Elise Stribos
Chief People Officer
Jungle Scout
Episode 351
Remote Work's Missing Link: How Authentic Connection Fuels Productivity & Engagement
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJanuary 14, 2025 · 9:15
Thesis
“Authentic human connection and intentional relationship-building are paramount for productivity and engagement in remote-first environments, necessitating active leadership championship and a clear philosophy to empower employee participation.”
Show notes
You will not get productivity without relationships. Full stop. Elise Stribos, Chief People Officer at Jungle Scout — a fully remote SaaS company — has built her entire people strategy around that conviction, and she'll push back hard on anyone who frames community-building as a productivity luxury. For a company where everyone works from home, connection isn't a culture amenity. It's the operational infrastructure that makes everything else possible.
What makes Jungle Scout's approach distinctive is the intentionality behind every touchpoint. Remote magic shows. Transparent town halls. Engagement dashboards layered with Glassdoor ratings, pulse surveys, and exit data. These aren't random team-building experiments — they're a coherent system designed to address the specific failure mode of remote work: the slow erosion of the human relationship that makes people care about the outcome of their work.
Elise's lens on AI is worth sitting with. As automation reshapes work, the HR professionals who matter most will be the ones who double down on what AI can't replicate: authentic stories, human transparency, the willingness to be real about what's working and what isn't. That, she argues, is where culture actually lives — and why HR has never been more important than it is right now.
- Connection as performance infrastructure — the data behind why relationships are non-negotiable for remote team productivity
- Leadership's role in setting the engagement tone — why leaders must actively model participation and give employees permission to connect
- Measuring community in a remote environment — the dashboard approach combining engagement scores, pulse surveys, exit data, and external ratings
- Designing accessible remote engagement initiatives — what makes virtual programs work across time zones, roles, and personality types
- Humanization as HR's competitive edge in an AI world — why authenticity, personal stories, and transparency become more valuable as automation expands
What you'll take away
- 1Productivity in remote teams is fundamentally dependent on strong relationships and connection, making these non-negotiable for success.
- 2Leadership must establish a clear philosophy for connection, actively model desired behaviors, and explicitly grant employees permission to engage in community-building activities.
- 3Success in fostering community among remote employees should be measured through a wide range of factors, including engagement dashboards, pulse surveys, exit metrics, and external ratings like Glassdoor.
- 4Effective remote engagement initiatives require intentional design, accessibility across diverse platforms, alignment with company values, and visible participation from leadership.
- 5Prioritize 'humanization' through personal stories, authentic interactions, and transparency to counteract the potential for loneliness in remote businesses, especially as AI integrates further into work.
What most organizations get wrong
- •You won't get productivity without relationships and connection. You just won't. It's absolutely fundamental to it. It's critical to it. And everybody has to believe that.
- •You probably shouldn't organize over a board meeting or like a town hall or something because then you're really not going to get the attendance.
In Elise's words
“I think our profession is a really important one with really important things to do, particularly in the world of AI. And the more experience I can bring to whatever company I'm in at that moment or that point in time, the better.”
This highlights the guest's belief in the increasing importance of HR expertise, especially in the context of emerging AI technologies.
“you won't get productivity without relationships and connection. You just won't. It's absolutely fundamental to it. It's critical to it. And everybody has to believe that.”
This is a core tenet of the guest's philosophy, asserting that connection is a prerequisite for productivity, particularly in remote environments.
“leaders need to again, set aside and set the tone that it's okay to make this trade by being involved.”
This quote emphasizes the crucial role of leadership in actively enabling and endorsing employee participation in connection activities.
“Well, in my mind, I definitely correlate it to engagement.”
This succinctly defines the primary metric the guest uses to measure the effectiveness of community-building efforts.
“Humanization is the most important thing as we go into like more of an AI world, whatever. I guess the HR community can do to reinforce the idea that personal stories, like being real as a human in your interactions, like addressing things that are good and bad and transparency, that's going to be the difference for us, particularly in culture and connection.”
This powerful closing statement underlines the enduring significance of human authenticity and transparency in maintaining a vibrant culture amidst technological advancements.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Companies struggle to maintain community and connection among fully remote teams, leading to disengagement and loneliness.
- •Leaders and employees often perceive engagement activities as a 'loss' of productivity, hindering participation and buy-in.
- •Without clear leadership philosophy and active participation, remote engagement initiatives fail to gain traction and achieve desired outcomes.
- •HR teams lack robust methods to measure the direct impact and ROI of culture and connection strategies on engagement and business results.
- •Virtual communications, such as town halls, can become impersonal or 'robotic,' failing to foster genuine human connection and transparency.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
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What creative initiatives have worked best for engaging remote employees and reinforcing a shared sense
What creative initiatives have worked best for engaging remote employees?
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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