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Ergo over 2 years ago
human resourceshuman resources🇺🇸 usa only🇺🇸 usa only
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Background

As every other company had to do, we pivoted from work-from-home Fridays to fully virtual during Quarantine. As CEO, I was determined to keep everyone safe and employed during this scary time. This included the whole company, even people like our receptionist and office office cleaner. 

During this time, I started a long-overdue weekly Covid update email, which is now a permanent company update. I believed that people were scared, so I felt it was important to keep as much familiar structure as possible to guide the company and the inidual people through it. I shifted our 9AM daily in-person morning company huddles to Zoom. I also scheduled Friday Happy-Half-Hour “Sign-off”  Zoom cocktails. I had a policy of cameras-on for meetings because people needed as much human interaction as possible, whether they wanted to recognize it or not. I later got the feedback that while requiring cameras seemed intrusive in the beginning, it proved to be the right call because it helped people feel more connected. I also personally scheduled quarterly 10-minute employee well-being check-ins with every single employee so I was able to see first hand, with my own eyes and ears, how people were doing during this time. I felt deeply responsible for everyone on a personal level.

Post-crisis, a company survey indicated that most people felt that we don’t need an office. We responded by terminating our office lease and formalizing a remote-work policy. We now have a small ERGO-branded, dedicated footprint available at WeWork at Bryant Park for meetings or anyone who needs to get out of the house. 

We also scaled back the daily huddle to specific teams, and eliminated the Friday Happy Half Hours, as everyone clearly developed Zoom fatigue. 

This has been a golden opportunity for me to learn to finally become a better CEO. I work with a great executive coach, who has helped me to improve immensely.

During all of this, we had some fun virtual events, including Halloween Sip & Carve led by a renowned Pumpkin Carving artist in Brooklyn, NY. Hot Sauce making for Cinco de Mayo and a Virtual Holiday White Elephant (company purchased gifts) in December 2020. We were able to sneak a fun in-person reunion happy hour in October, and another in-person Pasta cooking class in December 2021 in before the Omicrom wave. I’ve also committed to an annual thematically-relevant company event to recognize Juneteenth (rather than just giving another day off.

We also have monthly company huddles, originally fully virtual, and now hybrid for people who want to be there in person (at WeWork), followed by Happy Hour.

ERGO is far from perfect and not for everyone. It's a start-up environment, which means there’s a lot of rough edges at the moment. We have a great team of people, some with less experience, some with more. But everyone is committed, for which I’m grateful. I'm eyes-wide-open to how people feel when they write on Glass Door, and really try to understand where they're coming from so that we can make things better here. 

We need someone to take us from a pre-Covid office culture to a modern and engaging remote-work environment. This includes guiding every single employee through mutually fulfilling career growth, beginning at onboarding and continuing throughout the entire employment lifecycle.

Role Objective: Own the systems and processes that make ERGO an amazing place to work, while we aggressively scale the company. 

Areas of Responsibility:

Develop a Tangible Culture. Bring our core values to life and create a foundation for employee engagement. This includes: reworking or redesigning our Company Intranet to be employee centric and useful, developing virtual and in-person employee gatherings including monthly All-Hands, Holidays, Volunteer Days as well as other ideas that you come up with.

Recruiting. Manage our TopGrading process to ensure we hire the right talent.

Onboarding. Implement and manage a top-tier onboarding program. 

Ongoing Training. Develop a training program of bitesize content (apps, short videos, or easily digestible content) that’s easy to consume and recall. Lean into the wisdom that smaller bits of information used and repeated are more likely to get ideas across more effectively and be remembered.

Performance Management.  Manage and evolve our performance management framework to allow people to function at their peaks and provide career guidance. Live our core values of Compassionate Candor & ALT Mindset (Accountability without fear of blame, Learning and Teamwork). Note that we currently use Small Improvements, with weekly 1:1 and quarterly feedback reviews.

Offboarding. Create a process that allows dignified and fulfilling closure for any employee who leaves, and gather learnings to improve our Culture. Transition them from active team members to supportive alumni.