Building the future of work at Andela

Andela’s mission is to connect brilliance with opportunity. I believe the key to achieving that is through excellence in remote work. I joined Andela to lead workplace design and remote experience, but there was something else pulling me in: a once-in-a-career opportunity to create a workplace revolution.

The future of work will be defined by the future of living. While much of the world fixates on the where we’ll be busy solving the how.

Business today is inherently global. When you build systems and cultures that decouple business results from linear time, you unlock efficiency, productivity, and quality of life improvements that are not attainable in the old, rigid, time-bound model of work.

The workplace’s “fax machine moment”

In 2023 and beyond, every company is a remote company. Teams work everywhere, partners are globally distributed, and even folks wrapped up in return-to-office mandates have laptops and phones that enable progress outside of a specific physical space. Unless a CEO mandates that everyone return to an office and use a tethered desktop PC, elements of remote work will influence an organization’s culture and workflow. The only choice is whether or not to embrace the change and lean into the opportunity.

• According to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work report, nearly 80% of teams will identify as hybrid or remote in 2023.
• Per Gartner: Employees who operate in human-centric work models – where they are seen as people, not just resources – are 3.8 times more likely to be high performing. Human-centric work models encompass three guiding pillars: flexible work experiences, intentional collaboration, and empathy-based management.
• Research from AT&T shows that the hybrid remote workplace model is expected to grow from 42% (2021) to 81% (2024).

We’re witnessing the “fax machine moment” of the workplace. 20+ years ago, despite having email, some recruiting teams doubled-down on the fax machine. That decision did not age well. The most progressive organizations may still be experimenting with where they’ll settle on the remote spectrum (which includes hybrid, all-remote, and incarnations in between), but they aren’t looking to pull the past back into the present.

Remote work is not a perk. It’s a product.

Prior to joining Andela, I spent nearly four years architecting and codifying how we worked at GitLab. The team made history by becoming the first all-remote organization to go public in October 2021, proving that remote work was a formidable operating model when treated as a strategic initiative rather than an HR policy. With over 1,600 team members in more than 60 countries, I saw the level of infrastructure needed to ensure tight collaboration and a sense of belonging with no physical headquarters to fall back on.

The present state of remote work is fixated on location or geographic independence. True leverage is found in the next state — time independence. The world is now filled with contributors and leaders desperate to upskill themselves to be ready for the future of work. Tomorrow’s leaders won’t just assess technical skills but skills like low-context communication, asynchronous comfortability, and documentation.

We envision a world where the most talented people can build a career commensurate with their ability – not their race, gender, or geography. We exist to unlock human potential at scale. The unlock is right in front of us, and it’s called remote work — treated as a product, not a perk.

Connecting brilliance with opportunity

At Andela, we leverage systems and documented workflows to build a world-class remote operation of more than 400 team members in 20+ countries. This requires a culture of adaptability — one that embraces iteration. Andela is uniquely positioned to marry remote work fluency with engineering excellence around the globe. We’ll enable progress through a flywheel motion.

I savor the privilege of working remotely. I’ve shared memories with my family in over 50 countries and have celebrated milestones with colleagues all over the world.

My wife and I experienced the beautiful and transformative journey of adoption in large part due to workplace flexibility. I’ve met countless peers and colleagues who have experienced a personal renaissance through remote work, finding themselves more engaged with work, family, and community.

I joined Andela to enable more stories like these. Andela is positioned to be of service to everyone — from startups to the world’s largest enterprises — in creating a remote infrastructure that works. I couldn’t be more excited to help enable precisely that.