Intention & Impact: Creating Employee Connection in Remote Teams With Justin Tsatsa

What does Justin Tsatsa recommend for engagement and employee connection in remote teams? Quality over quantity.

When he joined Fetch, one of the globe’s top shopping rewards apps, he had no idea we were mere weeks from a pandemic. Going remote-first and scaling exponentially transformed him from office manager to culture champion practically overnight. Tsatsa dove headfirst into a lot of the virtual team-building stuff you’ve probably tried. Today, he finds that more carefully selected impact events work best for his high-energy team, as well as recognition tools like HeyTaco.

“It just came down to the content that we put out and how impactful and meaningful the event is, not the amount that we're trying to do. It's okay if participation is low. It gives you a place to start.” – Justin Tsatsa

Key Takeaways

• Be wary of issues like Zoom fatigue and personal time when planning team-building events.
• Adding purpose and meaning to in-person and virtual events gives them more impact.
• Growth opportunities add value to teams, even if it empowers some people to move on to new roles.
• Keeping events voluntary is part of showing your team you trust them.
• Experimentation is important for company culture, even if it means circling back to something that didn’t work before.

Timestamps

1:14 Joining Fetch & Going Remote

2:43 The Trial & Error of Remote Team Building

4:32 Virtual Socializing & Events With Impact

6:12 The Team Meetup Playbook

10:37  Communication, Feedback, & Remote Operations

12:37 On Voluntary Activities & Trusting Your People

14:02 Sustaining Culture & Fostering Growth

18:05 Scaling a Remote Team: Justin’s Recipes for Success

25:32 Five Tacos to Share

Key Topics Discussed

Amazing Teams, Una Japundza, Justin Tsatsa, employee connection, remote teams, team building, company culture

Mentions

Website: https://fetch.com/

Transcript

Una Japundza

Welcome, everyone, to the Amazing Teams podcast, where we talk about all things that make work better. Today I'm joined by Justin Tsatsa, Associate Director of Workplace Operations at Fetch. Justin joined Fetch in January of 2020, basically right before every company on earth had to figure out remote work overnight.

He's spent the last six years helping the company grow from a tight knit team to over 800 employees spread across offices and home offices nationwide. He thinks and works a lot on how to keep the culture real when you can’t rely on hallway conversations. And he has great insights and lessons learned on what works and what doesn't. Justin, thank you for being here. 

Justin Tsatsa

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Una Japundza

Justin, tell me more about Fetch. How did you end up there and what do you guys do at Fetch?

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, so thank you for the introduction. A little bit about me, additionally. I came from a corporate real estate firm job and I was just looking to go from an admin role to something a little bit more. So I saw a job opening at Fetch for Chicago office manager, decided to apply, got it, and that was right before the pandemic. So I was like, cool, do what you can to the office, and then all of a sudden the pandemic hit and I was like, this is fantastic.

So fortunately I was able to stay on, to have a job when, you know, the office wasn't operational. But during the middle of that we did a Chicago office move. So I had to do a full office relocation during the pandemic, which was fun and challenging while no one was going in. So everyone left thinking that they'll be back in two weeks to box up all their stuff. Nope, that didn't happen. So I had to move everything. It was also weird because we still had movers come and everything like that. It was a strange time, as everyone knows. Anyway.

But what I do at Fetch. So, I started as the Chicago office manager. Now I am helping with our remote operations. What that means is just making sure our remote teams still feel connected to everything while also still helping to support our Director of Workplace Operations who now oversees all of our office operations. So when I started, we had Chicago and Madison as our main office hubs. No one, I think there were maybe actually like five people that worked remotely, but everyone else was in office.

Once the pandemic hit, we then started hiring in all states for the most part. And that just opened up Fetch's horizons to all this talent pool that we could then tap into. That just changed the way that Fetch kind of operated. We were fully in office, then we became pretty much fully remote with office hubs and we've grown our office hubs since then. I don't think I even answered what Fetch does. Is that what you asked?

I just went on the most like random tangent, so there you go.

Una Japundza

No, that was not a random tangent. I like your story of like, how did you end up there? And obviously, remote operations were not something that was needed at Fetch when you started. So the pandemic created an opportunity for you to do what you do today. But yeah, tell me more about Fetch and then from like what, 170 people when you joined to over 800 in the last six years?

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah. So Fetch is a mobile app. Scan your receipts, get rewards. We play certain games on our app with our app partners and get points for the games that you play as well. We have a plugin for web browser, so whenever you shop online you can get points and you turn all those points in for gift cards. So that's as simple as that. I promise you that there's no catch to it.

Una Japundza

It sounds like during the pandemic people were spending a lot of time on their phones, right? And probably what helped balloon the company into what it is today and continue to grow.

Justin Tsatsa

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you would buy stuff online 'cause you weren't doing anything else and turn in those receipts and then get gift cards and buy more things. We love to see it.

Una Japundza

So when you know, like literally two months after you joined the company, you're like, Okay, I haven't even had the chance to meet everyone, but now I have to be behind a screen. What did you–what were you in charge of creating? Engagement opportunities and helping people feel connected, or was that someone else's role?

Justin Tsatsa

I don't think it was really anyone's role at the time, right? It was just, it was like people that were in charge of the office. It was me and one other person who was in charge of a Madison office and our manager. And it was basically just like, All right, let's try to figure this out, I guess. So at the time it was, figure out what return to office means. Then it became, okay, we may not even be returning to office. So

Una Japundza

That's true. That's a good point.

Justin Tsatsa

Yes, how do we stay connected? How do we build that engagement? That's kind of what my role shifted into a little bit in terms of that. It was, you know, what games are out there, what can we do? Besides like happy hours, all that fun stuff, because we've done that too.

Una Japundza

So what did you start with? Like what are all the things, I'm sure you've tried a billion things. What are all the things that you tried? Or some of them, at least.

Justin Tsatsa

Absolutely. You know, we did the main ones. We did happy hours, we did virtual coffee chats, we tried a co-working thing where basically you would just open your Zoom and people could come in there and work at the same time. No one really joined that. We did trivia, we've done some more like ongoing things, and these are the things that would have kind of stuck with us.

We hired a wellness director at the time as well. She created a wellness bingo that we still do to this day. That is, you know, go out, get some steps in, cross off a square, give someone a shout out in one of the channels, maybe someone that you don't usually shout out, cross off a square. So that was something that created a little like engagement that continued to go on. It wasn't just joining a video call.

Una Japundza

When you were preparing, you were saying, you know, some of this stuff just became a lot, right? It was kind of an overcorrection. We went from like no time together to, let's throw all these opportunities at the wall and see what sticks. Was it too much? Was it just the same people joining? What was the result that you were not happy with?

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, it was more of that, we started to learn that employees were getting burnt out from Zoom fatigue, from Slack fatigue. And here we were trying to throw more on top of that too, of like, okay, yeah, take some time off from the work you're doing and come chat with employees, your other employees on Zoom still. So it just became a lot of just fatigue in general. We were doing things that were just more and more of the things that people were already doing.

As awkward as it is, you know, you would get online and just try to chat with people and there wasn't any structure. It was just, grab a coffee, grab a glass of wine, whatever, and just come and talk. By that point of the day, everyone was like, I don't want to do this. So we did those. We did the happy hours. Then our ERGs would offer tons of events for any sort of festivity or celebration that they may be celebrating. So on top of the events that we were doing, they would host events.

We'd have town halls, we would have impact events, plus all the regular meetings that your teams were doing. It just became so much that we were offering. Yeah, so many things. And so it just became like, no one had time to do any of it. So it was like, okay, how do we scale this back a little bit? Because we were trying to offer so many things to try to get people to show up. And to your question before, yeah, it was kind of the same people.

Una Japundza

Just hearing you talk about it sounds exhausting.

Justin Tsatsa

There were those people that actually really enjoyed that virtual socializing, which is very different from in-office socializing, right? It became a matter of, how do we tailor that into something that's more meaningful and a little bit more impactful? It wasn't about the quantity of things that we offered, it was the quality of things that we offered.

So our ERGs shifted and they would do fewer events, but the events that they put on would be a little bit more impactful. They would think through it a little bit more. They would have maybe some more like, I don't want to say gifts, but things that they would send out to employees to participate with.

[One] example is our Pride ERG would offer events throughout the year. We would try to figure out, okay, how do we scale back that and then maybe do some that are a little bit more meaningful. So now we put our resources and we actually participate in the Chicago Pride Parade. So things like that would make it a little bit more impactful versus just doing some coffee chats and stuff here or there.

That was a very, again, a long winded roundabout answer to that.

Una Japundza

You're good. That makes perfect sense. What did you–it's like okay, what is the new now, you mentioned the pandemic, it feels like it was 20 years ago, which kinda it was, right? So what does the new normal look like? What do you guys do daily, monthly, quarterly, annually to kind of provide these engagement opportunities and team building opportunities to people?

Justin Tsatsa

Mm. Right.

Yeah, it still kind of varies. You know, it's still an ongoing learning process for us too on what's working, what's not. But we have a monthly town hall that everybody is expected to attend. Also from that though, we have one of our remote specialists who does a town hall trivia. So you kind of have to pay attention throughout town hall and then at the end of it she'll ask a couple of questions and then people will chime in with what the answers are. Little things to keep people participating and engaged in that.

Una Japundza

What do they get? What do they get for getting the answers there?

Justin Tsatsa

It totally varies. You could get a gift card, tacos, obviously. Obviously. And then sometimes we'll send out actual little treats or something there. We've even done merch as well, like specific merch for it. So, totally up for grabs on what that might be, but that one's fun. Our ERGs will do maybe one or two events a quarter to help people get engaged and remain connected with the opportunities and stuff that’s out there. That's not the word I want, but you know what I mean.

Then, other things that we're doing are in office happy hours. We tried to mimic our in office happy hours by just hosting a virtual happy hour, which was again, like I said, come in, get your own cocktail, coffee, water, whatever it is to drink, and just chat.

But we found that you need a little bit of structure to it. You don't need structure when you're in the office. People naturally mingle. People naturally go in. Just yesterday we had our happy hour. People got a board game and just started playing a board game. It's difficult when you're trying to mimic that on Zoom. So that became one of our challenges that we learned early on too, like I said, is to not mimic what we're doing in the office. Virtual, it's okay that it's different than what we're doing in the office.

We may still offer something around the same time, but we need to know that it's not going to be the same experience that you would get in the office. And that's okay. We're still doing something that would allow people to be connected. What other things do we do?

Una Japundza

In person? Like you 'cause obviously you still have a few offices, like Chicago and Madison are still the main offices and obviously a lot more people are now remote. Do people get together in person? Like do you have a company off site every year? Or do people get together like hey, you get together with your department or your team and you have budget for it? How does that work?

Justin Tsatsa

Great question.

Yeah, so we do offer team meetups. We haven't done a full company meetup now that we're at 800, but it's something that we would love to do. So who knows what the future may hold there? But as far as teams going, we encourage teams to meet up as frequently as they need with a specific outcome or business purpose obviously tied to it. It's not like, hey, let's meet up so we can all just go and do like, the Chicago architecture tour, as exciting as those are.

But that can be tied into something if it's like, hey, we're releasing a new pack or we're doing a product launch or we're doing a sales meetup. Things like that where we do encourage teams to get together. During that time, we work to get the most out of it as they can while having it still, like I said, be meaningful, have specific outcomes, and also people need to leave feeling enthusiastic and excited and not leaving an off-site feeling tired, which can sometimes happen because you're just trying to cram in so much.

We've also learned too that if you're getting together in person, hey, that's not the time to do slide deck after slide deck after slide deck. Yeah, you do that remote. This is the time to encourage collaboration, brainstorming, small groups, different activities, team building things that you can't necessarily do virtually or won't get the same effect doing virtually. So to answer your question, yes, we do offer a lot of opportunities for our teams to get together in some of our office hubs.

Una Japundza

I know you're putting together, for lack of a better word, because I don't know what you're gonna call it, but like something like an in-person meeting playbook, how to get the most out of meetings. Because it sounds like–I mean, there's a lot of meetups going on and you and your teammates cannot be there at every single one helping the organizer and facilitator making sure it goes well. Besides what you just mentioned, what else goes or is going to go in that playbook that you're like, hey, if you're creating an in-person meetup, here are the essentials, probably coffee to start with? You gotta have coffee.

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah. Yeah, it's everything you can think of. You know, we're trying to put together kind of like what a rough agenda could look like for people too, like content, have a break, build in a break. People need to know when the breaks are. Have the breaks be a little bit longer than five minutes. So if people need to check Slack, emails, things that people just don't necessarily think about. You know, it's everything from like, how do you want the rooms set up? You know, do you need food catered?

How many people are coming in? Do you have external speakers? We encourage external speakers or in-person speakers so that way, the people don't get together and watch someone on a Zoom call. It's everything we can help you with–activities to do, team building things, restaurants to go to, hotels to book, travel, all of that stuff is just kind of put into one so that it's like a one-stop place. Hey, we want to do a meetup. Where do I start? It's right here. Everything's spelled out for what I need.

It's just kind of like, check box, go through the list.

Una Japundza

How are you getting that to people? The execution stuff like intranet, where can people find these resources? I imagine, you know, that can also be hard. It's a distribution.

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, absolutely. Distribution communication, you know, there's so many different channels and that's one of our fun challenges as well, trying to find a central source of truth for all of our information. We do have a people portal that employees know to go to that has information on travel and things like that. So once we get this finalized, hopefully it'll be a little bit more interactive and that can live on our people portal. So it'll be a little bit more of a click your way through it type of thing.

Another thing is we do our manager forums. So hopefully during that time too, we can take five minutes, 10 minutes, explain what we're trying to accomplish with this meetup guide. That way, we can start having communication go top down and managers can communicate it to teams and everything as well. So, trying to find various different ways that we can get the communication channels all filled.

Una Japundza

And I'm sure you'll still get a question every so often, a DM or Slack saying, Hey Justin, where's that thing that you talked about?

Justin Tsatsa

Absolutely.

Hey, but you know what, at the same time, it’s like a little bit of job security. Like, people still need me. You know what? People are still gonna ask me questions, fantastic. I will put together as much information as I can, but I will still answer your questions.

Una Japundza

Well, and it's good that they ask. I'm sure a lot of people will just organize a meetup and their team is gonna leave exhausted and then they'll be like, I should have looked at that guide. So if they're asking ahead of time, that's always a good sign.

Justin Tsatsa

Right. I'll also say too, going back to what we wanted to put in that, one big thing after it is feedback. So there's gonna be like a survey that will facilitate. So that way managers, once it's over, they can continue on with the work that they need to do and we can help facilitate the survey so that we can get appropriate feedback. You know, we can measure things, we can get some specific metrics, outcomes and everything to just keep continuing to improve.

Una Japundza

How big is the team of like workplace operations, in employee engagement, remote operations? How many people are you working with on these efforts?

Justin Tsatsa

We have gosh, one, two, three, four, five. There are five of us. Is that true? My gosh. Well, I should know this off the top of my head, but we've grown, so that's great. We've got Madison, Birmingham, Chicago, hopefully New York, and then our remote. So six. And myself, seven, and our director, eight.

Una Japundza

Gotcha. So each of you are supporting a different geography, remote, Chicago, Madison, and whatnot.

Justin Tsatsa

Yes, but very much collaborative 'cause it's all jumping in and helping as necessary.

Una Japundza

Well, and you don't want to have a different philosophy for your Chicago office than remote, right? In terms of how you talk to people. What is one thing that has changed about your remote operations as you've grown? Are there things that you used to do, that just don't work anymore and that you had to change? It worked for remote work first, at the time. It could be something, I'm just curious, like maybe the intranet platform you use was nice when you had 200 people, but now it's ridiculous.

I don't know, things like that you're like, hey, yeah, it was great for a remote company when you're 200 people, but at 800 it just breaks.

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, Jira used to pretty much be our entire thing. That used to be where we'd have all of our office information. It would be where we had our handbook and everything like that. And then we built out our people portal, which transferred a lot of that information. That came with a learning curve for people as well. Then our people portal has just evolved so much as well over the time in terms of figuring out what's the best way to put things.

What just makes sense–we have so much information on there, too. Even trying to build out a search, even with AI, trying to build out search functions so people can easily find information is still a little challenging. So we put together different tool kits, which are basically just little tables of contents like, okay, I have questions about benefits. Here's a benefit section, but I also need, you know, employment verification or something. And there would be like a direct link on how to go to that, too. So helping it be a little bit more self-explanatory.

I will say Slack has released the Slack bot, which has been a lot helpful or really helpful for people, 'cause they can just go in there and search it and it'll pull all the times people have asked the same question and it will show you where the information is.

Una Japundza

Nice. Yeah, I've definitely heard a lot of people love Slack bots.

Justin Tsatsa

It's great. It's great. I've used it to pull like metrics. I even asked it to pull through different data points in our HeyTaco channel and it would count character counts for how many times people are actually–or how long the messages are that people are writing. So that's been fun.

Una Japundza

Nice. What did you learn? I'm curious now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Tsatsa

They're very, very short. So nothing new. I didn't learn anything new, but it's fun. It's definitely a really great way to just pull different types of data points.

Una Japundza

Back to the remote engagement and the events you were throwing and stuff, did you ever besides the town hall, is there anything that you mandated? Or was everything voluntary? What’s your guys' philosophy on voluntary? Cause you know, there's especially at certain sizes, people will start mandating things. Is there a philosophy Fetch holds about voluntary versus mandated?

Justin Tsatsa

No. Everything is always voluntary.

I don't know if there's a specific policy around mandates, but it also just goes back to our pillar of trust and you know, we trust that employees are doing their best work, they're making the right decisions in terms of their time. If you need to take time away from work, please do that. If you have–if it comes between taking time away from your computer or coming into one of our events, yeah, take the time away from the computer. We have different types of events that you can do throughout the week instead.

But no philosophy that's really like, you have to attend this or your manager will get you, you’ll get deducted or something like that. It's just not something I've never heard in terms of–it's always a question, right? Of like, can we mandate? Do we have a policy around this? We're slowly starting to do a little bit more policy around certain types of trainings, obviously, but in terms of different things that are more on the engagement side of things, no. Nothing mandated.

Una Japundza

When you and I prepared for this, you said one thing that really stood out, which is we trust and treat people, we hire adults, and we treat people like adults. So to mandate or police things is just not coherent with that belief, people are adults and we trust you to do the right thing.

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, absolutely. I would hope that you would do the right thing. And if not, then that's a different conversation. But yeah, I mean we have like a list of things that people can do, accomplish. People are obviously smart enough to figure out what they need to go to. It's working out so far, knock on wood.

Una Japundza

Exactly. Exactly. Since you've grown to over 800 people, what surprised you about how the culture held up from when you joined?

Justin Tsatsa

I think the energy is still there. Fetch still moves very quickly. And people still are really on board with our product. You know, everyone loves Fetch. Everyone gets excited when new merch drops. I don't know. I think I love just seeing the enthusiasm when people walk into the office for like our little Fetch touches that we have there.

I think that energy carries out to home as well because we do our best to set employees up for success when working from home. Even something as exciting as a sticker you get in the mail, or even just like our HeyTaco thing. We've had to grow in terms of how many tacos people get because people are just giving them out so much because our teams have grown so many times. Little things like that have just been great in terms of the excitement, enthusiasm around the company itself.

Una Japundza

Besides the growth and you guys doing well, what else do you think has helped maintain that energy? You mentioned people coming into the office to join. When you join, do you always start by onboarding in an office?

Justin Tsatsa

No, no, in fact that's something that we've been talking about is, what does that look like if we were to bring new hires in on their first day or first week in an office? We’ll continue to toy around with that idea, maybe it'll come to fruition, I'm not sure. But no, I think it's just having like–our CEO is fantastic and he actually cares about employees and you can feel that sincerity and generosity in our town halls and everything. I think he's a big part of it.

I think we've hired amazing people that really know how to connect with one another and I don't know, just really help bring that excitement for this product that has grown so much in such a short amount of time, you can't help just to hear the story, or at least I can't–hear the story of Fetch and just be kind of jazzed by it and be like, what a cool like growth opportunity and story that Fetch has. So I don't know, I think that's just a big part of the energy, the employees wanting to take pride in our product.

Una Japundza

And what you guys stand for and how you guys work, right? As you said, that's your CEO being awesome and being authentic. People can feel that, right? It's the authenticity people can feel through a Zoom call or just how everyone goes about their day. What do you think or what have you learned is the fastest way to lose a great employee in a remote setup?

Justin Tsatsa

Ooh. That's a good question.

You know, I think there's always bound to be new opportunities that people want to try. It's very possible that you can grow out of a role. I would say that, you know, we move quickly and sometimes with all of these updates and everything that we do with the introduction of AI and things like that, it creates a lot more things that you have to juggle. So if you're not one to maybe wear multiple hats, or try to just balance a lot of different challenges, I'll say it can get maybe a little tricky.

But other than that, Fetch is just such a great place to start no matter–or a great place to work no matter where you're at in your career path. So if you get started here early, then you may grow and learn so much. We have, you know, great education reimbursement and stuff too, you could learn something and want to go a completely different path or are ready to move on to the next role and there may not be a role open for you to move into, so you just go and take an opportunity elsewhere.

I would think that in terms of the biggest thing, something that we help do is encourage people to learn and grow and better themselves and it's very possible that they do that and then go somewhere else.

Una Japundza

I was talking to someone else about this and it's kinda like, you can train people–what is that quote about?

[crosstalk]

Yeah, the only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay. Henry Ford. Because in a sense, you're not training them and now they're staying and they're not progressing, they're not providing more value, they're not getting better at their roles. Your company's not getting better. So do you really not want to train them so they're not, you know, hirable elsewhere? Not necessarily, right?

Justin Tsatsa

Henry Ford. There you go, Henry.

Yeah, but I think if you train and invest in your employees too, they're gonna still give you their best work during the time that they're there and they'll stay, not stay, continue to grow at Fetch or elsewhere. I don't know. I think it just goes back to how we trust our employees and we care so much about employees that we want you to do what's best for you and we'll give you all the resources that we have at our company and then hope that you do what you need to do.

Una Japundza

Justin, if you were talking to someone who is, let's say again, some 150, 200 person company and they're just starting to think about workplace engagement, remote operations, what would you tell them to start with first or think about first? Now that you have the experience of having helped scale remote operations to 800 people?

Justin Tsatsa

I would say to not be afraid to try and experiment with things, you know, we wouldn't know what worked for us if we didn't go through this huge, long list of things that didn't work or that people may not have attended. I think just figuring out what works for your company, it took us a long time to kind of figure out what employees responded well to and it just came down to the content that we put out and how impactful and meaningful the event is and not the amount that we're trying to do. That it's okay if participation is low. It gives you a place to start and to grow up in.

So yeah, I think going in and knowing what you want to achieve and what you're trying to do. If it's just employee connection, okay, how can we do the best employee connection we can in this one event and then go from there? I think boiling it down would be just try it. Just experiment. You'll see. It'll fail or it'll take off. Who knows?

Una Japundza

When you communicate something to a few hundred people–I'm sure all of us would feel a little bit, I presume you felt this way too, like, I'm about to create this event and what if no one shows up? We don't want people to not show up to whatever we do. No one wants to throw a party and have no one come. What advice would you give people to overcome that, you know, little fear?

Justin Tsatsa

Right.

Listen, I'll give a story that just happened this past week. Again, we're a company of 800-plus employees. We did our virtual happy hour to coincide at the same time as our in office happy hours. Four people showed up to the virtual one. But those four people had such meaningful conversations and really got to know the other people because it wasn't employees that they usually talk to. So listen, to me, that's still a win. Like, yes, we had four people show up.

But those four people just created a stronger connection than they would have if they didn't go. And now we know, okay, four people. How do we continue to spread the word? How do we make this a little bit more impactful? Was it the time of day? You know, things that we still continue to play around with. What works this month isn't gonna work next month. So who knows? But yeah, even if there's a company of 200, you're afraid no one's gonna show up.

Even if it's you and one other person, you can give that person the best time that they have there.

Una Japundza

I like that story. What are you working on next? What are you and your team working on next? What are the next challenges, initiatives, things that you have brewing?

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah, we are still really working on putting together our connections with intention, which is trying to get the best out of our in-person meetups. So we're putting together that sort of playbook. We're building kind of an enablement strategy, is what the working title is on it. But it really goes through and gives us the data behind remote operations and also just our employee connection and how we can continue to allow employees to do their best work.

How do we continue to set them up for success? So we're working on building that out a little bit. We're pulling some data points together in terms of what other companies are doing. We're doing some comparisons there a little bit, which, doing some research on that is not easy. So if you're out there and you have ideas, please share them with me. I'd love to hear. Shameless plug there.

Yeah, no, I went on and lost my train of thought. What we're working on. So yeah, figuring out what next looks like, what being the best remote-first company looks like and how we can continue to just evolve and continue to track and grow and figure out what we need to do.

Una Japundza

Are there companies that you think have it figured out, at least from what you can tell, that you kinda secretly, you know, follow, learn from, read about?

Justin Tsatsa

You know, I feel like some companies have it figured out for them and it may be working for them, but it is something–I was just at the, you know, the conference that we were at and there were things that people said and I was like, yeah, we've tried that and it was a win for them, but I was like, it didn't work for us. There's companies that are doing companywide meetups or doing onboarding in person, which is working for them, and we haven't tried that, so maybe we'll try that next.

Things that we're still trying to research and find, I wouldn't say that any company necessarily has found an end all be all to remote operations, but I think some companies are definitely doing what is working or doing well for their own companies. And I love hearing those stories and seeing if it's something we've tried or something we can't try. Was that a vague enough answer for you?

Una Japundza

No, no, I think that makes sense because like you said, it's kinda like businesses, right? Like let's say a marketing approach that might work for Fetch might absolutely not work for Starbucks, right? Or might not work for Nike. Same with remote operations. It truly depends on your business, on locations, on people, and what the culture is like. So you can't just take one for one and be like, they've tried a virtual happy hour, therefore it's gonna work for us.

Justin Tsatsa

Right, right.

Una Japundza

Maybe not, right? I think it also–correct me if I'm wrong–but I think timing also matters, too. What works this year might not work three years from now, and vice versa. Maybe something doesn't work today, but in three years you're like, hey, people are loving it and we should try it. So it sounds like even the old tricks that you've tried, re-cycling through them, not a bad idea.

Justin Tsatsa

One hundred percent. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's fun to see. You know, like I said, we've talked a lot about virtual happy hours, but we have stuff that has stayed around and like I said, one of it's the bingo cards that we do for wellness and things where people can like accomplish something on their own and then go back into a Slack channel or something to talk about, I think is really helpful too.

We've done book clubs and things like that, just different ways that people are already kind of doing something. So how can we just kind of bring it into Fetch a little bit? Yeah, exactly.

Una Japundza

Like shared with your colleagues. Yeah. And I think your point of async is what I'm also hearing about a lot. Because as you say, you can't take in person office hours and just mimic it virtually and expect it to work the same way. I feel like you have to think about, what are we trying to accomplish with the in person office hour? Okay, how do we get to the same goal? And maybe the mechanism is letter writing. I don't know. Just spit balling a very off the cuff idea, but it's like what are we trying to accomplish? Not just mimic the mechanism in any situation. I hope it works.

Justin Tsatsa

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we didn't do any sort of big, you know, holiday winter party or anything where the whole company got together. But one thing that we did and I love was we created a Fetch recipe book. Do you remember like in church groups or something like that and you would put together those cookbooks or recipe books and people would do like little stories and stuff. We did that. We put it together in an eBook and shared it and people were really fun and submitting different recipes, different stories behind it...

Una Japundza

Yes. That's awesome.

Justin Tsatsa

It was something that you didn't have to be on a Zoom call for, but it was still a way to pass around and share your story, connect in different ways. So I loved that one. That one was so much fun.

Una Japundza

I feel like that would be a great printed book as well for new hires or, you know, a holiday gift or like Employee Appreciation Day gift or something like that. Like that's something you would keep on your bookshelf forever.

Justin Tsatsa

Yeah. And it's something that we can continue to add to too if we're doing something like a virtual eBook or something, just add another chapter. So yeah, that one was really fun.

Una Japundza

Exactly.

Justin, before we wrap up, as you know, with HeyTaco, you have five tacos. I know you guys have eight, but for the purpose of this exercise, you have five tacos to give out today.

Justin Tsatsa

We have 10.

Una Japundza

You have 10? Holy cow, that's a lot of tacos. Go work at Fetch if you want more tacos. You have five tacos. Who would you like to give them to and why? And it can be anyone. It doesn't have to be at Fetch, you know, it can be anyone.

Justin Tsatsa

Wow. Anyone. The first person I was going to give it to is my boss Cheryl at my corporate real estate firm job that I was at. Speaking of training people, and you know, having them do their best work and then having it be okay that they leave. I was there for five years and I think from the very minute I started she just invested time and energy in shaping me.

Even when I moved to Fetch I had some questions on things and I would call her up and be like, hey remember when we did this there, how do I do that here? And she’s like, that's a fun challenge, good luck now! But we would just talk about it and it's those people that just kind of stay in your life forever. So her for sure. I would definitely say my colleague and employee Betsy who you know, taco to Betsy.

Una Japundza

Of course, taco to Betsy.

Justin Tsatsa

She's awesome when it comes to our remote culture. We have a remote channel that she mans. It's everywhere from like our brain teasers and things, just little things that again you don't need to do any meetings for, but she runs that. Anytime there's a crisis that happens near someone, bad weather, run out of power, whatever it is, she'll reach out personally and see if they're okay. So she's just an awesome person to be in that role.

Let's see, who else? Gonna go with my BFF, Kita, who gets to hear me talk about all things work, all things life. So she's yeah, just one of those people that is your person or whatever. So that's three. Okay.

You know what? I'm gonna go with Wes, CEO of Fetch. He created an awesome company that I love to work at. He's created an awesome app that people love and truly loves rewarding employees and people. So definitely shout out to Wes there. He can have a taco.

All right, we're gonna go cheesy with this last one. We're gonna give a taco to HeyTaco because it has become such a huge part of our culture. People love doing peer-to-peer recognition with tacos. We use them as incentives for everything. You know, it's fill out a survey, get some tacos. Again, show up to a meeting. You can maybe get some tacos, bingo cards, get tacos, birthdays, Fetchiversaries, you name it, you get tacos. So we love HeyTaco.

Una Japundza

Well, you know, if it was in the app, HeyTaco would politely tell you that you're not allowed to give a taco to HeyTaco, but on behalf of HeyTaco here, I accept your taco, so thank you. Well, Justin, thank you so much for joining it. I appreciate you.

Justin Tsatsa

Perfect. Give it to Una.

Yeah, thank you. It's been great.