Dive Brief:

• As co-founders of eLearning Mind (ELM) running offices on opposite U.S. coasts, Andrew Fayad and Simon Casuto knew that it was going to take a lot more than regular conference calls to help employees feel like they were part of one team, according to an article the duo wrote for Forbes.
• With offices in NYC, Detroit, and San Diego, they realized that creating a workplace culture would have to mean more than making sure there’s coffee in the break room.
• The two already had a vision of how they wanted employees to feel about ELM, but they needed to find a way to create a sense of community and teamwork when employees are stationed across the United States.

Dive Insight

ELM turned, in part, to strategies such as social networking, offsite retreats, one-on-ones and lunches to set the tone for ELM’s organizational culture. When you have multiple offices, communication can feel awkward without any personal relationships, so ELM uses offsite events to help bridge that gap.

For example, ELM, a design and development agency that creates interactive learning experiences, sailed a 50-foot sailboat as a team of 25 earlier this year. Team activities like this help break down the natural power dynamics that can develop even in a relatively flat organization, they write. The two also recommend Slack, an instant messaging platform, for communicating between multiple offices. With Slack, ELM workers stay in touch and document everything as it happens.

HR executives who manage multiple offices may get some ideas from the ELM experience. As the co-CEOs note, making simple changes, offering a strong onboarding process and planning better offsite meetings can go a long way to bridging the gap between seemingly conflicting locations, bringing the best of both worlds to each office.