How ZOE is embracing remote-first working

Zoe means “life” in Greek, and that doesn’t just apply to our groundbreaking studies on health and nutrition. We believe that life is more than just work and that’s why here at Zoe, we’ve completely transformed our working model.?

Eighteen months ago, we were fully office-based with locations in London and Boston. Today, we have a fully flexible, remote-first model that allows our employees to choose the style of work that works for them.

But how did we get here??

The simple answer is COVID-19, but the full story dates back to before the pandemic. In early 2020, we were already discussing the possibility of remote working. Although I didn’t have first-hand experience of remote work, I was aware that many companies had successfully moved to a fully remote model (i.e., GitLab, Toptal, Automattic). I was keen that we should explore this too.?

At this time, Zoe’s centre of gravity was London. This was natural given the founders were located there. Unfortunately, it was also natural that the US office struggled to feel truly integrated with the UK office. The leadership team discussed the idea of remote-first working as a possible solution, but opinions were mixed, probably due to our different working and communication styles. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of skepticism about remote working.

Lockdown changes everything

Then we went into lockdown overnight. Our interest in remote working suddenly became incredibly timely and useful. Because of our research, we were already aware of the high performers in this space and what their best practices looked like.?

But when it comes down to it, it’s the practical experience that really counts. We’ve spent the last eighteen months iterating what practices work best for our organisation. And the transition has been overwhelmingly seen as a success. Productivity appeared to be steady, perhaps even improved. In fact, during this time, Zoe has grown massively. We’ve designed and launched the COVID Symptom Study app, and we introduced our ground-breaking nutrition product.?

So it didn’t take long for even the most skeptical members of the leadership team, including our CEO, to realise that remote working could actually work for us. This recognition was a perfect example of one of our core principles in practice: ‘Evolve our Opinions with New Evidence’. We value a scientific, evidence-based approach, and in this case, the evidence made a compelling case! Most of us appreciated the obvious benefits of remote working – less time spent commuting meant time gained with our families or for ourselves. For a minority of employees, this abrupt change was harder, often because of the loneliness factor (they were living by themselves) or because they didn’t have a good working environment.

During lockdown, we also made several key strategic hires based on the assumption of remote-first working. By not restricting our search to London or Boston-based candidates, we were able to find more qualified and more diverse talent.?

An intentional transformation for post-pandemic work life

This spring, as we all hopefully looked at a post-covid future, Zoe’s leadership team was still unsure about how to proceed with our remote working strategy. At the same time, we needed to grow and this uncertainty was slowing down our ongoing hiring.

Our engagement survey showed a clear preference for not returning full time to the office. But it was also apparent that current and prospective employees still wanted some opportunities for working in the office.?

From a strategic perspective, it had also become clear that the transparent communication style that accompanied fully remote working had helped to bridge the divide between the UK and the US teams. Furthermore, remote working had proven to be an important strategy for hiring. We were able to widen the pool of prospective employees – we gained some extremely valuable team members who didn’t live in Boston or London. Since the pandemic, highly qualified candidates in the tech field have shown a preference for remote work, and we knew that it was essential for future talent acquisition that we could continue to attract these people.?

Despite all our success working fully remote, we struggled to agree on making this change formal. But by doing this, we realised that we were unintentionally causing distress to our staff. They saw new hires coming onboard in new locations and allowed themselves to imagine life outside of London or Boston. They knew that things had changed, but without a clear policy in place, how could they properly plan their lives with any certainty??

We knew that we owed our team clarity and transparency. That’s why in June, we announced Zoe Flex.

A remote working plan based on Zoe’s values

We suspected that fully remote working wouldn’t work for everyone 100 percent of the time. At the same time, we wanted our working model to be remote-first. That means that someone who is fully remote will never feel penalised or at a disadvantage because they are missing out on time spent in the office. That’s why we created Zoe Flex – a fully flexible, hybrid model that gives our employees the opportunity to adopt the working style that best suits them.?

So what does that look like for us?

All new hires and existing staff have the choice of working fully remote or hybrid, i.e., with optional in-office days. Our offices are available for those who want to use them but there is never any obligation to do so. (Of course, our nutrition test kits cannot be sent remotely, which means that fulfillment roles are necessarily office-based, and they are all advertised as such.) Zoe Flex has led to some employees moving out of London. And I have no doubt that our employee retention rate has improved because of this flexibility.?

New hires can join us from new locations (assuming that the legislation of their home country or state is compatible with our legal and tax policies). This has led to more diverse hires which has brought new and fresh perspectives to our thinking.?

All employees have the ability to work up to a certain number of months abroad with just their manager’s approval. This had been used widely already, but formalising the policy provides even more flexibility for employees to temporarily base themselves in places that might not be compatible for long-term working (for tax or other legal reasons).?

To make remote-first working effective, we’re working on shifting from synchronous communication to asynchronous wherever possible. All our communication is public and shareable which creates greater levels of transparency across the organisation. Where we’ve gained an added level of documentation in meeting notes and other written communication, we’ve tried to balance this out with our social channels and face-to-face video recordings to create connection where appropriate. We’re still learning how to strike this balance and be respectful of our team’s time and preferred communication styles.??

When we do make a new hire, we have a highly effective onboarding strategy. We know it can be isolating starting a new job remotely. That’s why we’ve crafted a highly structured two-week onboarding checklist. Rather than inundating new hires with a disorganised mess of files or just pointing them to the company wiki, new staff members must complete a checklist of tasks that ranges from watching specific videos on day one to sending slack messages and virtual coffee invitations to fellow colleagues.??

But what about the social aspect of work?

At Zoe, we strive to create space for moments of joy every day. This starts with strong relationships. That’s why we highly encourage social interaction and bonding. Just because we are consciously creating a remote-first philosophy doesn’t mean that we don’t value in-person relationship building!?

Employees have a monthly social budget of ￡60 (on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis). But they have total discretion on how to use that budget. Teams have the freedom and flexibility to meet how and when it suits them. Widely dispersed teams might choose to gather for several days quarterly, whereas a London-based team might get together once a week.?

It’s important to note that things haven’t entirely returned to normal, and we do expect in-person social interaction to continually evolve along with the wider pandemic situation. We have plans for a company retreat in the future, but for now, we are happy to let the teams decide their own optimal social style.?

What does the future of work look like at Zoe?

There’s still a lot to learn as we move ahead with Zoe Flex. For example, we don’t have set guidelines around travel frequency (partially due to the continued lack of clarity around COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines). Whilst we are committed to bringing people together, we don’t know how possible it will be to get the UK and US teams together face-to-face.

Ultimately, we realise that the remote working experience during the pandemic has been far from normal. But we expect that the long-term experience of remote-first working will become a lot less isolating.?

We can’t deny how incredibly useful face-to-face interaction can be when it comes to building strong relationships. But our experience has taught us that we don’t have to sacrifice flexibility to foster close working relationships. We’ve learned that even if our people don’t see each other face-to-face, they’ve still found ways to get to know each other and bond. That has been an incredible transformation to watch.

Join the Zoe team

We’re pretty confident that we’ve found a solution that works for us and for our team. This is critical because here at Zoe, we’re on a mission to improve human health, and the way we’re going to achieve that is by embracing a flexible and remote-first working model.?

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, we are hiring for several positions. We’d love to hear from you!