigeria or the Hapenese in the Deep South who are not close to anybody else? And suddenly you're creating an inequality that is pretty hard to come back from.

Yeah, it's a great point. It's a really good point that I hadn't thought of. So how do you create that offer, which is everybody gets exactly the same and that, as you say, that equality is there?

Exactly.

Yeah, sure. Last question, just conscious of time. I think post-COVID, and actually to your point, we are not going back to 9 to 5 full-time in the office. I just don't think we are. I've listened to a few property people say, well, I think this is just a blip and we actually will end up in offices, back in offices, and all those organizations are offloading all their office space are mad because they're going to want it back in a few years' time. My gut feeling, I'm sure you'd agree, is that most traditional organizations are going to end up up in some kind of hybrid working model, whether that be a week on, week off, 2 days in the office, 3 days out, whatever it might be. But I just wonder, from your perspective and from what you've learned having been at Hopin, what's the, probably the most important thing that they need to bear in mind if that's going to be successful when it comes to culture?

If the hybrid model is going to be successful? I think the most important thing to bear in mind for a hybrid model to be successful is this point that we were talking about of a quality of experience. And also, how do you offer a hybrid experience without just detracting from the benefits from both sides, from physical and virtual experience? And I think that's the biggest thing companies are going to have to contend with, because if you're saying, well, we want the benefits of a physical experience, and those benefits are that everyone's in the office at the same time, but we also want to give you the benefits of a virtual experience, which is flexibility to choose when you're in the office and when you're not, then suddenly you're, you're ending up in a world where people are coming into the office but nobody else is really there. So you're missing out on that benefit, or you're mandating days in which people have to come into the office, which means that you're impinging on the flexibility that you had promised them from, from that kind of fully remote, uh, angle. So I think companies need to be very intentional about rules that they're going to set if they want hybrid to be successful, because otherwise they're going to end up in this kind of halfway state that doesn't fulfill the promise either way.

And for me, it's about— you touched on it there— it's about flexibility. It's about, I think, companies getting to a place where they mark out the lines of the pitch. People know what's expected of them because they've got really, really good internal comms and really good leaders. They hand over the ball to teams and they say, Just go off and score goals because you guys know what it is you have to do. And whether that's at home or in the office, whether it's a week on, a week off, 2 days in, 3 days out, all remote, all in, you choose. And I think organizations to be successful are going to have to offer that level of flexibility. To be truly successful, are going to have to offer that level of flexibility.

Yeah. And one more thing I would add is that we are asking companies to trust their people in a way that maybe they've never been asked to trust them before. And I think about that a lot with the investment banking model of suddenly, you have to treat all your employees like adults. You just have to trust that no matter where they are, they're going to get the work done. And you won't be able to nanny them or look over their shoulder in the office. And I think that's an uncomfortable thing for older companies who are looking to adapt to a newer world. But we'll see how it pans out.

Yeah, for sure. Camilla, We've come to the end of our little chat, but if people want to learn a bit more about Hopin, where can they go?

Yeah, so, uh, just Google Hopin. You'll find a lot more about the, about the platform, the product there. We have a lot of great demos and information on the website. I post a lot about Hopin on LinkedIn, so feel free to check out my content on LinkedIn by just searching my name. Um, and also we have all the socials So we're @hopinhq on Instagram, and I think we are @hopin on Twitter as well.

Cool. Brilliant stuff. Listen, I've really enjoyed the chat. I've learned so much, and I hope listeners have too. Thanks a million for joining me today. It's been a pleasure.

Fabulous. Thanks so much for having me.

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