Warning: (Not so humble) Brag Alert
There are a few more trophies on the mantle here at Rustici. We just landed the #1 spot on Middle Tennessee’s Top Workplaces list for small businesses, hosted by The Tennessean. Based solely on employee survey responses, it’s one of the awards that we value the most. And we were recently honored by the Nashville Business Journalist as a finalist at their Best in Business awards for our success in service, growth, innovation and strategy. Given how much our workplace has changed over the past year, these acknowledgements are even more gratifying.
We’re more distributed than ever before here at Rustici. In the last 12 months, we’ve brought on 11 new people and they all work from home offices. And we’ve seen four of our local office mates move out of state. Selfishly, every time we throw a bon voyage party it makes me a little sad. That is one less person I’ll see around the office every day, which means one less pong player, crokinole flicker or burrito train dice roller. On the flip side, it’s exciting to see people try new things and be able to support the next adventure ahead for them and their families.
It’s not where you work, but how you work that matters
On any given day you’ll now find more of us working out of a home office (some nearby, some across the country) than in our Franklin,TN, office. As the leader of a company that defines itself by office culture as much as our software products, that’s a pretty scary stat to ponder. But we’ve embraced this idea rather than fear it.
Rethinking remote work
We’ve all had to redefine how we describe our working environment and ‘remote’ became the default term for letting people work in places other than a defined office location. If you really think about it, that’s a terrible word to use. Remote implies distance and seclusion. Do I want to travel to a remote island for a vacation to disconnect from work and recharge? Absolutely. Do I want to work in a remote, siloed environment? Absolutely not.
Having people in many places means adapting in so many ways. Making sure everyone is included in conversations and decisions means being more intentional with our interactions and adjusting how we meet and communicate. The trick is to make sure that the only thing that is remote is where the work happens, and not the experience of doing the work.
We rely heavily on tools like Slack and Google Meet to share updates and have those face to face conversations that just happened organically when we all shared the same working space. Our office manager, Liz, spends more time making magical things happen, supporting our team mates across 13 states.
So rather than viewing remote offices as a threat, we’ve embraced it. Giving people the freedom to decide where to work that best fits their lifestyle matters more to us. We’re willing to make that additional effort and investment because we have always trusted our employees to make smart decisions for how they work. Adding in a layer of where that work gets done is simply an extension of that trust.
Our customers are winning too
While we are proud of winning the Top Workplaces award, we also celebrate when our customers top the charts. Every year, we see our customers consistently dominate the various industry awards and “Top LMS/Training Company/Digital Learning” lists. We feel honored when our customers are honored and are grateful for the opportunity to support them.
