Why Most Remote Cultures Fail
In the most recent HR Leaders Podcast episode, I had an inspiring conversation with Barbara Matthews, Chief People Officer at Remote.
She explains how her team successfully operates across 85 countries without traditional office mandates or endless meetings. By replacing friction with clear asynchronous documentation, Remote maintains connection and speed at scale.
In this episode, Barbara discusses:
Reserve synchronous time for connection → Handle routine status updates asynchronously so meeting time can focus on coaching, vulnerability, and personal growth.
Evaluate leaders on people capabilities → Move beyond output metrics by rating managers explicitly on leadership pillars and people development skills.
Leverage AI to streamline performance reviews → Automate self-assessments and check-ins to cut review turnarounds to 48 hours and save 1.5 hours per employee.
Shift from lagging metrics to predictive indicators → Monitor continuous performance data to identify issues early rather than waiting for annual review cycles.
Prioritize curiosity and power skills over technical jargon → Focus on human capabilities like curiosity and critical thinking as AI handles technical workflows.
What if AI agents were not just another way to create more learning content?
What if the talent you need is already inside your organisation, but hidden in skills no one has mapped yet?
That is what 365Talents helps HR teams solve with AI-driven skills intelligence.
It helps organisations see the real skills their people already have, spot gaps, and turn that insight into workforce planning, internal mobility, and better career paths.
That is why 365Talents created the 2026 HR Skills Strategy Toolkit.
14 ready-to-use templates to help HR leaders build the business case, calculate ROI, evaluate vendors, define governance, and roll out a skills strategy that actually moves.
[01:00:00:09 - 01:00:09:22]
Hey, Barbara, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm good. Thanks for having me, Chris. Do me a favor and keep that storm where you are over there, over there. Don't bring it over to me.
[01:00:11:05 - 01:03:29:22]
You don't want that Irish rain coming. Definitely not. That's funny. It's normally us saying that to other countries. Right. Because I'm trying to do this, like, you know, but I feel like the times I have been in Ireland is probably it's probably worse, actually. I'll give you that. Yeah. It's just definitely is. And it just has this wonderful dampness that just pervades, you know. Yeah. How does it affect your internet, though? When you first joined in, like, like, how is rain affecting Internet signal? That is a new one. I don't know. I am. I am the tech person. I'm the people person. So I'm joking. I also sent a star link in case of any of you were. Have you a star link? No, it's just here in a box. I can't be dealing with unpacking and putting that together. But I was sent it in case of end of world. That's incredible, by the way. Your team that you're that the company sent you a star link. Starlink and like the seller panels. The tracks, the tracks. Wow. OK, that's cool. That's what that's random and super cool. But apparently it's going to there's a generator there that'll help run my fridge for two days. So well, well, these are some real employee benefits I've never heard of. Yeah, I mean, they're sitting in boxes. So they don't benefit me in the slightest. I asked you who lives on the other side of the country over and put it together for me. You tell me where to go. That sounds like a pretty. I'm not going to build a power wall and this. Yes, I think it's fair play. It would still be in a box. You need to buy a zone. But anyway, how are you? How's the new how's the new year treating you? Oh, it's good. Yeah, great. Exciting stuff. We've just wrapped our performance cycle today and last week. So we are riding high on the back of that, actually. Yeah. Last year, like obviously, I've worked with your team, seemed like an incredible whirlwind of activity in the business of new product rollouts, scaling just so much like from the product side, like which we'll talk about a bit later, like to where it was at the beginning of the year to the end of the year, even within one year, it was insane. Like to see the transformation right as well. And I can only imagine what that meant on your end in terms of the skills, capability from a people perspective, what that looked like. So we'll get into that. But before we do that, tell everyone more about your background and sort of journey to to where we are now. Yeah, so if I'd over well, over 20 years ago, I arrived in Google. And that was my first kind of real tech job. So before I had been in HR in retail. So I arrived on a three week contract. And stayed there for 12 years. So they didn't hear me after those three weeks. But I was the first recruitment coordinator. So started in in talent acquisition and was the first recruitment coordinator for me and helped build that organization. And then one of the things that was really quite pivotal to me was around the time of the recession in 2008. So I was moving up in the world of recruiting and had to make my team redundant in 2008. Now, my role, they moved me into our people up space. I got exposed to another area of people. And then I moved into a programs area and then finally moved into a HRBP area, which was as it turned out, my dream role. It was just one of those moments where I came home from work and I was like, oh, this is the job that I was meant to do. I loved engaging with the people in the business. I loved being exposed to kind of the challenges that the employees have, the coaching for the managers and helping grow them and resolve stuff.
[01:03:31:09 - 01:04:17:14]
So that was a wonderful experience. It kind of exposed me to all of a people organization and all the different facets and functions within that group. And then I was given the opportunity to build the HR team at Stripe, which is really exciting. So when I started, there was only 550 people. And one of the founders is very famously at the beginning, kind of was very flummoxed when people introduced the idea of managers. He's like, what do we need managers for? We just operate in people who just like run stuff. So we so it was a really interesting challenge from a people perspective, because it's not that there was resistance inside the organization, but it was definitely new for many people who were working in Stripe at the time. But we had an amazing kind of seven and a half year run there building
[01:04:18:24 - 01:04:52:04]
all of the HR policies and procedures like we have no performance, we have no talent review, all of those things. And then for the last three, two and a half years, I have been here at remote remote itself is a an employment platform that enables companies to manage people from hire to retire. So I've been working in this organization. There's about 2000 people across 84, 85 countries. And we work completely remote. So it's a very different way of working for me compared to my previous roles. It's literally in the name.
[01:04:53:14 - 01:04:54:06]
Literally in the name.
[01:04:55:10 - 01:05:08:05]
Wow. There's a lot to unpack there. So yeah. So so you super interested. So you were in that in the whole sort of tech boom. When it comes in Dublin, which is where. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:05:09:14 - 01:05:20:16]
Wow. That must have been incredible to be in that period of like all those tech companies coming over. Everyone's kind of like fighting for the same talent. Yes. I've been crazy.
[01:05:21:22 - 01:07:17:17]
Yeah, it's really exciting. I was in love for a while, but then I came back in 2015 and that's when I started in Stripe. Yeah. And I love Stripe, by the way, like me and Shane, when we first started the company like 10 years ago, we were like built our own website, you know, completely just taped everything together in my bedroom, trying to figure out how to do this. And then we found this company called Stripe that within two or three clicks was integrated into our website. Yeah. And literally a week later, we got our first transaction come through and we were like, this is insane. Yeah. How easy, how easy we're like, how easy are we still use it today, by the way? We never same account never changed. Like like we use it for our AI solution, Atlas as well. Like what an incredible, such an amazing, simple. This made something so complicated, so easy, especially for startups. Like for us, it was like, oh my God, game changer. And it just rode this amazing wave, you know, and it just kept it's such a company that's so ambitious and it just kept expanding and adding new strings to their bow and it's just a company. Yeah. It's just two brothers, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Me and Shane have like followed the story for a while and always been like, wow, like, you know, like along the journey. So, so, so, so you mentioned a little bit, though, but why remote in terms of like you've worked at those incredible organizations, remote comes along. It's also selling a solution to HR, which you've worked in. Why remote? Yeah. So a couple of different reasons. So firstly, it was selling a solution for sure that helped enable companies. So that was attractive. Secondly, I think I had lived my entire career away from the West Coast and away from Silicon Valley, and I'd always worked for those West Coast companies. And at a certain point, sadly, you're kind of stimmied or, you know, there is some form of ceiling in where you can go and how successful you can be within the people organization was my experience unless you moved
[01:07:18:18 - 01:08:30:09]
to the West Coast, which was not a goer for me. And so I really wanted to move into a company that was still in building mode. And a lot of the processes and procedures back then were relatively immature. It was like 900 people. So it was pretty small. And I love the building. I actually get quite bored when everything is established and it's just same, same, same status quo. And also, I mean, the CPO role just gave me even more exposure to the business and allowed me to manage a broader remit than just people partners. And so it kind of ticked all the boxes for me in terms of the scope of that role. And then the idea that I could be part of something that could craft what I believe is a better HR tool and definitely will be a better HR one stop shop, considering the kind of disconnected tools I have had experience with over the years. So that was definitely attractive to me. Love that. Well, one of the big things I want to talk to you about, one, because you're living and breathing it externally and internally, and two, that is a big topic of conversation amongst our CIT work community right now is in a fully distributed global company like remote, how do you think about building trust
[01:08:31:17 - 01:09:19:23]
at scale when teams never really meet face to face, especially as loads of organizations are becoming more hybrid? Yes, I mean, it's a really, really critical one. And it's one that you can't just assume the culture will provide for you. So you need to be well, I always advise leaders and myself that you need to be very intentional on building connection. And the time that you get with your team is when you are you should be spending time learning more about that person, growing that person and coaching that person and continuing to build that connection. A lot of stuff that people cover in one to ones can actually be done asynchronously, like sitting with somebody in sales and looking at their pipeline. That can all be done asynchronously. Don't waste your precious in-person time doing that. Be very intentional about spending time with
[01:09:21:03 - 01:11:53:22]
with the folks that you can in real life. I think being very transparent and clear in how you lead, in how you manage and in how you communicate is very important from the perspective of trust. And also showing I encourage leaders to show vulnerability and to make sure that they are sharing their own personal experiences to try and build that trust and make sure that you're also kind of doing the things that you commit to is super important. Yeah. How do you make sure that that whole experience, though, because it's remote remains consistent? That's hard. And, you know, even if you're in person, you can't really ensure that it remains consistent because you're not in rooms having all of those ones. But what you what you hope to do or what you hope to create is an organization where managers can lean on each other. So we're very intentional about building our manager community so folks can learn from each other. We have a strong people partner team that are very focused on providing kind of strategic coaching and business partnering. And they we all have a consistent within the people team. We all have a consistent understanding of what that should look like in the business and then providing the right learning opportunities, which we have done. But I think we need to actually do more with regards to down into our I.C. population, some more learning opportunities there. But I think taking all of those boxes, making sure your leaders are role modeling those those capabilities, I guess, is really critical. And then finally, data. So we we really try and check in with our employees through our engagement surveys. We ask very specific questions about managers through performance reviews. We have these people leadership pillars where we're assessing their capabilities because we actually using our own platform with perf, we actually looked through all of the the development areas and the strengths of all of our managers in the tool. And what we actually found was people are not talking about manager capabilities in those reviews, they're talking about sales numbers or projects and the impact that was seen there. And actually, there was very little touching on the people capabilities and the leadership capabilities, which led us to think maybe they weren't deemed as critical or as important to this person's overall review. So we've put in these leadership pillars. We have a handbook that go alongside with the leadership. Managers understand what they are and how they should show up. And then the final phase is that we actually evaluate them on their leadership pillars and provide relevant training to help shore up any development areas. Yeah.
[01:11:55:00 - 01:11:56:22]
You just need to answer my next question about ROI.
[01:11:58:09 - 01:13:43:01]
You already knew I was going. Because that's not even in my notes, Chris. I think that's the important part, right? Because you can talk about these pillars, but if you don't shift behavior and you don't create the right systems and processes, nothing will change. You can shout from the rooftop. Well, that's exactly what you want. But culture is a group, a set of behaviors and how people show up. Right. Like from a performance perspective, like all of last year, we really focused on building a culture of high performance in the organization across all of our manager population. And we put in a lot of different levers to try and make sure that we were catching performance. And when we just wrapped our performance review, only two percent of our low performance cases were new to us. So we were we were using data at every point to make sure that we knew the story. We knew the data. We knew what was happening with each team. We knew what every manager was dealing with. We knew our low performers. We knew folks that needed support. And having those check ins really gives us kind of that entire story so that we're never at a loss for what's going on in our organization. I was talking literally to David Work about this recently. We were talking about how HR in the past were always looking at lagging indicators, right, versus leading indicators. And that's what you've just described. Hey, let's not wait until an exit interview to figure out why as far as I was left. Right. Because then and also if you want HR to truly be strategic or, you know, you know, driving the business, it can't always be a reporting like as well. So you mentioned that very casually. But many organizations are very still, you know, the order taker reporting still stuck stuck in that
[01:13:44:15 - 01:14:26:06]
way of working, let's just say as well. And especially being remote, you can't you definitely can't afford to do that. No, I'm predictive indicators is actually on the goals thing for my team this year. So I don't feel we've done enough of it. We really want to focus on it for this year and figuring out kind of who's potentially a trading, who is coasting, who's disengaged. Our top talent. Are they still feeling trusting of the organization? All those things. So we're going to work on all that stuff this year. Yeah. What's the biggest challenge that you face personally when moving into? Because you're also leading your team remotely. Right. Yeah. So from a personal perspective, what was one of the biggest challenges that you faced?
[01:14:28:07 - 01:14:36:00]
In remote or kind of in any role? I mean, coming into remote in a completely was this the first time you've been in 100 percent remote?
[01:14:37:02 - 01:14:56:03]
First, yeah, because in Stripe with Covid, you were just kind of doing all your zooms. It was different when you actually move remote. You have to work differently. You can't just be sitting on Zooms all day. Very intentional about documentation and communication and all those things. So for me, I think, well,
[01:14:57:09 - 01:15:20:20]
I am quite fast paced. So I was I was given some feedback around intensity and maybe dialing it back. So you let me to go in the middle of actually maybe we need to dial it up as a team, if this is the impression. And that's harder. I think it's harder to show your full self over these these short bursts of
[01:15:22:03 - 01:29:33:00]
in-person virtual engagement. So I had to do a lot of like I would post a lot of looms. I would communicate that way. I would engage across a lot of different Slack channels. I wouldn't just let my leads focus on their teams. I was in all that. I am in all those Slack channels and I'm engaging with each of them. I also run skip levels, which I think are really important. I run group skip levels with like all of the people, partners, all of the learning team, all of the recruiting team. And I also run some with some top talent folks as well. And in practice, you have also kind of fun, actually, you just kind of post, I'm going to huddle here, ask me anything type five. And I do ask me anything company wide and also specifically within my own team. So it's just it's just kind of that extra effort that you need to really put in. If you want to be building your own profile and brand within a remote and then also making sure that you're connecting with your team and helping them feel that they have the right leader in place leading them. Yeah, I'm so happy I just answered that question, by the way, because those are the things that a lot of the practical things you just shared that you just kind of threw out there are so important. Right. Even like like because you don't have the natural I'm going to bump into in the office. Exactly. There's not. Or people get to know you, you know, through those kind of moments and looms, by the way, if they don't listen to that, I isn't aware. It's just a video recording platform and you can record a quick video. It's super authentic and you just send it, you know, via an email or in any of the messaging apps. And I think that's an incredible way of communicating. Right. Does that overly prepared or rehearsed? It's just an authentic video. You just send it out like it just makes people build more trust and feel like they get you. Right. So that was such a simple one that people think that like you have to over complicate. No, just like you could be like, hey, I'm thinking about this. Like, what do you guys think? It just boom, send it outright. Or it doesn't have to be complicated as well. In terms of we've got to suppose we can't have a conversation without talking about AI. So we're going to have to do it. Yeah. As a obviously you're in a really interesting environment where you're both building it into product and customers, you obviously get to use those same tools internally. So can you share a few concrete examples of how AI has sort of helped enable your both HR but also your organization and improve the experience? Yeah. And I think just to take it a step back, if I may, and Chris around around AI, I think I've been talking to a lot of leaders about this and indeed my own team. There's a very clear mandate across our organization around enabling yourselves with AI, tackling AI and trying to figure out how to leverage it and weave it into all of the work that you do. And the truth of the matter is, is that a very significant portion of the workforce are like deers and headlights. You know, they are just frozen, I think they don't know where to start. I even asked my boss in January, I was like, tell me the best AI course that I can do. And he's like, there's no point because the course that was good last week is going to be terrible in a month's time. So you just need to keep finding. Speaking of language. Organic ways of learning. And I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, I've gone to Gemini and I've gone to Claude, I'm digging into all of those things. But what I'm trying to turn my team onto is like, you're not an engineer, you don't have to be able to code. What you have is we need to pivot on the capabilities that our organization needs. And that is curiosity, a growth mindset, people looking at a process saying like, why am I doing this? There must be a better way and having conversations with those that are better. So I think when we talk about AI, there is a fear, everyone's like, oh, I can't do it. I need to be an AI expert and I'm not. But actually, I believe the curiosity in the mindset will get you kind of halfway there. From a remote perspective, we, as you say, we're weaving it into everything we do from a HR perspective, specifically, we have woven it into our performance tool and we have done a ton of work on leveraging AI to summarize self assessments and manager reviews. We actually do a real time performance and we do monthly trends every month to kind of send a Slack message to the manager to say, hey, pop in how Jack is trending and maybe two lines. So they put that into the system. And within our platform as well, we have goals, we have one to one. And so AI kind of scrapes all of those to deliver a manager assessment, which is how we get to do it in 48 hours because the manager assessment is like mostly done. But what we encourage them to do is read, tweak and submit. So make sure that they're reviewing it, they're editing it. So that has been a huge saving for us. We actually just ran our survey last week and there's a saving on average of like an hour and a half per employee, which is a ton of hours. Yeah. And AI is definitely we have a bot within our HR space to answer what used to be kind of our people ops questions. And that is a game changer for us in terms of the efficiencies that we're having and how we're able to elevate the folks within people ops, things that our people partners were doing. We're now moving to those. So they're doing more interesting work as well. And then we also are using our bot, which is called Remy. We send very customized learning nudges. So we have different cohorts in the company. So leaders get a certain message from Remy managers will get a different message. ICs will get a different message. And we send these kinds of nudges once every one every two weeks is kind of what goes out to these people to really encourage whatever's going on. Like maybe it's values awards or training and development or prepping for your own career conversation or prepping, you know, do compensation training. So you're ready to have the compensation conversation with your employees. So we try and use those kind of assisted prompts to really, to really firstly make the person receiving the message. We also say like it's person's anniversary, make sure you wish them an anniversary. So we're trying to make it fun, but also the leader feels seen and it's customized to the individual, which is just a nice add on. Yeah. Well, it's kind of what, every time you speak, there's a lot for me to unpack. So I love your first part going all the way back earlier about the learning part when you mentioned about courses, right? Because I spent the last three years working with, you know, the, we built Atlas co-pilot, our product, right? Based around that, like, you know, we for years, we spoke on courses, not capability. And by the time you've taken a course, especially now, it's already update. It's not, it's not personalized to the learner. It doesn't understand me. It doesn't understand the work that I do, the organization, right? All of the, the context that, so the fact that like you mentioned just at the end there, you're able to now create a personalized experience, even just if it's simple, using the bot of like one, helping managers and leaders by having those nudges, because everyone could use a bit of help. I'm not going to remember every birthday, every, I'm not going to remember every anniversary, but two, from a learning experience, again, just having a nudge, just personalized to you, your function, your role, that actually takes me to something useful for me. I'm way more excited to go and do that rather than you just throw me into LinkedIn learning and say, good luck with the thousands of things. With the thousands of things, oh, cool. What am I going to do? Right? Like, and just expect people to still go in there, like, like, and we're all, and, and obviously let's not even get into how we measure that, because that was, you know, even today, it's just different. So yeah. And those unlocked hours, you mentioned for your team now, that you've got through answering the basic questions. These are a lot of the things for the longest time we've been talking about that are all just here. And it's not like, like last year, a lot of companies were like, just dabbling. And we were talking about now, it's like, this is the year where it's like, it's happened. You see, we're already using it. Like we're, we're failing fast. We have to, we have to be uncomfortable. HR in the past always was like, we need to have to be perfectly planned out and everything has to be, actually, nope, it's evolving. It's constant evolution, you know, constant, like agile, you know, you cannot be static at any moment as well. I'm having my team like start, like measure the time that you're doing things now, because we need to have like a then and now and we want to keep the metrics going. We want to make sure that we're demonstrating efficiency, time saved, all those things. So that we're really living and breathing the AI. And I don't like saying like AI, it's like more about efficiencies and workflows for me, because I think if I'm just doing that big label, people freeze. Well, one of the points you said that stood out to me was when you think AI, everyone goes technical, technical, technical, right? Whereas I am kind of 100% with you, it's the opposite. AI now basically democratizes that part. And the most important thing is the power skills, the human skills, the curiosity, the growth mindset, like the critical thinking, right? Like making space for all those things. Now you have a tool that can do the coding, it can do all the things in the past that we like, I mean, not all of it, let me just be, a big part of that, right? So it's actually the more technology and more advances, the more important the human, but like, no, I don't like the word soft skills because it's like we need to rebrand it power skills, we're gonna call it power skills. I got started from Josh Berson, the power skills become more important for our leaders, our managers, our employees, which is so interesting when you think about it, right? Because everyone's thinking the most of my friends talk about AI, that the initial reaction is technical, I can't do it, I don't understand it, I'm like, no, this is the opposite. It's like, you got an idea, you can just feed that and it can do the rest, right? So I'm with you, like it's now like developing more of those skills and education. I think also for leaders, they need to be able to demonstrate the curiosity and the growth mindset and all those things and encourage them in those team members that they have. And then they also actually need to be able to manage AI agents, which may be different capabilities, but they're going to need both in the future because they're not just going to just going to manage agents, they're not just going to manage people anymore, they need to evolve to have both. I think every team function, even moving individuals will now shift to becoming AI orchestrators. So like, you know, like, probably start off with Josh Berson as well, actually. Where did I get that from? I don't know where I got that one from, but that's true, even in our small business we have, I've got probably like six or seven agents that are doing different things for me on a day. And I'm orchestrating those. I like it, right? And then I check in now and again to make sure they're still doing what they're supposed to be doing, right? And I'm adding more and more and I'm like, like unlocking, like, I mean, we last year, I think we worked out, it freed up an entire day per week for me. Right. Of just stuff like scheduling podcasts, like replying after even like editing, we use AI and our editing process now to like remove OMS and ARS that the editors will take forever to, you know, it is just so much, right? But you also, I want to be clear to everyone, listen, though, you've got to be intentional about where you wear and how you use it. This is not about, because if you can throw AI into your current systems and processes, it's just going to scale terrible processes and make it worse or practice. I want to be clear on that part as well. So you can't just throw on AI and expect. We were looking at a process and I got the team to map the entire thing out on paper, end to end before we actually figured out what our workflow was going to look like. We're like, don't need that. Why is that there? And like we had really good critical conversations, like really questioning every step and every phase before we focused on creating the work. We did it the right way around, right? You're not choosing, you're looking at what is the problem we're trying to solve. You're reassessing how you currently solve it and you've cut out a lot of the stuff that you're like, oh, we don't really need that. Then you're going at, okay, what solution? Whereas right now you're getting a lot of people that are kind of this sort of new shiny object syndrome of AI, just feeling like they have the fear of missing, there's a sort of bit of fear of missing out of, you know, kind of keeping up and they're just trying to, they're working the other way around. And sometimes it means going back to the basics and fixing your foundation first and reassessing that and how does work actually get done? The work itself and then you're working, that's a longer process and people feel like, oh, I've got to keep up right now. But garbage in garbage out, right? If you, AI is only going to make that 10 times worse. If you scale it. I can't even imagine where we're going to be at the end of the year. What are some of the big goals and aspirations for you and the team this year? Yeah, I think we have three kind of main pillars. And on one of them last year, we, as I said, we built this kind of future of high performance, culture of high performance. And now we're focusing on the retention side of it. So enablement, growth, mobility, making sure that we are kind of transforming the remoter employee experience is what we're calling it. The second one is around operational excellence, automation and innovation. So that's really reducing the manual work, establishing like single sources of truth for everything, leveraging our AI and our tech to drive the efficiencies, more workflows, all of that. And then the last one is around ourselves. Because so often I think we forget about ourselves. So it's really about putting on our own oxygen masks, investing in the team's capability, bringing them along with us for the journey, you know, into the AI and the capability changes and the growth and the mindset and making sure that we're strengthening our ways of working. We just spent a few hours about three weeks ago building our people team charter on how we're committing to show up to each other across the 45 team members, how we are committing to engaging and kind of the,
[01:29:34:03 - 01:29:37:12]
I guess, the capabilities and the values that we hold. Recording stopped.
[01:29:38:13 - 01:32:52:02]
Yeah, sorry, that was just on zoom. So ignore that. Did you hear that as well? Yeah, that was weird. That's fine. We're good. That was just my AI being like, I'll stop him, but we haven't suffered the podcast. So that I love the fact by the way that you, you created that together. Because like, right, it's like, because you didn't, you don't have to bring people on the journey. Like, you know, like, like we co-created what this could, we've made a commitment to each other. And visa, you know, core skills and capabilities. No one's like, oh, I didn't realize I needed those skills. Like, it's like, this is, this is where we are. This is where we're going. And we're going to get very clear. Yeah. And the point that we're going to help invest to help get you on that journey with us, right? Where it did the clear message to be able to do that. Because you are right. We always, I say we like have whatever in HR, but we, we always put everyone else first. We do. Right. And we always keep talking about that analogy of oxygen mask and, but we know we don't do it. And, uh, we want to be really intentional this year. Yeah. Yeah. Because it, because like, it's easy to say, but then when things just get hetted, you just forget. You deprioritize yourself. Yeah. It's just like, and I even personally, it's something that, um, I'm working on because I, I used to make excuses in the past that like, Oh, I'm like not doing these things because I need to do it for the business or whatever. And, and, and, uh, even, even at home as a dad, as a, as a husband, I'll make these things. I'm doing it for you, babe. I'm doing it for Robin. And all of them needs to be the best version of my best husband, the best dad, the best CEO, the best leader, best friend. I've got to prioritize me first, which was a really strange thing. Yeah. And it's so hard to do because like, so I'm the breadwinner in my family. My husband is that he's more focused on stay at home. And, and, and that's really hard because I feel a lot of that guilt as a parent to not being there, but then you're balancing it with the needs of your family and the needs of the future of, you know, your own career and how the family will evolve together. And so it's a balance. Um, and then you also need your time for yourself. And so when I work full time during the week, I almost feel guilty about taking the time to do that. I'm like, well, I haven't seen them all week. So I need to be with them for the entire weekend. I mean, they might not even want to be with me, but I need to do it for the entire weekend, you know? And I, as my husband says, he's like, no one, you're putting that on yourself. Like nobody is saying anything, no one is saying anything, but you're putting it on yourself. I think everyone listening can relate to what we're saying right now. Um, but we always like, um, give ourselves a heart. We need to give ourselves grace sometimes, right? Because it's not like, yeah, because I have, um, put some systems in place now to help with that. So like, you know, the team will know between when I get home and, um, 8 PM, don't, don't contact me. Like, that's my time spent with Robin. And if we need to jump back online later, um, after Robin's, uh, put Robin to bed and, you know, I really cherish that moment now reading a book and just like being there. Obviously I can't always, cause I'm traveling for events and all that other stuff, but when I can, I make sure I'm there to the team. Now respect that's blocked out in my calendar.
[01:32:53:03 - 01:35:12:21]
You cannot choose time there. I love that. And actually in remote, all of the leadership team have children and families, so they can all relate to that and being working in a remote asynchronous environment enables more of that ability to disconnect and kind of work on whatever time works for you. Um, versus previous roles where I was just in back to back zooms until half eight at night. So it's completely different. It's given me definitely a bit more of a lease on life with my family and the connection there, which is great. But to your point, but to the opposite though, right? If you're not intentional, like you, it can go really quickly the other way. Cause then you can, cause then you can be always on. Yeah. So you do have to set boundaries, right? And that's where I, what I got wrong. And actually when your office is like right beside your kitchen, otherwise you're just like, you just like, and I, and that's what I did. And for me, my, you know, mental and physical health suffered pretty badly. Cause I was like, I just, it just never ended. I was walking through the front door straight into another room, straight back onto a computer or like, if I'm working from home, like I was like, okay, I need to set some guidelines and also by the way, to communicate that to the team, to give them permission because like, and just I've reached don't assume anything. That's one of my biggest mistakes as a leader is I assumed that they knew that they don't have to reply to an email at 9 PM or assume, don't assume anything, like very clear about what that, like you don't need to ask me to go to the doctors or that you have to reply to an email when I sent it, you know? Um, so those simple things go along. And I do try and do like schedule send in my slacks and stuff as well, especially doing something at night. It doesn't mean people should be getting that to ping up on their phone when they're watching their Netflix. Yeah. And especially now we've all got like a million apps. We've got email, but people are like, Chris, I'm like, where was it slack team email LinkedIn? Like, like, what, like, so like, where, where, where is that? Um, I went to an offsite last week and my CEO, he had the sub stack and he posted something around the only notifications that come up on his phone or from his wife. And I was like, oh, I, whenever you ping me the notification pops up, he's like, why? Like that's on you, not me. And I was like, you are so right. So I turned off all my notifications. Me too, by the way, I have none. I have none. So like my phone, it was freeing, I have to say everything to do.
[01:35:13:24 - 01:35:35:12]
Well, I haven't used it, but my coach bought me something. I should be using it where it's like when he comes through the front door, he has like this box and he puts his phone in it and it, and it basically removes any signal. So it's like a black box. I mean, it looks really cool. It looks like like a little nice, like you wouldn't even know what it was. It would work with my interior. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And then you can actually choose your colors and everything.
[01:35:36:12 - 01:36:55:02]
And he mainly uses it for like bed. So like, like if you set like between these hours and these hours, like you need, you put it in there and it locks. That's pretty cool. And right. There is a way of unlocking it, but it's a little bit, it takes a few steps so that it just stops you from like, we're all like, oh, you just put your hand over that even like you're watching TV, you just naturally just grab your phone and have a look. You're like, all right, stop doing it. Right. I need to start using that, but normally I'm pretty good now. I come in, just put the phone, because there's a difference between being in the house and being present. Yes, completely. So I'll be all, I'm here, but are you present? And I realized my wife, I said, I'm here. And my wife's like, no, but you're not present, Chris. Yeah. Like, so I was like, okay, I need to like, yeah, yeah, but it's, it's, it's true. Right. And everyone listening can understand that, right? There's a difference between being there and being there as well. So I had to learn that hard way. And even my coach, I've said this a million times on the podcast, he always reminds me a lot that Chris, no amount of success you have makes up for failure in the home. I mean, that's so true. Right. Like, cause if you say that, sure. Why? When you die around your grave, people aren't gonna be like, oh, she worked so hard. Yeah. That, that was always on those Zoom calls. He was dedicated.
[01:36:57:04 - 01:37:32:23]
It's so true. And that's the things of what Robin's going to remember the stories we tell and like, like I'm so excited now that she can read like, like, fundamentally and I'm like sitting there and she's reading books to me and I'm like, she doesn't even realize that she's helping me de-stress and unwind like, you know what I mean? Like, it's actually like therapy for me just to be like, oh my God, I just got off a call, which was insane to now being in a, in just a nice cool comfy bed with my daughter just reading me a book. I'm like, thank you for reading me a book. I really needed this book today, Robin. I still have. Oh, listen, I know I gotta let you go at some point, but
[01:37:34:00 - 01:37:45:21]
what, what, yeah, no, I love it. I really enjoyed the conversation with you. It's been super fun. I always end the show with the same question, which is, you know, for those HR leaders of tomorrow,
[01:37:47:00 - 01:39:22:11]
you know, what, what did you wish you knew that you know now that you wish you knew coming in? What would your advice speak to those CPOs? If even the role is even going to be called that, I know probably not. I think earlier in my career, I wish I had built more, been more curious about the business. I think I was halfway through my HRBP career when the world changed to strategic business partners and actually being curious about the business and building business acumen and understanding really just enhances your own confidence and also the trust that the leaders that you're coaching have in you. So it really enables you to speak up and be like a true business partner to the business. And the other one is say yes to every opportunity. When I was in Google, I had this, a manager and she was always in my ear going, you can do it, put your hand up. You can do it. Yes, you can. It just, somebody always giving me that confidence to try and to expose myself to something new. And I think saying yes to every opportunity, no matter how wild it might seem at the moment, or you don't see how it's going to connect to your broader experience or your future career, just say yes. And the opportunity and the impact of the work will stand to you. Yeah. You're going to feel, if it feels scary, if it feels uncomfortable, that's normally the direction you need to run towards. We use the words internally here, seek discomfort. I actually was going to create merch as well. So at one point it says seek discomfort because I feel like that's kind of always been the philosophy of me and Shane's
[01:39:23:12 - 01:39:58:12]
lives. Even when we were playing sports growing up together, Shane's next to a neighbor by then, co-founder says we've been together on the journey since like four, not that we started the company then, but we've done it since before. But I love that advice. And it's great that you had someone there to do that because a lot of us- And now I try to do that for other people, you know? Because no one's going to tap you on a shoulder and give you permission. You need to just go and take it and figure it out along the way. Just say yes. And you'll figure it out a lot. Like you got time, don't worry, to figure it out. But listen, I appreciate you coming on. Looking forward to catching up soon in person.
[01:39:59:20 - 01:40:17:23]
Wish you all the best. Vegas. I'll put it all on black, Chris. See what happens. So now everyone listening, there's no context. It just sounds like me and you are going to party in Vegas. Yeah, that's what we do. We're really busy. And every HR leader, we're going to party. Yeah. Because apparently that's where HR lives.
[01:40:18:24 - 01:40:22:15]
But don't worry, enjoy the rest of your day and I'll catch you soon. Thank you.
Barbara Matthews, Chief People Officer at Remote