HubSpot's 'hybrid enablement manager' works to ease remote-work pain points

The new year comes with the same old questions for employers: Should we go remote? Demand employees return to work? Or establish a combination of both? 

At software platform HubSpot, those questions were answered years before the COVID pandemic upended traditional work operations. The team has always had a hybrid workforce, though the pandemic gave them an opportunity to rethink the best way to manage, organize and support their dispersed employees. 

At the helm of those efforts is Meaghan Williams, HubSpot's hybrid enablement and operations manager. Her job is to connect workers, no matter their location, ensuring the company's 7,000 employees are engaged, communicating effectively and working productively. 

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At HubSpot, that means managing three separate work options, and providing a clear framework for how people execute their job responsibilities. Sixty percent of their team takes advantage of the stay-at-home option, and the remainder are either flex workers who work remotely or in the office several days a week, or workers who report to the office full-time. 

"You do not need to go into an office in order to do your job and be effective," Williams says. "It really does come down to personal preference. But we wanted to make sure that we had a more formal process for categorizing folks into those different work preferences, so that we could then better support them." 

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Williams shares how HubSpot found the right balance for their workforce, and how she facilitates an equitable work experience for all employees, regardless of where and how they work. 

Hubspot offers a ton of flexibility for employees to choose a working arrangement that's best for them. How has this evolved over the last several years?   
Prior to COVID, we had a binary option, which was remote or office. We've had remote folks since the earliest days of HubSpot, but the population was much smaller. When COVID hit and everyone needed to work remotely, what we realized was that there were a ton of people that came back and said, 'Listen, I really like this way of working. This works out really well for me.' We wanted to make sure that we had a more formal process for categorizing folks into those different work preferences, so that we could then better support them. 

So for example, flex folks who only come into the office a couple of times a week, they have an IT setup at home, which we didn't previously have in that binary option. Office folks have a permanent desk. We also have stipends for remote and flex employees. And so it's just an easier way to scale the options in a way that still suits the needs. 

It often seems like employees are the ones embracing remote or hybrid work, while leaders may be more resistant. Did you experience that disconnect at HubSpot? 
I always feel so spoiled when I talk about this because I think I'm one of the rare people where our founders really believed in the remote option. They created my remote work and inclusion program manager role in 2019, right before COVID. That said, I will say that there were managers who, as we scaled the remote population, they were just accustomed to managing in person. Managers want to do a great job, right? They want to support their employees, and to suddenly take that away in the way that they're used to — sitting next to people sharing information, listening to calls — that was really scary for some managers. 

Meaghan Williams of HubSpot

One of the big things that we worked on in 2020, and we continue to work on to this day, is manager enablement and training. It's less about being in the same space and seeing productivity, and more being able to think about, what results are you looking for? What do you actually need to see from this employee? How can you make your time more effective? It's actually made everyone a better manager. 

HubSpot has taken a very intentional approach to your work arrangements. How does that differ from other employers who may be saying, we'll just see how it goes? 
I think we see a lot of companies allowing remote work, but they don't enable it. So if you say to someone, sure, you can do your job from home, but we're not going to make accommodations in meetings, we're not going to figure out a way to include human conversations, you're going to be left out of team dinners — that's not a good experience for the employee. And frankly, it's not a good experience for the business outcome. It's really hard to collaborate, if you're not included. It's really hard to join the conversation and grow your career and feel connected if your company isn't going to put the resources and energy and training behind it, to make sure that you've got that equitable and inclusive experience. It's why my team exists, to make sure that we're not just stopping at, sure, you can work remotely. We're making sure that that experience is equitable.

Read more: 5 communication tips for a remote workforce

How are you doing that in practice? 
All of our roles are eligible for any work preference. We've got all the way up to the C-levels working remotely. In terms of career growth, as we think about those options, being able to look up the ladder and see people who work in the same way that you do is really important. 

In terms of the connection points, we really encourage folks to talk about how we communicate that allows everyone to contribute. I now sit on the culture team and we've got someone in almost every country in which HubSpot operates. We are never all online at the same time. So we have a daily prompt that is automated in Slack, like, What are you excited about this week? What did you accomplish this week? What did you learn this week? And whenever you're online, which is going to be different for everyone, you have the opportunity to jump into that thread and share. So even though we're not seeing each other and we're not staying up late in order to do that, we're still learning from each other, we're still connecting. 

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We also have local meetups — for example, we've got over 100 people in Colorado, and we give those folks a stipend so that if they want to get together and work from a coffee shop, or some folks in Indiana went apple picking a couple months ago, they have the ability not just to find each other, but to actually get together and expense some of that on HubSpot. We've also tried to set up our office for better connections. We've got open tables with little topic cards on them and you can go and sit there and do your work, which indicates like, Hey, I'd love to meet people. Regardless of your work preference or location, you have avenues to connect with other people, and that's going to be a huge focus for us in the next year.

What are your recommendations for other employers to approach hybrid work with intention in 2023? 
The first piece is to listen to your employees. Ask the questions, get out there, send surveys and have listening hours where you can really understand what folks actually want and need and how are your efforts working for them. Sometimes you'll put tons of energy into something only to find that people really aren't interested. Then from there, be so intentional about your efforts — write it down, really think it through. Go through an experimentation process. It's really about fine tuning and taking it to the next level. 

At HubSpot, I'm excited to experiment with some new ways to connect folks in a meaningful way to help build long term relationships that will hopefully help folks to collaborate again and continue to grow their career. I think that that's what people across the industry feel like they're missing in a hybrid or remote world, that sporadic connection that you might have found at the watercooler, as people always say. Really double down on that effort because connection matters. It affects somebody's experience at the company, it affects attrition rates, it affects productivity rates, there's so much to it. So it's a place where we really want to spend our energy and time to get right.