Hiring Your People Team for Remote Success

Hey everybody!

Here’s another session on hybrid and remote success. Today, we’re going to be talking about how to hire a people team for remote culture success. So, you know, it’s how to build a people team if you’re 100 people, or 500 people, or 1,000 people.

You know, we all are here because we want to drive engagement, performance, and culture, but it can be so challenging within a distributed team, especially if you’re new to remote work or hybrid work. You know, remote work at the end of the day is not an event on a calendar, it’s a set of principles and a culture that can drive your organization forward.

You know, so we want to design a people team that drives manager quality, communication systems, onboarding, rewards, operating rhythm, and we’re going to be talking about all of those things today in our session.

So is it helping you as an HR team move from that office-first HR model to a remote-ready people operating model? And how do you hire people to do that?

I think we all know, when you hire one person who is an A player, they’ll hire five more A players, and then those A players hire more A players, right? So it’s so critical from the outset to have the right people there.

So before we go into all the details, I just want to mention that my name is Alex Grande. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Recognize. RecognizeApp.com is an employee recognition and rewards platform. We’ve been dedicated and focused on the distributed workforce, hybrid work, and remote work for about a decade now.

That’s where a recognition program, or a solution like ours, really comes to shine. If you’re all in one office together, it’s so easy to have that great culture, that kind of water cooler environment. You can even just have a bulletin board, right? But when you grow, especially if you have multiple locations, or people who are deskless, or people who are now working remotely, it becomes so much more of a challenge.

So I’m very passionate about these topics around motivation and organizational development. Just want to mention that if you have any questions or anything in this session, that’s why we’re in a live demo. We have about 30 people here. We’re all here together at the same time.

So I would love it, it looks like Steve has kicked it off. I’d love to have you share where you are in the world and what your company does. Promote your brand, give your elevator pitch. Put that in the chat.

I see some Florida, Minneapolis. I love Minnesota. Last summer I got to go up north to a friend’s cabin in Minnesota. It was so beautiful. I’d never been up north. It was on, I think it was called Seven Lakes. All these lakes connect to different lakes. It was so beautiful.

Oregon, awesome. I was just in Portland dog-sitting for a couple weeks, bounced around. I’m actually in Austin, Texas right now celebrating my friend’s birthday. My birthday is next week, turning the big 43. But normally I’m in Seattle. I do bounce around a lot.

I’m going to be at the Great Place to Work conference in two weeks in Vegas, so if you’re going to be there, I’d love to meet, have a coffee, have a tea, and connect. And Indianapolis as well, yeah, awesome.

Yeah, so reach out to Tiffany if you want cybersecurity help. Same with Barb. Cybersecurity is such a growing field, what a strong industry to be in.

Awesome, so keep it up in the chat. Please keep asking questions. We have people here in the chat to help facilitate and make sure I notice them as I go through the presentation.

So without further ado, let’s go into the main topics.

I just want to make sure we level set what this webinar is about. It’s meant as a practical session for leaders who need to make hiring decisions for success in remote and hybrid work environments.

We’re going to cover a lot today. We have an hour, maybe shorter depending on pace, but you should walk away with concrete ideas, examples, and strategies.

We’re covering things like organization design, role scorecards, interview questions, take-home challenges, and rollout roadmaps. I’m also going to present an org chart for your people team at 100 people up to 1,000+ people.

Stepping back a bit, hiring is an art.

Put a 1 in the chat if you’ve ever made a hire and within the first five minutes of day one thought, “I made a mistake.” It happens. You can’t always hire the right people, but a structured approach reduces that.

Let me share a couple stories.

My business partner, Peter Phillips, and I sometimes both interview candidates. I might interview someone, or he might, or we cross over in the process.

I once hired someone onto the team. They met Peter during onboarding. I emailed them and said, “Here’s Peter, he’s going to help you with onboarding.”

The person replied, “Hello Phillips.”

It was one of those small things where you pause and think, wait, what? His name is Peter, not Phillips. It wasn’t even “Mr. Phillips,” just “Phillips.”

It seemed odd, but you ignore it and move on. Within six months, it became a disaster and we had to part ways.

Another time, right after hiring someone, I called them to say they got the job. They didn’t hang up properly, and I heard them say, “I got the job, yay!” before ending the call. They were going to be a sales rep. I immediately wondered if that same behavior would happen on real sales calls. It didn’t work out.

These are the kinds of signals you learn to notice. Over time, you get better at hiring, but it’s never perfect.

At one point I thought hiring higher-salary, senior people would eliminate problems. It doesn’t. It just creates different problems. I’ve seen very senior hires who later had serious behavioral issues that weren’t visible in interviews. That’s why documentation, values, and code of conduct matter.

One of our values is being an ally. That means things like, if someone is not acting constructively, you can name it directly.

So let’s talk about systems to reduce these issues.

Why does remote work matter right now?

In the United States, about 35 million people teleworked in Q1 2024, roughly 23% of workers, up from 20% the year before. Even post-COVID, remote work remains high.

Hybrid work appears to be a durable middle ground. Fully remote can feel isolating, so hybrid often becomes the compromise.

I once interviewed someone who said they wanted to work here just because it was remote. That alone is not enough.

Stanford did a study with Trip.com and found hybrid workers were just as productive, equally likely to be promoted, and 33% less likely to quit than office-only peers.

Remote flexibility is also economically meaningful. Some studies show workers value a two-day remote option at about 8% of wages.

At Recognize, we’ve been fully remote for years. Our early team was just two or three people, and those early hires stuck around for a long time.

Gallup research shows highly engaged teams have better well-being, productivity, profitability, and lower turnover. Managers account for about 70% of the variance in engagement.

That’s why people systems matter so much.

Buffer research shows remote workers often feel engaged, but struggle with career visibility and growth.

We need to ensure people are seen, valued, and supported regardless of location.

Let’s talk about five design principles for a remote-ready people team.

GitLab has a strong async handbook approach: document everything, work across time zones intentionally, and reduce dependence on real-time presence signals like Slack status dots.

Microsoft research shows remote work can create more siloed collaboration networks. That means we must intentionally build structure for connection.

Now let’s talk org design at different scales.

At around 100 people, SHRM suggests roughly 1.5 to 4 HR per 100 employees depending on structure. The focus should be hiring quality, onboarding, and manager capacity.

At 500 people, culture becomes system-dependent. Onboarding, manager quality, and internal communications become leverage points.

At 1,000 people, complexity becomes about fairness, communication, and risk management.

WTW research shows flexibility is a key retention driver. People want autonomy in when and where they work.

I personally work in focused blocks during the day, often with breaks and naps. That rhythm increases productivity.

We also need mature total rewards and communication systems.

At Recognize, we support recognition through tools like Slack, Teams, and mobile workflows so people don’t need to go to separate systems.

Now, roles.

The people partner role should be reframed as manager infrastructure, not policy administration.

Talent acquisition must treat job descriptions as living documents with clear expectations at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months.

Structured interviews are critical. Research from Cambridge and other studies shows they are more predictive and reduce bias compared to unstructured interviews.

Employee experience is about communication and social infrastructure, not just events.

Total rewards is about fairness and clarity. Pay transparency and benefits alignment matter greatly in distributed teams.

Buffer research shows compensation fairness and flexibility influence retention significantly.

OWL Labs research shows hybrid workers spend more when commuting, which impacts total rewards planning.

We also need to avoid traps where remote processes create hidden inequality or uneven access to information.

Stanford research suggests in-person ideation can still outperform virtual sessions in some contexts, so we should match the medium to the task.

For hiring, use structured interviews and async writing tests.

Take-home challenges should be respectful of candidate time. Some companies even pay candidates for these exercises, which is a thoughtful approach.

Onboarding should focus on connection, not just compliance. The first 30 to 90 days should include KPIs, mentoring, and social integration.

Virtual water cooler sessions can improve onboarding outcomes significantly.

We also need to teach managers that employees are allowed to disconnect and work in focused cycles.

KPIs should be tracked consistently, including hiring metrics like time-to-fill, drop-off rates, and quality of hire.

Gallup shows engagement strongly links to performance outcomes.

Buffer shows visibility and career growth are ongoing challenges in remote environments.

In summary, remote and hybrid organizations succeed when they build systems for clarity, fairness, connection, and manager excellence.

Gallup, Stanford, and Buffer all point toward the same conclusion: systems matter more than proximity.

We run regular team-building exercises that are designed around participation, like structured debates on topics such as the four-day work week.

Thanks everyone for joining.

Jess, do we have any questions?

Jess:

We do not have questions at the moment, but the floor is open.

Alex:

Great. If anyone has questions, feel free to drop them in the chat.

We’ll also be doing a live demo soon, including a webinar on gamification and engagement design.

We host weekly webinars and continue improving the platform every month.

Daisy asked whether higher education institutions use Recognize. Yes, we’ve had universities like the University of Sydney use it, and many institutions use it in different configurations, including gamification-only setups without rewards.

We can tailor implementations depending on budget and structure.

If you want to learn more, feel free to reach out.

Thanks everyone for attending. Take care.