For Julian Hill, the hardest part about working remotely for Simply Business is that his office (his kitchen counter) and his break room (his couch) are five feet away from each other.

It’s the same dilemma most people have faced this year: How do you find work-life balance when those spaces are the same? 

“When we first transitioned to all-remote, I told myself that I’d stop working after finishing up a few more emails or wrapping up a project, but before I knew it, I would be logged into work far later than I intended,” Hill, an insurance product manager, said. “I became irritable.” 

But after nine months of remote work, Hill and Simply Business have found ways to adapt. The company that provides small businesses with insurance and expertise has implemented new policies to ease the transition of remote work to support its staff, like flexible working hours, a host of virtual events and frequent employee surveys to gain a better understanding of how everyone is doing.

We spoke with three employees at Simply Business to learn how the company has navigated remote work while maintaining a supportive culture.

Onboarding During a Pandemic 

Roughly one week before Rachel Phillips was set to start at Simply Business as a licensed service agent in March, she received a call from the company’s talent acquisition team letting her know that the company would be shipping her a laptop and other necessary equipment to onboard virtually.

Such is the case for most people who started a job during the pandemic.

It certainly wasn’t ideal, Phillips explained. Of course she would’ve preferred to meet her new coworkers face-to-face instead of virtually, and it would’ve been easier to learn Simply Business’s systems in the office instead of relying on Slack and Zoom calls.

“But everyone made it as easy as possible for those of us who onboarded remotely,” Phillips said. “My team is amazing and definitely accepted me into the fold. Since then, I’ve been able to meet a few of them face-to-face, but socially distanced.”

Phillips is no longer the newbie — her team has grown from five to 15 in the seven months she’s been with the company. But the most challenging aspect of being a part of an expanding team in a virtual world is not knowing how each person works or operates, she explained.

“To try to overcome this, we did a virtual group session to learn each other’s work and emotional styles, which has helped in our communication with each other,” Phillips said.

It also helps that Simply Business has set up informal virtual events like Zoom happy hours, seminars that address current social issues and a variety of employee resource groups, like those focused on parenting and professional development for women, to provide its staff a better sense of community.
 

I’ve never been part of a company that provides so much to its employees to maintain a healthy well-being.’’

But some days, Phillips’ work-life balance is in flux. That’s when she utilizes the company’s exceptional circumstance policy, which was implemented during the pandemic to provide time off for employees who’ve been affected by COVID-19, or who simply need a mental health day.

“I’ve never been part of a company that provides so much to its employees to maintain a healthy well-being,” Phillips said.

Building Trust in a Virtual World

Alan Gentile has always been an office guy. The director of program management worked Monday through Friday at Simply Business’s Boston headquarters and loved how the office’s work environment forced him to focus on work, as opposed to his at-home environment, which forced him to unplug.

But when the pandemic began, Gentile saw those environments blur. And now even more tricky, some days he finds himself a victim of Zoom fatigue.

“There are days when it feels like I start a Zoom meeting at 9 a.m. and go back-to-back-to-back until 5 p.m.,” Gentile said.

That’s why he and his team have explored ways to avoid such a pitfall. One solution is to implement calendar blocks on certain days to allow for deep-brain work. Another is to switch one-on-one calls to walk-around-the-block phone conversations or require that everyone take a break from their screen at lunchtime.

But the most important solution, Gentile explained, is trust.

“With all the craziness in our lives, there are just some days when being online from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re feeling productive at 4 a.m. or maybe we need a longer mid-day break to recharge away from our screens. There are certainly days when my dog, Blanche, needs some extra attention,” Gentile said.

“We have a great level of trust to know that we can be more flexible with our schedules and still get everything we need done, done.”

‘Fully remote and fully productive’

Every day, Hill sits in front of a computer screen on Zoom with his coworkers who are spread across the Boston area and other parts of the country. But this isn’t just some novel scene that’s played out solely during the pandemic: It’s been common practice for Hill at Simply Business.

Hill joined the company two and a half years ago and still recalls a blurb from his onboarding training packet that went something like this:
 

If scheduling a meeting where one or more attendee happens to be working remotely that day, the meeting host is responsible for booking a room, sending a Zoom link to all remote participants and setting up the television monitor in the meeting room to ensure remote participants could dial in from home.

“The remote work policy for Simply Business was ahead of the curve,” Hill said. “That simple change in mindset to ensure remote workers could dial in, rather than tailoring meetings strictly to the people in the office, made a lasting impression on me.”

That ingrained flexible remote policy has made switching to a fully remote office during the pandemic a smoother transition, Hill explained. But the company has found other ways to support its staff during this unprecedented time.
 

The remote work policy for Simply Business was ahead of the curve.’’

For example, like Gentile, Hill chose to work four to five days a week in the office pre-pandemic, primarily due to a long-held belief that he could never get as much work done from home. He grew accustomed to his three desktop monitors and the company’s free endless supply of coffee.

“So when the COVID-19 pandemic took off in late March, the first thought that came to my mind was that my productivity would plummet,” Hill said. “Again, Simply Business came through. They allowed me to order additional monitors for my home office, and after I invested in a cheap coffee maker and grinder, I quickly disproved my belief that I can’t be both fully remote and fully productive.”