Why LTV Decided to Go Fully Remote

In February of 2020, The Lifetime Value Company told its employees to start bringing home their work devices every day in anticipation of an extended office closure. Like many companies, we made an early decision to prepare for a fully remote work model to keep our team safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six months in, it became clear that remote work, well, worked. While we missed seeing our colleagues in our New York and Costa Rica offices, we got plenty of daily communication and culture-building opportunities over Slack and video conferencing. We established “virtual commute” routines and set ourselves up to thrive in our home offices. In short, the LTV team was just as productive at home as we were in the office, if not more so.

We recently decided to make fully remote work a permanent part of the LTV experience. A lot of factors went into this decision, but our leadership team and employees agree that this is the best way to continue growing our team while delivering best-in-class data tools to help our customer unlock the power of information.

Here’s why LTV is now a fully distributed workforce and what it means for our employees moving forward.

Why LTV decided to go fully remote

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way companies like ours thought about “the workplace.” LTV had been headquartered in New York City since its inception and had an office in Costa Rica. While there are certainly benefits to in-person work, the benefits of being completely distributed—especially in the midst of the ongoing pandemic—are even greater. According to Chief People Officer Stefani Ribaudo, it wasn’t a particularly difficult choice.

“LTV was heading in the direction of being remote-first long before the pandemic began as we saw the benefits of it years ago,” she said “Initially, we planned to take a measured years-long approach to get there but in March 2020 we ended up doing it in just a few days as many others did!”

“There are a lot of reasons why companies go remote-first. Ours is simple, we have an amazing team with exceptionally talented people that we trust to do their jobs and be productive under any circumstance.”

For LTV, the key to our success as a fully remote company has been optimizing our tools and workflows, training our leaders to manage a team remotely and keeping our culture alive through fun remote events that everyone can participate in, even from afar.

Remote work is catching on

LTV is far from the only company that has given up the traditional office and implemented a fully remote model. We’re joining big tech companies like Adobe, Amazon, Atlassian, Facebook, Microsoft, Quora, Reddit and Twitter in the shift to long-term distributed work.

In 2020, Global Workplace Analytics estimated that roughly 75 million U.S. employees—56% of the overall workforce—have jobs that could be done from home at least part of the time, and nearly 70% of American employees worked from home at the height of COVID-19.

Moreover, the majority of professionals want to work from home at least part of the time. According to the 2020 Global Work-from-Home Experience Survey, nearly three-quarters of U.S. respondents feel they are “very successful” working from home, and 78% of office workers say they have the resources they need to successfully work from home. In fact, a Buffer survey found that nine out of 10 workers who are currently full-time remote plan to work from home for the rest of their careers.

Of course, there are myriad benefits to employers that shift to a distributed model, including lower overhead costs, reduced absenteeism and a more competitive employer brand. However, there are a few key employee sentiments are convincing companies it’s a good idea to make the move to fully remote work:

• They perform just as well as home as they do in the office (70%).
• Managers find their employees produce the same or better results when they work from home as they do in-office (70%).
• Employees gain back an average of 35 minutes a day working at home due to fewer office interruptions.
• They love the flexibility (77%) and the well-being (69%) remote work affords them.

What do our employees think of being a fully remote team?

Shifting from in-office work to a full-time remote position required some adjustments to our workflows, daily communications and culture. However, our employees have made a smooth transition to our fully virtual model and love that they can be a part of the LTV family from just about anywhere in the U.S. or Costa Rica.

For some, the move was an opportunity to finally explore other parts of the country. But even for those who remain near the New York and Costa Rica offices, transitioning to full remote work means less time spent commuting and more time with family and friends. All in all, employees are happy the company took such a proactive approach and look forward to leaning into the advantages of remote work as the company continues to grow.

To learn more about LTV and its remote work culture, visit our blog and our careers page.