Logz.IO tackles the challenge of supporting employee burnout remotely

For every benefit of working remotely - whether it’s the lack of commute or more time for errands during the day, there are also the drawbacks. For open-source observability platform Logz.IO, it knew it had to learn how to support employees who may be feeling overwhelmed by incessant lockdowns.

“The burnout and state of mind of employees are difficult to support remotely,” admitted Dana Harduf, VP of Global HR at Logz.IO. “We have already provided, twice, a day off at the expense of the company, to support burnout and provide avenues for our employees to recover a bit and shorten their week.”

Dana Harduf, VP of Global HR at Logz.IO. Photo: Fabiana Kocubey

Harduf told CTech as part of its HR Post-Covid series that the company needs to continue and find ways to support its employees in gaining back their energy and morale every once in a while. Here’s how they did it.

Company Name: Logz.io

HR Leader: Dana Harduf, VP of Global HR

Field of Activity:

Logz.io is an open-source, cloud-native observability platform, for developers, that detects and alerts to both current and future bugs in the system. The platform is built on popular open-source programs such as Jaeger, Grafana, and ELK and combines AI platforms and advanced management tools. It can be dynamically adjusted to the needs of clients and offers optimization capabilities and reduced data storing costs. In addition, the company also offers a popular information security product that allows organizations to protect their cloud infrastructure.

Number of employees/location: 245 employees. We have sites in Tel Aviv, Boston, UK, Kiev.

Professional background of HR Manager:

I joined Logz.io, as VP of Global HR, over a year and a half ago. Today, I'm in charge of everything related to global recruiting, OD processes, managers development, feedback and coaching processes, Culture and Wellbeing, Compensation and Benefits, but mostly helping management navigate constant changes and preparing ourselves for the challenges ahead. Previously I worked out of the U.S as an HR leader for companies like Jive Software, HP, and Mercury interactive.

On a scale of 1-10, how much did the coronavirus pandemic disrupt operations at the company?

I would rate the challenges at the beginning at a 4. It took us a while to adjust, to learn how to connect, interact and communicate from afar, and build supporting processes to enable us to hire remotely, onboard properly, and measure the team's productivity. All of this was while not being able to see each other in the office every day. The smartest decision we took was to guide our managers to have daily sync with their teams, at first twice a day, which later turned into a morning stand up/sync at every manager's discretion. This very early routine enabled us to stay connected with the teams right from the get-go. After a couple of weeks, we already started seeing the immediate benefits from the new working arrangements and everyone seemed highly committed to the success of the company and motivated and eager to make it work.

What interesting technological tools do you use in employee management/recruitment?

In addition to the daily sync ups, we have a weekly "Global All hands" where we share important news, Covid-19 or business-related. We collect Q&A before and after and try to leave enough time to address any concerns that employees might have.

We are using the same technology we used in the past and only amplified its use. We obviously used Zoom prior to Covid-19 but today we are using its functionality to the fullest. We have introduced more groups and communities on Slack for fun and leisure time and are now looking at communication platforms to enable better connections and alignment between the different parts of the organization. We also use Bob more often for shoutout announcements and we run quick focused employees surveys to check the overall pulse on specific topics.

What positive and/or negative impact did the outbreak have on the human capital of the company?

We have run multiple employee surveys and all of them consistently show employees high satisfaction with the level of flexibility that we provide these days when it comes to picking where you want to work from. The convenience, lack of difficult commute back and forth, balancing family with work needs, are all positive assets we gained from the Covid-19 era.

On the flip side, there is the loneliness of working without meeting the teams, the high-quality office environment that can't be replaced, and the sense of exhaustion from working around the clock, and the blurry lines between home and home office. There were other inputs that came out of the surveys and we tried to address them, one at a time. For example, employees felt that after a long stay in their "home office" they are having much more expenses than before so we gave everyone globally a "one-time expenses bonus" to cover any additional cost (electricity bills, babysitting services, food, etc).

What are the two major challenges you are coping with these days?

The number one challenge is, and would definitely continue to be, how to keep the glue/connections between the different parts of the organization remotely while traveling is still prohibited and connections are mostly done through Zoom. There is no substitute for a physical team building or an offsite. We haven't had an activity like that, globally, in almost a year now. Not only are we missing those types of interactions, the planning, decision making, orchestrating activities remotely, but from a business perspective, it is much harder.

The Logz.IO team. Photo: Fabiana Kocubey

Also, the burnout and state of mind of employees are difficult to support remotely. We have already provided, twice, a day off at the expense of the company, to support burnout and provide avenues for our employees to recover a bit and shorten their week, and we need to continue and find ways to support our employees in gaining back their energy and morale, every once in a while.

Are you actively recruiting? If so, what is the process and where can the applicants find you?

We have over 30 open positions globally, in all locations and are always looking for smart, curious, and self-driven talents. Interviews are done remotely via Zoom by all relevant stakeholders. All of our open positions can be reviewed here: https://logz.io/careers/

Which changes forced upon you by the circumstances will stay in place after Covid-19 is over, and which are you most eager to revert back to normal?

We have already decided we will gradually move towards a hybrid working environment, which basically means we would allow a high level of flexibility for our employees to work both from home and from the office. Everyone misses the interactions, the team brainstorm, and connectedness and we would like to provide that in combination with the flexible environment, our employees are looking for. The day where we could walk into the office several times a week, give each other a hug, and go have a cup of coffee in close proximity to each other will be such a great milestone!