How we work in distributed teams at Gusto
Since 2019, the corporate world has changed fundamentally due to COVID-19. Many companies were forced into working remotely due to safety concerns. However, four years out from the onset of the pandemic, we have seen companies adopting return-to-office (RTO) policies where employees can either be fully remote, fully in person, or in a more hybrid approach. In many cases, teams are spread out across these different modes of working. So how has Gusto adapted to these changes?
Many of our teams are working in a remote or hybrid environment, and also working across many different time zones. Although Gusto has offices in Denver, New York, and San Francisco, we have many Gusties that are fully remote across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Turkiye, and elsewhere. Because this distributed way of working is so common at Gusto, we have found many ways to improve how we work in this new environment.
Team Time
At Gusto, we have a concept called “team time,” which you can think of as a virtual office space. Team time is essentially a recurring video call (we use Zoom), where all team members hop onto the meeting. This meeting can be used for regular team planning, and sometimes, team members just hop on the call to hang out. Each team decides how long and how often this block of time is scheduled.
You might be wondering, how is this different from a regular meeting? Well, having a dedicated space for people to meet makes it easy for team members to quickly ask questions. Just unmute yourself and ask someone on the call for help. Think of it as the virtual form of walking to someone’s desk and asking a question.
One thing that we like to do to make things easier is to have all meetings using team time. This setup has helped reduce confusion about which online meeting link to go to, as it is always the same meeting link for retrospectives, planning, and more.
Pair Programming
Gusto has a strong pair programming culture, and this pairs (ba dum tss) really well with team time. When the whole team is already together, it’s easy to grab someone and go into a separate breakout room and work on a problem. This culture makes it really easy to ask for help within the team, or even outside the team. Need to ask someone on a different team for more expertise? Invite them to team time.
Pair programming is also extremely helpful for onboarding new team members. We like to pair a person who knows more about a specific area with someone who does not know as much. Because of this, knowledge gets spread around much faster instead of being siloed into some people’s minds. Also, having pairing sessions makes it less intimidating for new members to ask questions. Got a quick question? Just ask while you are pairing with someone. No more taking time to craft the perfect message to ask your question, you can just ask and get an answer right away!
Overlapping Time Zones
Gusto has a global workforce. While a majority of our workforce is based in North America, working across time zones globally can be a challenge.
For our North America Gusties, many of our teams have a significant part of the working day overlapping. East Coast Gusties have their afternoons overlap with the mornings and early afternoons of West Coast Gusties. Teams optimize their team times to be during these overlapping times.
Scheduling becomes more difficult when you start considering time zones outside of North America, such as that of Turkiye. For this, we have East Coast Gusties overlap their mornings with the evenings of Turkiye Gusties. While this allows for some overlap between parts of the team, it does mean that sometimes West Coast team members do not work as closely with the Turkiye team members.
To bridge these time zone gaps, we rely on overcommunicating through our channels on Slack. This means leaving messages to be read by team members when they sign back on for their workday and writing more detailed messages to help unblock team members in a different time zone. When issues arise, we try to write as much as we can about our thoughts and solutions, so they are easily searchable for people in the future who run into the same problems.
Getting the team together
When a team is distributed across multiple locations or time zones, it is nice to get some in-person time with the whole team. Gusto has a budget for teams to host on-site meetings to get the whole team together. The in-person time can be used in a variety of ways — team building, project planning, or in-person collaboration on a thorny issue. For example, team building can look like doing an escape room, axe-throwing, having a team dinner, and more. Project planning can encompass figuring out the roadmap for the next quarter or even the next few years. When teams have some focused, in-person face time, they can remain empowered and confident to be highly productive despite being distributed.
Iterate
While this is how we work currently, we recognize there are always still improvements that can be made. The current set up is more centric to team members in North America, which can be harder for those not working on the continent. However, employees are encouraged to suggest ideas for how we can adapt our current practices to better suit everyone.
Plans for the future
In conclusion, the workplace has fundamentally transformed since the pandemic, and Gusto is constantly evolving to embrace this new reality. Through different approaches like team time, pair programming, and a focus on collaborating across time zones, Gusto’s iterative approach allows the company to continually evolve in response to the needs of its diverse and global workforce.
Does this method of working seem enticing for you? If so, check out our careers page.
