Building the Future of Work

When the reality of the pandemic became evident in March 2020, our global Tanium team moved almost overnight from Tanium offices to home offices. With video calls from the closet, kitchen tables covered in homework, and sharing spaces with kids, partners, and puppies, our team showed incredible resilience. 

We quickly realized that despite the challenges of this new virtual environment, productivity and engagement could remain high.  Excited about the world of possibilities this created, I released a blog on April 17, 2020, that welcomed the future of work.

Becoming a remote-first company

Since then, we’ve been busy putting that vision into action. We’ve become a remote-first company where employees have the flexibility to work from anywhere. That could be a home office (for which we’ve provided support so employees can upgrade from the kitchen table) or a Tanium office when those gradually reopen — or it could be from a coffee shop, park, hotel room, or a space at the in-laws’ house.

The principle of flexibility, for us, means removing the friction and barriers to working productively from anywhere. It means the freedom to choose where you work best, and it puts the focus on results and outcomes — where it should be! — and away from any distraction of whose car shows up in the parking lot last. 

To support this, we shared a relocation policy with employees early in 2020 that empowered them to work from anywhere within their country without a reduction in salary. Since June, more than 10 percent of our team members have taken advantage of this to be closer to family, enjoy a lower cost of living, or just take the opportunity to live somewhere they’ve always dreamed about.

Creating a more sustainable way of working

In the April 2020 blog, I also remarked on the opportunity to create a more sustainable, environmentally friendly, and healthy way of working. We have since doubled down on that vision. We are committed to reducing our physical office footprint and, within the offices we maintain, eliminating a further 80 percent of all plastic usage. 

Another core tenet of sustainability as we see it is our commitment to long-term employee health and well-being. With high engagement and productivity comes a risk of burnout. Eliminating the commute is a start, but we have also increased our investments in the mental, physical and financial well-being of our employees. 

One example was our Wellness Month, which included health education sessions, fitness classes and financial wellness classes and resources. During the month, team members joined live information sessions on topics like managing finances in a volatile market, understanding tax implications of relocations, as well as joining our regular fitness offerings like yoga and meditation.

Building opportunities to stay connected

Looking ahead, companies with strong cultures won’t just be focused on productivity from anywhere but will also build new ways to connect, communicate and collaborate. The ties that bind us are no longer tethered to the office floor we happen to sit on but can be created anytime and anywhere in a virtual water-cooler world. These will be facilitated by curated digital experiences that have the potential to be even more powerful than the in-person experiences we had before.

Tanium employees are taking on an individual stewardship of our values, purpose, and one-team mentality by creating opportunities to connect with one another in new and inspiring ways. 

One example is Tanium Chat, our virtual breakroom that randomly assigns small groups to introduce people across the company. The feedback from employees has been very enthusiastic as relationships are quickly forged across teams and geographies, and employees get to meet people who, in their own words, they “otherwise would never have met.”

The foundation of our future of work vision is, and always will be, people-centric. To scale and strengthen culture virtually requires enabling and empowering employees to take their own initiative in culture-building and culture-connection.

Staying agile and unstoppable

Last, being agile and unstoppable are core tenets of our culture and critical as we continue to evolve the future of work. Part of building an agile culture is creating an environment where continuous learning is celebrated. We take risks, experiment with new things, and are willing to double down on what works and let go of what doesn’t. 

As a company, we are excited to continue growing and learning on this journey as we create a new world of work that is better for our employees, customers and communities.

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To learn more about our culture at Tanium and our current openings, visit Tanium Careers.