Positioning Andela as a Remote Work Authority
Crafting an Enterprise-Level Guide to Remote Work
In 2023, Andela, a global talent network, was focusing its revenue efforts on enterprise clients while positioning itself as a thought leader in remote work. The company aimed to upgrade its infrastructure and establish itself as a pioneer in intentionally designed remote work practices.
TL;DR:
I created “The Tech Leader’s Enterprise Guide to Remote Work” for Andela, targeting enterprise clients. The 38-page guide covered key aspects of remote work, such as culture, communication, hiring, tools, security, compliance, and employee wellbeing. It led to significant engagement, with 483 downloads, 368 potential client inquiries, and a successful webinar attracting over 5,000 views. This project helped position Andela as a thought leader in remote work and provided valuable resources for its sales team.
Detailed Overview
To provide a comprehensive understanding of the project and its impact, the following sections delve into each stage of the process, from initial discovery and research to content creation, design collaboration, and outcome analysis. These detailed sections highlight the methodologies employed, challenges encountered, and the strategic approaches taken to ensure the project’s success.
The Brief
Create a comprehensive yet digestible guide to remote work for enterprise-size clients, serving dual purposes:
- A marketable piece of thought leadership to drive leads into the organization
- An enablement tool for Andela’s sales and client-facing team members
The guide needed to cater to enterprises new to remote work as well as those seeking a deeper understanding of intentional remote work design.
Approach
Discovery and Content Strategy:
- Leveraged my experience as a remote work expert to craft content tailored for enterprise clients
- Drew from extensive personal experience and deep industry knowledge to address specific challenges and solutions in remote work
- Collaborated across Andela departments to align the guide’s content with company goals and client needs
- Synthesized complex remote work concepts into accessible, actionable insights for enterprise leaders
- Identified key areas of focus based on current trends and common pain points in enterprise remote work adoption
In-depth interviews for content development:
Conducted interviews with 16 Andela leaders and experts to gather insights and real-world examples, including:
- C-suite executives
- Department heads
- Technical leaders
- HR and talent acquisition specialists
- Security and compliance experts
- Client-facing team members
Synthesized insights from these interviews to ensure the guide reflected a comprehensive view of remote work challenges and solutions across various roles and departments
Review and Refinement:
- Engaged in multiple rounds of review and refinement with 6 key stakeholders from marketing, branding, and content teams to ensure quality, accuracy, and alignment with Andela’s brand and goals
- Incorporated feedback to enhance the guide’s relevance, readability, and visual appeal
Content:
Wrote the entire 38-page guide, covering key aspects of remote work:
1. Introduction and Context:
- Overview of current remote work trends and statistics
- Addressing common concerns about remote work
2. Culture:
- Developing a remote-first mindset
- Establishing principles of trust, clarity, and transparency
- Strategies for building remote company culture
3. Communication:
- Balancing synchronous and asynchronous communication
- Effective remote meeting techniques
- Tools and best practices for remote collaboration
4. Hiring for Remote:
- Strategies for sourcing global talent
- Adapting recruitment and onboarding processes
5. Tools and Infrastructure:
- Essential digital tools for remote work
- Creating a digital workplace infrastructure
- Strategies for tool adoption
6. Security:
- Addressing misconceptions about remote work security
- Implementing Zero Trust security models
- Best practices for data protection
7. Compliance:
- Navigating employment laws across jurisdictions
- Managing tax implications of a distributed workforce
- Ensuring intellectual property protection
8. Employee Wellbeing:
- Strategies to combat burnout and maintain work-life balance
- Fostering connection in remote teams
- Supporting mental health in remote environments
9. The Andela Solve:
- Overview of Andela’s solutions for remote talent management
Design Collaboration
- Worked with the marketing team to ensure the final design aligned with Andela’s brand guidelines
Outcome
Produced “The Tech Leader’s Enterprise Guide to Remote Work,” a comprehensive 38-page guide offering in-depth insights, practical advice, and actionable steps for enterprises to implement effective remote work strategies.
Key Features:
- Addressed common misconceptions about remote work
- Provided strategies for building trust and maintaining productivity
- Offered guidance on selecting and implementing remote collaboration tools
- Detailed security and compliance considerations
- Suggested approaches to ensure employee wellbeing
Impact
1. Attracting Potential Clients:
The guide was downloaded 483 times by people who provided their contact information. This number could be higher, as we later made it freely available without requiring contact details but do not have the stats on this.
From these initial downloads, 368 people showed initial interest in Andela’s services.
- 13 of these became strong potential clients, with 92% being large enterprises — our target audience.
- Two major companies, expressed serious interest after finding the guide through our content sharing program.
2. Website Engagement:
245 people visited the guide’s webpage, with 212 of them actively scrolling through the content.
3. Expanding the Guide’s Reach:
We created five blog posts based on the guide’s content, which were viewed 335 times in total.
The most popular blog was “How to transition your company to a remote environment,” showing that practical advice on remote work was in high demand.
4. Social Media Impact:
The guide sparked discussions on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, suggesting it resonated with our target audience across different platforms.
5. Use by Our Sales Team:
After we made the guide available internally in March, 7 sales team members viewed it, and 3 shared it with potential clients.
Webinar
To complement the launch of our “Tech Leader’s Guide to Remote Work” and capitalise on the growing interest in remote work strategies, we decided to host a live webinar. This event was designed to provide a dynamic, interactive platform to discuss the guide’s key topics and offer real-time insights to our audience.
Leveraging my network in the remote work space, I secured the participation of Laïla von Alvensleben, a fellow Remote Work Advisor & Collaboration Designer, as a guest speaker. This collaboration allowed us to offer a broader perspective and enhance the credibility of our presentation.
The webinar, titled “Navigating Remote Work Challenges with Expert Insights,” featured myself as Andela’s Remote & Hybrid Work Specialist alongside Laïla. Our goal was to bring the guide to life, address current challenges, and provide actionable insights for our audience.
In the webinar, Laïla and I shared examples of real-lived experiences of companies successfully navigating remote hiring challenges. We provided insights to help attendees build resilient and high-performing tech teams, going beyond conventional approaches. This practical, experience-based content was designed to offer immediate value to our audience and demonstrate Andela’s expertise in the remote work space.
The event covered key topics including:
- The current state of remote work in tech, highlighting talent shortages and competition
- Trends in remote flexibility for tech workers
- Common barriers to hiring global remote talent
- Real-world examples of successful remote work strategies
- Practical solutions for streamlining tools, boosting productivity, and building trust in remote teams
- An introduction to Andela’s Tech Leader’s Guide to Remote Work
This strategic approach to content delivery significantly boosted our reach and engagement:
Webinar Impact
This event significantly boosted our reach and engagement:
- Live Attendance and Engagement:
• Over 248 live attendees participated across LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
• High engagement with 171 reactions, 186 comments, and 26 shares during the live session. - Audience Composition:
• Attracted a diverse professional audience: 76% Software Development, 17% Salesperson, 10% IT, and 7% Founders. - Extended Reach:
• Within 5 days, the webinar accumulated 5,000 total views across platforms.
• After several weeks, lifetime views reached over 5,357 (4,700 on LinkedIn, 357 combined on Twitter and YouTube).
• Continued to attract approximately 10 new viewers weekly. - Positive Feedback:
• Received encouraging comments like “This presentation is incredible, gaining many useful insights.” - Benchmark Setting:
• Highest viewership ever for an Andela webinar, significantly outperforming previous averages of around 300 views.
• This webinar achieved nearly 18 times the viewership of typical Andela webinars.
• Set a new standard for future live-streamed events. - Guide Downloads:
• Generated 15 direct guide downloads in the week following the webinar.
This webinar not only provided valuable insights to our audience but also effectively promoted the guide, reinforcing Andela’s position as a thought leader in remote work strategies. The success of this event demonstrates the power of multi-channel content distribution and live engagement in amplifying our message and reaching our target audience. The significant increase in viewership compared to previous Andela webinars highlights the effectiveness of the chosen topic, format, and promotion strategy.
Areas for Future Improvement:
1. Timing:
Some feedback suggested we could have released the guide earlier in the remote work trend. In the future, we’ll aim to produce content on emerging trends more quickly.
2. Adoption by Sales Team:
There’s room to encourage our sales team to use the guide and other marketing materials more frequently when talking to potential clients.
3. Converting Interest to Clients:
While the guide attracted interest from potential clients, we can work on improving how we turn this interest into actual business partnerships.
Conclusion
This project demonstrated the ability to synthesize complex information into a digestible format for enterprise clients, while aligning with Andela’s strategic goals of thought leadership in the remote work space. The guide serves as both a lead generation tool and a valuable resource for Andela’s sales and client-facing teams, positioning the company as an authority in intentional remote work design.
“Gary is a world-class operator and innovator. He led the interview and creation process for Andela’s Enterprise Guide to Remote Work — a comprehensive resource for getting distributed environments right.
As anyone who has partnered with Gary will tell you, there’s no scope too narrow nor wide for him to up-level when it comes to strategy, operations, ways of working, and collaboration.”
Darren Murph — VP Workplace Design & Remote Experience, Andela
(Now Technology Strategy Communications at Ford)
