I work at InMotion Hosting as the Recruitment and Community Engagement Manager. I mainly oversee staffing and recruiting efforts and find different ways the company can give back to our community through partnerships with non-profit organizations.

How big is it?

We’re a team of three - myself and two Recruiters.

Where are your teammates located?

One team member works remotely from Buffalo, NY and the other works from our Denver, CO office. I sit in the Virginia Beach, VA office.

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?

My team primarily fills our open staffing requests and everything included in that - research, posting, partner with the hiring managers, conduct and schedule interviews, coordinate events, provide feedback and start the on boarding process with new hires. 

I do all of those things as well. We split up the work by position so I help more with the more senior roles but also will assist the team where needed. Additionally, I focus on departmental tracking and act as the primary point of contact to organize events or donations to give back to the community.

Communication is really crucial, but can take on a lot of different forms. You have to stay in touch to understand what is going on with your team on a daily basis - as it relates to work but also what may be going on outside of work. We make sure we spend time in our meetings talking about non-work things so we can connect on different levels.

Keeping your team connected about things that are going on in the office that maybe aren’t “need-to-know” can help remote people feel included, too. Mentioning things written on the community dry erase board, who you saw at the coffee station, conference room preferences, etc. - really anything to fill in gaps that team members wouldn’t have if they were there in the office with you.‍

We have company-wide communication channels that are dedicated to culture. In our “IMH fun” channel, the HR team will have different prompts or questions to give people the opportunity to connect. One of my favorites was when they asked team members to email in their baby photos and then we were also guessing which photo was who in the channel. We also have channels celebrating recent promotions and letting everyone know of new positions they can apply for. 

Since we have a hybrid team of remote and in-office staff, we issue a weekly “IMH Insider” to let people know what is happening in the company that may be outside of their normal scope.

Short answer is - I ask them. People have different things that motivate them and different aspects of the role that they prefer. I try to assign projects so they get more exposure to areas they want to continue to develop in or get to do more of what they enjoy doing. 

Our company also has stay interviews where we survey team members about why they continue to choose InMotion Hosting, an employee suggestion program, and quarterly performance evaluations where leaders can make sure we stay aligned with our team’s needs in addition to the normal day-to-day and weekly touch basis.

My team has a daily standup where we each go over what we’re working on for the day and if we have any obstacles. That’s been really helpful when balancing the workload in a remote team.

It can take a conscious effort on busy days to check in with the team. Even if there isn’t anything specific I need to check in about, I don’t want to go a day without talking to them. Ideally, that’s done over the phone or in a video meeting instead of just a message.

Prior to the pandemic, I would travel to them or have them come to the office so we had a week of face-to-face time. When we are together we’ll go out for dinner or something after work to connect. 

Over the last couple years, with travel limited and to keep everyone safe, it's been more virtual events. We like playing games virtually but also just talking about upcoming events in each other's lives. Sometimes major events like weddings, new babies, shows we’re obsessed with or failed recipes we tried over the weekend.

We’ve done “Lunch and Learns” too. A team member will pick a topic they’re interested in, research, and create a presentation to teach the team more in that area so we can grow together.

We’ve tried trivia games, virtual racing, and crosswords as a team. 

The most popular game we play is Scavenger Hunt. Someone, let’s call them the ‘judge’, will get a random object from somewhere in the house. This is typically the most random or unique thing they can find. The players then have a few minutes to grab something that best matches the judge’s item. The goal is to find a perfect match but that has proven to be nearly impossible. When everyone has their “best match” we all come back and it's time for the players to pitch how their item most closely resembles the original (i.e. they’re both made of metal or they’re both used for cleaning). The judge then gets to determine how many points each player gets for their ability to match the original item. Then after that round, the role of judge rotates to another person so everyone gets a turn. 

We crack each other up trying to be creative with our pitches but it also gives us insight to each other that we may not have had otherwise. For example, would you guess someone on your team has an authentic metal knight’s helmet in their home or a book of poems they wrote as a kid?

• If you were to compete in the olympics (summer or winter games) what sport would you play and why?
• What is something you’re celebrating or recently celebrated?
• What’s your ideal road trip?
  

We use Slack as our internal messaging platform but also rely heavily on video meetings. We can video through Slack or through Google Meets typically. We’ve also used team Trello boards in the past for larger projects.

Our company provided a Fred Pryor membership along with a structured Leadership Academy they created. There were a lot of in-person and online resources there that were extremely helpful. LinkedIn learning is what I’m using currently.