Why CFOs should take the lead on remote working

Sean Quinn, CFO at Cim­press, has what he describes as a “tru­ly holis­tic view” of the com­pa­ny. With over­sight of HR, legal, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, real estate and pro­cure­ment across the busi­ness, he was the ide­al choice to lead the company’s remote-first strat­e­gy. 

And with that strat­e­gy lead­ing to $9m (£6.8m) a year in sav­ings, you can see that oth­er CFOs could be moti­vat­ed to dri­ve change. 

Cim­press, own­er of print­ing firm Vista, decid­ed to tran­si­tion to remote-first in Octo­ber 2020, after review­ing the strong pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pos­i­tive well­be­ing dri­ven by pan­dem­ic-enforced remote work­ing. The tran­si­tion involved 1,600 office work­ers – 20% of Cimpress’s 8,000-strong work­force. 

It was decid­ed that Quinn’s broad CFO remit would help to rein­force the remote-first strat­e­gy across the whole com­pa­ny, ensur­ing many dif­fer­ent teams were unit­ed behind the move, and with cru­cial deci­sion-mak­ing sped up by this struc­ture. But ulti­mate­ly a major trans­for­ma­tion involves sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial deci­sions – not least how to spend the $9m in sav­ings – mak­ing the CFO the most strate­gic per­son to be dri­ving the remote-first shift, says Quinn.

“I think the CFO is well placed to lead the deci­sion frame­work and set the right tone to allow the organ­i­sa­tion to push for­ward faster into the future of work,” he says.

But he adds that it’s impor­tant not to see those flash­ing six-fig­ure dol­lar signs as the end-game, but to con­tex­tu­alise the whole oper­a­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rethink and redesign how work works. Then the CFO can real­lo­cate cap­i­tal to where it can have the most impact for the busi­ness and its peo­ple. 

“This shift has a mas­sive impact on team mem­ber engage­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, hir­ing and reten­tion that will ulti­mate­ly be a key ingre­di­ent to deliv­er­ing on busi­ness out­comes. So being able to look at oppor­tu­ni­ties for cost sav­ings, for exam­ple in our real estate foot­print, and then think­ing through where that cap­i­tal can be more effi­cient­ly rede­ployed for the ben­e­fit of our team mem­bers becomes a great oppor­tu­ni­ty,” he explains.

Reinvesting in remote resources

That finan­cial deci­sion-mak­ing on rein­vest­ment has result­ed in the set up of a remote-work­ing stipend for peo­ple to pur­chase the nec­es­sary home office kit, plus the hir­ing of a ded­i­cat­ed eight-per­son ‘Remote-First Suc­cess’ team and cre­at­ing per­son­alised remote onboard­ing for team mem­bers’ first 100 days. This has been com­ple­ment­ed by extra learn­ing and devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties (to the tune of $5,250 per employ­ee per year). Com­pa­ny ben­e­fits have also been bol­stered, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion of ‘Recharge Fri­days’ (essen­tial­ly Fri­day after­noons off) and a reg­u­lar allowance to spend with any small busi­ness.

“Man­ag­ing teams in a remote envi­ron­ment is dif­fer­ent so we need to make sure we’re pro­vid­ing resources for that,” Quinn adds.

A remote-first cul­ture deck dis­trib­uted to all employ­ees also helps spell out the logis­tics of the tran­si­tion, from non-lin­ear work­days to asyn­chro­nous work­ing. 

“If we form good habits around doc­u­ment­ing infor­ma­tion in a place that’s com­mu­nal, it means peo­ple can see it, they can learn from it, and they can add to it,” says Quinn.

Around 57% of Cim­press’ remote employ­ees have in fact aban­doned the tra­di­tion­al 9 to 5 sched­ule, with the com­pa­ny encour­ag­ing them to design their day around their per­son­al pref­er­ences and com­mit­ments. While there are some extreme exam­ples of night owls and ear­ly birds, Quinn says peo­ple most­ly take pock­ets of time out for them­selves dur­ing the day, such as a break for a Pelo­ton work­out – for which the com­pa­ny pro­vides a sub­sidised sub­scrip­tion – or to take care of fam­i­ly respon­si­bil­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny aims to make 90% focused solo work and 10% meet­ings the default, using tech tools to help peo­ple keep meet­ings to a min­i­mum, such as remote work­space plat­form Con­flu­ence, vir­tu­al white­board Miro, project man­age­ment app Trel­lo and secure cloud man­age­ment sys­tem Box.

“We’ve need­ed to make sure that we role mod­el this from the exec­u­tive lev­el down,” he says. Meet­ings were so much of a cal­en­dar suck, so I think this dri­ves much more pow­er­ful busi­ness results.”

Reaping the benefits

The move to remote work­ing has had a marked impact on gen­der equal­i­ty in the busi­ness. Cim­press has more than dou­bled its female key lead­er­ship hires and tech roles have also seen a year-on-year increase of female rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the lead­er­ship lev­el. And the num­ber of women leav­ing the busi­ness has gone down by a third – an impres­sive over­all ROI for a CFO to report.

Pos­i­tive results can also be seen in tal­ent attrac­tion, with a 300% increase in job appli­ca­tions. Only one employ­ee has giv­en the remote-first shift as their rea­son for leav­ing. And tak­ing advan­tage of the abil­i­ty to work from any­where, 10% of Cimpress’s remote-first US work­force moved to anoth­er state. The company’s US staff are now spread out across three times as many states as before. 

Oth­er upsides include improved engage­ment and the abil­i­ty to recruit qual­i­ty tal­ent from a larg­er pool. The com­pa­ny has held onto a select num­ber of its office spaces, rein­vent­ing them for sched­uled learn­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. Employ­ees who want to work there more reg­u­lar­ly have the option to do so, and those who live in areas where Cim­press didn’t have an office pre-pan­dem­ic are being offered cowork­ing mem­ber­ships.

Quinn admits he had lit­tle knowl­edge of or affin­i­ty for remote work pre-pan­dem­ic, but now is one of its biggest advo­cates, not least because of the extra time that he can spend with his fam­i­ly.

“My son recent­ly asked me to take him to sharp­en his skates before hock­ey prac­tice, which was at 5pm. If we were in an office, I would have got­ten home at 7pm, so there’s no way I would have been able to do that,” he reflects.

“And when my CEO asks if I’m around for a catch up, it’s com­plete­ly accept­able for me to say that I’m out with my son from 5 to 5.30, so let’s talk after that. There’s not even a ques­tion about it.”