At 16 years of industry experience as a Financial Analyst, with the last five of those spent working as a remote worker for BC, you could say Nicole “Niki” Young is an expert at navigating both office and virtual work environments. But that didn’t mean there weren’t challenges to working remotely.
As the spouse of an U.S. Army pilot, working from home gave her flexibility to be the primary caregiver for her three young daughters, but it also meant she was away from her peers. “You feel very alone. You don’t have the same kind of community,” she explained. “And there’s this impression that you’re missing out on promotions and training opportunities.”
“The general assumption is that remote working is easy,” Niki said. “In the beginning, I often hid that I was working virtually, because people would jokingly say things like, ‘Get your laundry done?’ or ‘It must so nice.’ And there are great aspects of working remotely, but you need the skills of building trust relationships, accountability, and work-life harmony for it to be successful and not burn out.”
What Niki realized was that being in an office meant that team building happened naturally, and to re-create that connection virtually, takes a lot of personal effort. So, to help other BC remote workers feel connected, she co-founded the company’s third Employee Networking Group (ENG), Remote Workers, with colleague Dave Yates. To their surprise, they found out that about 60% of BCers worked out of the office at any time, meaning they were far from alone. There was a companywide need to learn the hard skills of virtual collaboration software, and the soft skills of building trust and accountability and how to create and maintain work-life harmony.
“It was kind of a shock-effect moment,” she said. “You were the majority and part of something that matters. And feeling like you are a part of something that matters makes a big difference in how you approach your work. What this ENG, and all ENGs at BC, does is say, ‘Let’s look at the things that make people feel like they don’t matter, that they aren’t part of something bigger, that they don’t belong, and help them understand that yes you do. You do matter and you do have a community.”
Since the start, the Virtual Talent ENG has made an impact for both those who work in and out of the office. Since the pandemic hit in early March, this ENG helped the rest of the company more quickly pivot to a 100% work from home environment. Many of the best practices and tips created by the ENG were later used in companywide COVID-19 guidance.
“It’s gone beyond advocating for individuals to advocating for BC so we can truly be a virtual firm. Providing the tools and resources to engage top talent from anywhere and work together successfully enables us to deliver the most amazing and complex projects for our clients.”
