Christian Sutherland-Wong took over as CEO of job-review web site Glassdoor in January 2020 after 5 years in varied roles throughout the agency—together with COO, head of product, and president. “It was a super interesting period to be taking on the reins,” Sutherland-Wong tells Fortune. “These past four years have seen a lot of change—and a lot of good stuff, too.”
One such good factor: Corporations throughout the globe are taking a renewed interest in flexibility—and Glassdoor is not any exception. Glassdoor advised Fortune solely that the corporate will shut its final remaining workplaces in Chicago and San Francisco imminently, and within the meantime will likely be subleasing the areas as they “double down on being a remote-first company going forward.”
Glassdoor shifted to a totally distant operation on March 3, 2020; its Bay Space headquarters was one of many first U.S. areas to really feel a COVID surge. “Like other companies, we were really pleasantly surprised to see how productive we still were when working from home,” Sutherland-Wong remembers. “We were very much an in-office company before that; we believed we needed to be in-person to collaborate and work together.”
As soon as that perception was confirmed to be unfounded, Glassdoor by no means regarded again. “We were so productive [working remotely], and employees really liked it, and it really opened up our talent pool to people we never had access to before,” Sutherland-Wong says. “So it was an incredible accelerant for us in hiring talent.”
There’s no turning again now; three quarters of the corporate’s workforce stay past commuting distance from certainly one of their workplaces. “We don’t even think we need an office presence eventually,” he says. “What we need more of is bigger event spaces where we want to bring people together for shorter periods of time to encourage relationship building.”
Glassdoor, bolstered by the opinions on its web site for different corporations that train a remote-first approach, is “very invested in being a remote-first company” for good. The drastic change to its real-estate technique, Sutherland-Wong says, was inevitable as a result of “pre-2020, we expected employees to come in 5 days a week.” Even he, as CEO, has solely been heading to the workplace round as soon as every week.
Phrase on the positioning
On the anonymous-review web site, dialogue round distant and hybrid work is at an enduring fever pitch. “The general sentiment is: Workers, for the most part, crave flexibility,” Sutherland-Wong says. “There are workers who feel lonely and like the opportunity to come into the office and connect with colleagues. But on the balance of things, it certainly feels like workers desire remote work more.”
It’s additionally been an enchanting train to look at how corporations have reacted—and in many cases, pulled back. “At the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like the large tech companies would embrace a remote-work future, but now the pendulum has swung back and you see a lot of them mandating a return to office, at least a few days a week,” he says. “I think that’s a reflection of: While you can do many things remotely, you lose some connection and brainstorming opportunities. That’s why larger tech companies have swung back a bit.”
However, smaller tech corporations—like Glassdoor—nonetheless “see many benefits,” he says. “You can, if you’re thoughtful, do things really effectively both remotely and asynchronously. Glassdoor has chosen to really embrace remote because it feels like the right decision for us.”
Whereas there’s usually dissonance between what employees need and what their bosses need, employees are nonetheless prone to do what management says—for now.
“We’re seeing a real difference between the 2021-22 sentiments on Glassdoor and the 2023-24 sentiment,” Sutherland-Wong says. “Earlier, we saw a real economic boom, particularly in tech, and we saw a lot of turnover because there were so many opportunities for workers and such high demand.” Then got here 2023, the place tons of of 1000’s of tech employees have been laid off and hiring demand cooled off considerably. “We’ve seen a real swing towards workers wanting to stay put, valuing job security way more than the things that could be out there. They’re just really nervous about layoffs.”
As for the flexibility to be taught by way of osmosis and make connections with higher-ups, the workplace nonetheless can’t be beat, Sutherland-Wong admits. “I’ll say upfront, our embrace of remote [work] is not perfect,” he says. “We’re certainly making trade-offs by being remote, when it comes to the fun of being in-person day-to-day, and I also think the informal learning opportunities that can come just from being next to a colleague physically—we just have to deal with those trade-offs.”
A type of trade-offs is onboarding, the place Sutherland-Wong says “we’re not perfect yet.”
“We haven’t solved the whole gap, but we’re confident we can get most of the way there through a more concerted effort, doing it really well and making sure managers really check in with their workers, knowing that things can slip through the cracks,” he says.
Nonetheless, the Glassdoor CEO is pleased with the various upsides of distant work: “A ton of flexibility benefits and the ability to tap into talent pools around the world,” he factors out. “We know there are things we need to solve for—the relational aspects of being together, things better done in person.” However they’d moderately bridge the hole with distant capabilities than renew their leases.
