As an HR leader for over three decades, Omada Health chief people officer Nancy Vitale understands the connection between
When a people leader's approach is rooted in the belief that talent drives the value of a company, they can create a work environment that fits employees' needs accordingly, Vitale says. This view has helped her with
"My role is to cultivate an environment where my team can support the organization, our employees and our leaders, in sourcing and recruiting talent, developing talent, helping them reward and recognize talent, and in the cases where people are off-boarding," she says. "This is how I've tried to lead the HR function at the different companies I've been a part of."
Following roles at healthcare companies like Cigna, Proctor and Gamble and Genentech, Vitale became CPO at Omada, a virtual care provider, in 2022. The company had already decided to go remote-first prior to COVID, and one of Vitale's early missions was to double down on this policy for the sake of employee well-being, talent recruitment and retention. Crafting a remote strategy takes a lot of thought and follow through, but
"When you look at our employee value proposition, work flexibility is a key component of that, and we see that being really important to job candidates, some of whom we're seeing because they're being mandated to go back to work at other companies," Vitale says.
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Vitale discusses how intentional connection efforts and consistency help organizations build an ideal remote-first setup, and that policies are not one size fits all.
What drove Omada to prioritize a remote-first work policy?
It gives us access to talent no matter where they live or work in the U.S., and were it not for that element, we probably wouldn't get the caliber of talent that we're able to acquire.
Our existing employee base also really values that aspect of the employee value proposition. It displays our trust in them, and cultivating trust is our first and foremost core-company value. We trust that they're working even when we don't see them. It enables them to have greater work- life harmony and productivity. It reduces their commuting stress. It gives them agency and autonomy. So not only do they value it, but we see they can be more productive as a result of that. Trusting people to carry out their day-to-day routine in a way that they can perform at their best is a crucial part in their ability to show up for their customers and their members effectively.
What does this policy look like for employees?
Our business model is virtual healthcare, so it stands to reason that our operating model and the way we work can align with that. In assessing our ability to execute our strategy and our objectives and key results, we've been having great results over the last years as a remote-first company.
We say remote-first for a reason, because our leadership believes that there is a role for in- person gatherings, that we're not just remote only. We do a good job with most of our leadership teams in getting together. We afford regional groups where there's critical mass the ability to come together more informally — social gatherings, for example — so in person does play a key role, but forcing people into an office [every day] would be a waste of time. If you're all together in the same place on some frequency, you get a lot of value out of that, but the day-to-day is spent in a remote-first operation.
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What is an example of remote first not being the best plan for a company?
It may make sense for them to call people back, depending on their business model, their operating model, or their talent strategy. One example of that is if a company's talent strategy is to hire predominantly early career talent, and perhaps recent graduates — those types of phenotypes really need more coaching, more mentoring, more professional development, and that tends to lend itself better to an in-office environment, which means they need to have managers in the office to cultivate that. An organization needs to assess the alignment of their strategy. And how in office versus hybrid versus remote fits with their overall operating model.
How do you keep your workforce connected on a daily basis?
In remote-first, you have to be very intentional and deliberate about connecting people virtually, whether that be asynchronously or synchronously in teams or as a community. For us, we leverage mechanisms. To have channels where people are in regular communication is super important, utilizing different communication mechanisms such as [a messaging platform], phone, or email. Not being afraid to pick up the phone, just to reach out to someone if there is a need, or you see something escalating on Slack or email that would be better served by a five-minute conversation — leveraging all of those things is important to cultivating connection and community.
Additionally, responsiveness from managers is important when people need support, [as are] regular team connections, as well as one-on-ones. [Our] employee resource groups, town halls and a monthly newsletter also contribute to employee connection. Being intentional and deliberate is important, because you don't have the water cooler talk or the happenstance of bumping into people, so everything has to be scheduled.
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How do you stay connected to your team in particular?
I have weekly team meetings, and we have a way to provide updates asynchronously to make sure that we're keeping a pulse, not operating in silos. I have regular one-on-one meetings with each one of my direct reports, but for my indirect reports I do quarterly skip level. It's important to stay connected to every one of them to know them on a human level and what's going on in their world, like family, friends and community, but also how things are going at work. Are there obstacles and things I can do to support them?
Read more about remote work and its impacts on employees and organizations:
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