Articles and tips on the topic of working remotely are growing at a rapid rate, but there are few posts from companies like Splice Machine who moved to a 100% remote work environment before the pandemic. In this post, we discuss how Splice Machine’s use of measurable goals and continuous feedback encourages trust and loyalty.

Standing Over Someone’s Shoulder

One of Splice Machine’s greatest learning moments when researching remote-first companies was a conversation on goal setting and measuring performance with Julie DeBuhr, Sr. Director of Employee Engagement at InVision, a company that started as 100% remote and is now over 1000 employees. Julie gave us some valuable tips and squashed many of our productivity and accountability concerns. She reminded us that we will never really know how productive someone is unless we are measuring their progress against a clear set of goals. “Standing over someone’s shoulder is no guarantee that they are productive or effective.”

Set Measurable Goals

Effective goal setting requires everyone to be present and to participate, so remote-first companies must be more disciplined about how they plan, post, track, and discuss progress. Effective goals must also be measurable. The combination of these two best practices quantifies productivity, ensures no one inadvertently gets left out, and builds trust throughout the team.

Objectives and Key Results

Splice Machine has been using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as our goal-setting methodology nearly since the company was founded. OKRs is a popular agile goal-setting process based on company, department, and individual goals that are measured frequently and refreshed quarterly. Before Splice Machine committed to a remote-first, distributed work strategy, we published our OKRs in a Google spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was cumbersome to review and inadvertently deterred people from viewing and updating their goals frequently.

When moving to a remote-first work model we invested in a tool, Ally.io, to manage our OKRs. Ally.io makes it easy for everyone in the company to add their own quarterly goals and view company, department, and other team members’ goals at a glance. The system is easy to quantifiably update and make comments on progress which becomes when comparing performance against previous quarters. Goal setting is only meaningful if goals are getting updated and progress is discussed regularly, so Splice Machine published a list of best practices in our Company Playbook for our team to follow. An excerpt is below.

Establish Goal Setting Expectations

OKR discussions at Splice Machine

• You meet with your manager weekly/ bi-weekly for a minimum of 25 minutes.

• You update your status in our OKR software, Ally.io, before your meeting.

• You prepare to talk for 15 minutes, starting with your OKRs progress while your manager listens.

• Your manager responds after you are finished with comments, suggestions, and direction.

• You and your manager review takeaways from the meeting and put them into action.

Continuous Feedback to Operate Better

While managers seek feedback from their team, the People Ops team has its own schedule and arsenal of methods to collect feedback from Splice Machine’s members. We make a point to connect with teams monthly to ask how they are doing and use tools like our Happiness Survey to solicit anonymous feedback. Our surveys often incorporate Employee Net Promoter Scoring (eNPS) to measure the team’s sentiment towards their work, their manager, their team, and how effectively they feel the company is communicating.

The most meaningful feedback People Ops surveyed was collected a year after Splice Machine moved to our fully distributed remote-work model. Our survey focused on “How Well We Were Communicating” and our overall score was a 4.7 out of 5. Many who opted to work from home versus a shared workspace indicated that they loved working from home and had no interest in returning to an office environment, either at Splice Machine or at a future job. The small group that originally chose to work at a shared workspace had started working from home at least part of the time. Most resoundingly, our team’s communication and trust scores remained high.

Earn Trust With Good Goals

Good goal setting builds trust, and great work cultures are based on deep-rooted trust. At Splice Machine trust building begins during the interview process when managers explain the role’s goals, how their team communicates, and measures performance in our asynchronous environment. Remote-first work cultures built on trust commonly share these characteristics.

Signs of Good Remote-Work Culture

• Trust prevails.

• Discussion is encouraged.

• Work processes and tools support all time zones.

• Asynchronous communication is pervasive.

• Meeting schedules are rotated and staggered.

• Facetime is the rule versus the exception.

• Conversations are memorialized in public channels.

• Feedback comes from a good place.

• Progress is measured.

• Mistakes provide learning opportunities.

• Decision making is transparent and inclusive.

• Career advancement is not biased.

• Wins are celebrated.

• People matter.

At Splice Machine we carefully interview and hire people who we believe will be productive in their role and will enjoy working in our company culture. Once we hire someone, we invest the time to onboard and equip them with the knowledge and tools needed to succeed. Our culture encourages sharing knowledge, helping someone out when they are in over their head, celebrating the small wins, and taking time to thank those who made it possible.

Trust Earns Loyalty

We attribute our culture that inspires trust, creativity, collaboration, and fun to the long-standing tenure and loyalty of our team at Splice Machine. Many of our founding team members are still with us, through tough times and good, excited about what lies ahead.

When Splice Machine moved to a fully remote work environment to help our company overcome hiring challenges, we unexpectedly reaped the benefits of greater communication and productivity.

We hope that after reading our journey you will better understand the options, challenges, and advantages of building a remote-first company. If you missed any of our posts, you may view them on Splice Machine’s career page or download the Splice Machine Journey From Office to 100% Remote ebook that our posts are based on. Our People Ops team is available for any questions and may be contacted at peopleops@splicemachine.com