45 - Building a Remote-First Culture (Shelby Wolpa, People Leadership Advisor & Remote Work Expert)

Shelby Wolpa, Founder of Shelby Wolpa Consulting, joined us on The Modern People Leader. Shelby talked about her experience scaling the people function for 4 separate unicorn+ status companies. Then, we talked about what it takes to build a best-in-class culture in a remote-first environment. Timestamps: learnings from scaling the people function for 4 venture-backed companies (9:19), what it was like pioneering a remote-first culture (10:55), foundational steps for setting yourself up for success in a remote-first environment (14:10), common pitfalls when going remote-first (20:12), what type of work should happen in the office (24:40), Shelby’s prediction for remote work (25:50), there’s no such thing as hybrid (30:30), the three phases of onboarding (33:45), and what’s keeping people leaders up at night (43:15). You can find Shelby’s free guide for building a remote-first culture and her other playbooks on her website: https://www.shelbywolpaconsulting.com/ If you have any feedback for the MPL podcast or would like to connect, don't hesitate to reach out on LinkedIn: Daniel Huerta and Stephen Huerta