Building a 100% Remote Company

At AmplifyMD we chose to be 100% remote, even before the pandemic. It was a very deliberate decision for several reasons.

First off, we wanted to hire the best talent, regardless of location, from physicians to our administrative team. Opening up talent searches across the country helped us achieve that – and in record time. We also wanted to give people the opportunity to live and work how they wanted, to maximize job satisfaction and employee retention.

Everyone has a different working style to deliver their best possible product. We don’t care if they’re at their cabin in the woods, or coding away late at night. At the end of the day, we just want our employees to produce their highest quality of work in the most efficient way possible. As we saw recently in Forbes, teleworkers are an average of 35-40% more productive than office workers. We wanted to give our people the trust and flexibility to choose the environment that lets them shine. 

However, there is a fine balance to maintain with a 100% remote workforce. The freedom to work at home is valuable, but you don’t want it to become isolating – or lead to internal communication and collaboration breakdowns. At the same time, you don’t want to take away the benefits of being remote by scheduling every minute of the day with meetings.

Here’s how we approach it:

1. A standing virtual biweekly all-hands meeting, including our international development team.  Here we talk about case studies to celebrate wins from the patients and providers, introduce new clients, and provide regular feature/product updates, so everyone is in sync with what we are doing, and why. This helps everyone get and stay excited about the way we’re revolutionizing how care is delivered virtually–critical for both employee recruitment and retention.

2. A weekly virtual leadership meeting for department heads and the executive team, to make sure all teams are in the loop on what everyone is working on, what’s coming down the pike, and where we’ll be looking for more cross-functional input from various teams in the near future

3. Short weekly virtual individual/departmental meetings, as well as monthly or quarterly in-person get-togethers and conferences, to make sure the lines of communication are wide open, employees and teams are held accountable on deliverables, successes and challenges are shared in a timely fashion, and we’re able to nimbly and immediately respond to anything an employee, client, or provider needs.

4. Biannual in-person company-wide offsites for intensive group planning sessions within departments as well as broader all-company meetings to facilitate cross-departmental learning. And, of course, bonding through cheesy icebreakers, games, treasure hunts, and breaking bread together. It’s a great opportunity to have fun and get to know each other better.

5. Slack channels are a great communication tool for remote workers, but we’ve found it’s also a great place to connect our staff with shared interests, celebrations, and tips.

Using the above, we are able to maintain the benefits of a connected workforce while staying 100% remote, and still give each employee the maximum flexibility over their work schedule. 

We are constantly on the hunt for the best people to help us innovate and grow (check out our openings). Being a remote workplace, we can look to every corner of the country to keep bringing them on. And along the way, we’ve seen again and again that what is best for our employees often ends up being best for the company overall.

Whether your company is remote, hybrid, or in-person, if you can be equally intentional about building and maintaining relationships and communications within and across teams, you too  can give your employees the flexibility they want without sacrificing any of the collaboration benefits we as employers value so highly.