{"id":46489,"date":"2021-02-04T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/us\/en\/blog\/?p=46489"},"modified":"2024-07-25T22:13:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T05:13:31","slug":"smart-ways-to-integrate-new-and-remote-high-tech-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/us\/en\/blog\/smart-ways-to-integrate-new-and-remote-high-tech-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart ways to integrate new and remote high-tech workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine what it\u2019s like these days for new hires finding their way in tech companies. Company culture is something they pick up on during videoconferences, interacting with people they haven\u2019t met in person and might not get to know for a long while. And in some cases, they may learn that the nearest office is transforming into a meeting place rather than a traditional workplace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Making company culture work remotely<\/b><\/h2>\n

Those challenges place an extra burden on high-tech employers to make their company culture work remotely. Theta Lake is an aggressive example of this. It is disrupting legacy compliance technology vendors, providing AI-based compliance and security tools for unified communications, requiring them to work hard to properly integrate its new hires\u2014maybe twice as hard as most\u2014because its team has literally doubled in size in the past six months.<\/span><\/p>\n

Compounding that integration effort, Theta Lake employees are distributed across multiple countries. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of key strategic hires we\u2019ve brought on that we don\u2019t ever get to meet and develop rapport with, which makes it increasingly difficult,\u201d said Anthony Cresci, Theta Lake\u2019s VP of Business Development & Operations. For the foreseeable future, he knows it won\u2019t be possible to take a new hire out and bond over dinner.\u00a0 We asked Cresci to please share with us how Theta Lake is bridging this divide for both the new hires and the company itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Building team cohesion<\/b><\/h2>\n

Theta Lake has always had a \u201cvideo-first,\u201d culture, explained Cresci, but it also does a lot of messaging instead of email. Like many firms, Theta Lake typically holds an \u201call-hands\u201d meeting to update the entire company on the latest internal news. Executives encourage team members to share their activities, review projects or processes, or highlight new features capabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal, Cresci said, is to drive more personal connections, which might not otherwise happen organically. Theta Lake wants employees to feel more comfortable approaching someone they haven\u2019t met in person. As a result, the company is developing ways to increase camaraderie:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  • It creates activities with break-out groups where \u201cthere\u2019s some sort of competition\u201d like a quiz or a collaboration<\/span><\/li>\n
  • It has monthly activities which have included \u201cmaking a drink\u201d or \u201chaving a coffee break\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  • It\u2019s considering mandating employee participation in 1:1 or small group \u201cmeetings with people who might not otherwise connect\u201d\u2014such as sales and engineering workers sharing what they\u2019re working on<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Some experiments work better than others. For instance, they tried a session where employees were given a virtual tour of a physical farm and introduced to the animals. \u201cPersonally, I thought other activities generated more participation from all employees,\u201d said Cresci, but added, \u201cIt was a fun experience, but there wasn\u2019t a lot of communication between employees.\u201d The upshot is that getting to know your coworkers engenders team cohesion.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Compliance matters<\/b><\/h2>\n

    Of course, working from anywhere isn\u2019t all fun and games, and Theta Lake knows this better than most high-tech companies. That\u2019s because it\u2019s in the compliance business\u2014focused on unified communications. It provides tools that integrate with RingCentral Office and other platforms to perform capture, eDiscovery, data loss protection, and supervision of video meetings, audio recordings, and collaboration chat. Theta Lake analyzes massive volumes of unified communications to automate the detection of compliance and data leakage risks, enabling compliance and risk teams to be more proactive and efficient in supervising communications.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Prior to the pandemic, companies in regulated industries were archiving email and other corporate documents, but many weren\u2019t establishing compliance and security controls for chat or video conferences\u2014which Cresci calls \u201cthe way people communicate today.\u201d The advent of unified communications platforms has \u201calso created richer ways for people to share information,\u201d often asynchronously.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Unfortunately, legacy compliance stacks are unable to process and analyze these richer forms of communication, added Cresci, which has resulted in \u201cdata leakage, [unauthorized] sharing, and employee misconduct.\u201d Lacking more modern compliance and security controls, Cresci said some companies have limited how their employees can interact remotely by turning off information-sharing features, but that should not be the approach, as it negatively impacts user experiences. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Most of the compliance monitoring that happens today is around providing visibility and even remediation in a post-review scenario, rather than in real-time, but he said that with \u201cbots\u201d and new streaming APIs the ability for compliance functionality to actively participate in meetings then can not only provide tools that coach users on how to reduce risk use, but also move towards more real-time response for \u201cdata leakage\u201d or other compliance issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

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    \n\t\t\tEnabling work from anywhere\t\t<\/div>\n
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    \n\t\t\t\t\tUnified communications gives teams everything they need to collaborate, wherever they work.\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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