The foreseeable future — remote work
Virtually no one feels comfortable returning to the office. As more and more people have transitioned to working from home for the past five months, we’re getting used to it, and we like it. The normal workday is now fully remote, full of new tooling and behaviors that weren’t as familiar earlier this year. Each person is individually dealing with the realities of COVID-19 and how it impacts their daily work responsibilities, but the overwhelming sentiment of returning to the office seems to be a unified front — we are in no rush.
The pervasive use of video conferencing and messaging platforms has skyrocketed during the pandemic. End users now leverage these tools several times per day, all day in some instances, in order to stay connected with their distributed teams. With new processes and ways of working virtually, we will continue to see less and less of a business case for returning to the office.
Recent stats show that 42% of the U.S. labor force is now working from home full-time. About 33% are unemployed, and the remaining 26%, mostly essential service workers are working onsite. “Working from home is not only economically essential, it is a critical weapon in our fight against COVID-19 — and future pandemics.” — Stanford University
Team members are now joining new organizations fully remote, reorgs are happening with new reporting structures — how do team members find others with in-demand skills who can help and problem solve? The reality is it’s tough; tough to know which team member knows what, and who to turn to when questions inevitably arise throughout the day.
This was the sentiment from our early customers as they transitioned to a fully remote workforce — how do I find team members with specific skills across my company who are available to help me, right now? There isn’t an accessible marketing department on floor 3, or an espresso machine down the hall, or a weekly all-hands meeting in the atrium, nope it’s just you and your internet connection with the barking dog in the background.
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We launched Giraffe with a product that centralized and captured the behavioral traits of team members and made this information accessible for team members. This helped teams learn more about one another, but the true pain was not necessarily capturing the behavioral traits of each team member — it was a nice to have but not a need to have.
Under the same theme of capturing traits and making them accessible within Giraffe, our customers wanted to see one another’s vocational skills, business process knowledge, and subject matter expertise. They wanted better ways to identify who could help them with tasks that inevitably popped up throughout the day. Not knowing who to go to for help, and spending time tracking down the right resource is a challenge they face several times per week. This was a great finding that we landed on with our early adopters.
In light of this feedback, we wanted to be objectively minded, and listen to our customers to help steer our ship — helping companies bring their skills and capabilities online for team members to access and action this information across the larger organization. So that’s what we did — made user profiles with skills and process knowledge accessible by team members.
Beyond making this information accessible, we needed to make it actionable, and we couldn’t think of a better way to do that, than by leveraging Slack. By bringing Giraffe into Slack, team members can type ‘/giraffe SQL’, for example, to identify and connect with the other teammates who have SQL knowledge and are available to help. Giraffe sets up a direct message between the two parties to communicate and problem solve.
What this integration will mean for companies, is quantifiable data around keyword search and conversations. As a leader, you now know how many times ‘Full Container Load — Pacific’ or ‘Contract Law’ was searched for by your organization. This gives leaders great insights into what team members need help with, where they have questions, and how to ensure knowledge is shared cross-functionally. Giraffe helps uncover where process knowledge lives and where there are skills gaps; helping organizations cater L&D to specific users, address knowledge gaps, inform managers on skills needed for future hires, while also giving managers a pulse on in-demand skills as they marry their talent and business strategies.
We wanted to meet users where they spend all their time already — inside Slack. Messaging apps have already advanced the way teams work, and layering in applications like Giraffe helps to boost productivity even further. The reality is, the more time spent in chat, without different logins, screens, and behaviors, the more productive teams can be from anywhere.
We’re optimistic that as real-time chat usage continues to rise, companies will continue to look for solutions that are embedded within the team messaging tools they’ve already invested in — without the need to interact and search for employee data in separate applications and platforms.
Moving forward, as the future of work takes shape, 3 themes are important for us to capitalize on: Digital, Distributed, Data-Driven.
- Digital in the way we bring we bring coffee conversations and offline networking soundbites online to centralize and make skills and process knowledge accessible and actionable, real-time.
- Distributed in the way we provide tooling to individuals and teams to operate at peak performance and productivity from the corners of the globe.
- Data-Driven in the way that companies are able to optimize and make smarter business decisions due to keywords, search, and insights gleaned from Giraffe data.
On these 3 threads, we’re actively thinking about how to make our user experience better, changing the way people identify and connect with helpful colleagues to solve problems cross-functionally for the long haul.
