“A great fire burns within me,
but no one stops to warm themselves at it,
and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.”
Vincent Van Gogh
Feeling invisible in an open-plan office space packed with 150 employees is unsettling. A few years back, I joined a firm where I worked remotely every other week. I lived in another state, so bimonthly, I would get in my car around 05:00 am and drive 244 miles southwest to the company. I was one of the first ten employees hired, and it was a lot of fun in the early years. We were a small company, growing insanely fast, and there was always someone to have lunch and chat with. Those first ten employees were, hands-down, some of the best people I’ve worked with in my career. Hungry, nimble, and driven to make the company a success. It was intoxicating. As we hit success, more people were hired, and larger office space was acquired, that camaraderie faded.
One challenge a fast-growing company faces is that more layers of hierarchy are established. New leaders from the outside are hired and drawn to the successful organization. However, given they are hired once the firm has established a successful model, some have little regard for the individuals who took the personal risk of joining a startup with (then) limited funding and who built the foundation to help the firm achieve success.
New employees (of any rank) would arrive to work at 09:00 and were out the door by 5:15 pm. The CEO would frequently look around at the end of the day and ask where the hell everyone was. The early employees were still there, for that sense of urgency from the early years had never left them. This was their baby. With this evolving scenario, though, the next four years would be some of the most trying in my career.
Image Credit: Fast Company
When arriving at the office, I considered it a good day if anyone said hello. I remember I would sometimes walk the floor to just say hi to someone, with limited success. I frequently ate lunch alone. Fortunately, we partnered with an ad agency on the same floor, and I would hang out with them as they were happy to see me. I felt more camaraderie with our vendors than with my fellow employees.
I loved my work, which involved expanding the firm’s sales leads. It was great to see the large sales team busy contacting the new leads coming in, thanks to my efforts (and the efforts of the entire marketing team). But being a remote employee often means you’re frequently forgotten for key meetings. If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. I would be there, working long, grinding hours, but I might as well have been in another country where you don’t speak the language.
About eight years after the firm’s founding, we were acquired. It was an incredible financial windfall for the early employees, as we owned stock. Still, we knew significant changes were coming, as is typical following an acquisition. What we were not prepared for was the new leadership. For the marketing team, our new leader made his contempt for us very clear, assuming he chose to speak to us at all, which was rare. Shortly after the acquisition, massive layoffs came, and I left the firm soon afterward.
So, I have bittersweet memories. I am forever grateful for the opportunity I had, the people I met and worked with, and the money I earned. But I have a few important lessons to share and how I could have handled them better. My hope is you can learn from my mistakes and manage similar situations better than I did.
The new norm in work is Hybrid workers, employees who are in the office a few days a week and work remotely the rest of the time. Despite companies' attempts, post-COVID, to institute a full-time return to the office, workers aren’t budging.
If you are a full-time employee, please open your eyes to those who are only at the office periodically. Just saying hello with a smile can make or break someone’s day because you acknowledge them. If you’re on a conference call and feel someone else should join, put it out there - “Shouldn’t Evan be on the call to talk about the new program?” Invite that remote worker to lunch or grab a coffee or drink after work. Camaraderie and a sense of oneness and belonging are primordial to our well-being and necessary ingredients for wanting to continue living. Ask yourself how you would like to be treated if the roles were reversed.
If you are a full-time remote employee, you must make an effort to build relationships while on Zoom, MS Teams, Slack, etc. One-on-one calls are ideal for asking how your colleague is doing, what initiatives their group is working on, and more. When at the office, introduce yourself to new employees. One effective technique I found was that I would give a brief presentation to all new employees about what my group did. It helped them understand the inner workings of the firm and, of course, to build relationships. Ask people to join you for lunch, and use the opportunity to maintain your relationships and create new ones. A lunch will help you better understand what your colleagues are working on, and acquire insights and perspectives about what’s happening at the firm while working remotely.
Work is where we spend the majority of our days. It is an opportunity to unite groups of people who may differ on many levels (who they vote for, their religion, background, education, culture, etc.). Yet, while working together, we collectively try to make it work and solve problems, for our livelihood depends on it. Work is a chance to transcend the divisive cultural environment. However, it requires all of us to make that effort—especially for those who work remotely.
Before writing this piece, I watched a YouTube video titled "Why 10 Million Men Have Given Up on Work." The video was telling, but the nearly 9K comments (as of this writing) are eye-opening. One of the most common reasons for not wanting a job is not feeling valued at work. Just imagine the change in employment trajectory (and employee retention) if we each made more effort to make our colleagues feel welcomed and valued at the office.
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