Hear from Flexe CEO, Karl Siebrecht, on our commitment to a remote-first work model.
Key Takeaways
- Like many companies, Flexe moved to a remote work environment when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Seattle.
- But unlike most companies, Flexe made a remote-first model part of our long-term strategy. Now, we have employees working remotely across the U.S.
- Flexe always aims to hire top-tier, diverse talent. And we’re dedicated to providing our new hires a world-class onboarding experience, ensuring they’re confident from day one.
Featured in this video:
Karl Siebrect - CEO & Co-Founder
The following transcript has been revised for brevity and clarity.
Karl Siebrect, Flexe CEO & Co-Founder
COVID-19 changed everything about how we live and how we work.
On March 4, 2020, I sent an all-company email that said, based on King County guidance, we will work from home, effective immediately.
So, we all know what happened after that.
After a couple of weeks of continued uncertainty, we froze all hiring because we had no idea what the market conditions would be and what the future of our company, let alone the economy, looked like.
Happily, we quickly discovered that our customers needed Flexe more than ever. Our prospects needed flexible logistics solutions to respond to all the uncertainty and chaos in supply chains from the pandemic.
Our customers needed Flexe more than ever. Our prospects needed flexible logistics solutions to respond to all the uncertainty and chaos in supply chains from the pandemic.
So we knew we had to turn on our hiring engine again. The problem was how can we continue to hire world-class talent in a fully remote environment? We also stepped back to think more strategically about what this remote work environment meant for Flexe.
We have very high hiring standards. We always want to attract truly world-class talent. We also want to attract diverse backgrounds, diverse professional experiences, diverse life experiences and diverse perspectives.
Was this an opportunity to expand our talent pool and expand our reach into a broader set of communities? And if we did this at scale, could we actually build a better company?
We also want to attract diverse backgrounds, diverse professional experiences, diverse life experiences and diverse perspectives.
Was this an opportunity to expand our talent pool and expand our reach into a broader set of communities? And if we did this at scale, could we actually build a better company?
So, we decided to lean in fully on the hybrid work model with a work-from-home-first mentality. Of course, we didn't know how long this pandemic would continue, so we had to plan for an indefinite future where we couldn't all be together.
But we leaned in further and made this strategic commitment to say we want to be hybrid permanently. So, let's figure out how to do that in a world-class fashion. Let's figure out how to attract, retain, nurture, and grow talent.
I want all of our people to one day look back on their experience at Flexe and say, “That's the best job I ever had.”
I'm super proud of what our team has built. Today we have hundreds of people. We've hired more people outside Seattle than in Seattle in the last eighteen months. We have centers of gravity, population-wise, in Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago, to name a few. We continue to get feedback that our onboarding experience is truly great. It helps people get ramped up quickly so they can feel confident that they can reach their potential, find growth opportunities quickly, do great things and deliver great results for our customers and our company.
Ultimately, I want all of our people to one day look back on their experience at Flexe and say, “That's the best job I ever had.”
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