- Patricia Gonzales is the chief people officer at the creator-commerce platform LTK.
- She described LTK’s remote-first strategy and other tips for productivity in the workforce.
- This story is part of “What’s Next,” a series about business leaders’ strategies for workplace productivity.
The way we work has drastically shifted over the past few years. Now companies are learning how to embrace hybrid work while nurturing new hires and increasing productivity.
Patricia Gonzales, the chief people officer at the creator-economy startup LTK, told Business Insider about how the company has operated since pivoting mainly to remote work and how it’s shifted to accommodate employees and hires.
LTK — formally known as RewardStyle and LiketoKnow.it — is an affiliate-marketing and creator-commerce platform for influencers. The service lets users build storefronts for fans to shop from. The Dallas-based company was last valued at $2 billion in 2021, when it raised $300 million from SoftBank.
Gonzales shared four key takeaways from LTK’s remote-first work culture.
Though LTK is based in Dallas, it employs people across the US
The Dallas office is still available for people to use, but most employees are spread out across the country. The startup says it has over 800 employees, including analytics and insights managers, consultants, and account managers.
“We want people to be as productive as they can be wherever they feel best,” Gonzales said. “And so we have made the decision to be a remote-first company.”
Gonzales said one of the benefits is being able to hire people wherever they are.
“What that allowed was we had access to talent everywhere, rather than limiting ourselves to a local office,” she said.
It hosts monthly events to help employees and new hires feel connected
Gonzales said that to keep employees connected, the company kept “a lot of the long-standing traditions that we had prior to COVID.”
These events include LTK’s anniversary celebration and its kickoff at the start of the year, set up like a conference for staffers to learn and collaborate. The company flies employees out to Dallas for both events.
LTK also hosts virtual events, like Slack celebrations for birthdays, engagements, and marriages, and monthly all-hands meetings. It publishes a weekly newsletter for employees about what’s happening across the company.
Gonzales said the company sometimes organizes in-person events for local employees or teams to gather.
“That is our way to continue to make sure that every individual is still seen, even if they’re sitting at home,” she said.
LTK sets annual objectives and communicates them at the start of each year
Each year the company sets objectives, such as goals for sales, earnings, and creator growth. It uses a model to measure how departments, teams, and individuals are performing within each objective.
Employees also set about three or four annual objectives for themselves before the year starts. Gonzales said the idea is to make sure individual goals are clear and aligned with company goals, adding that leaders revisit their goals monthly or quarterly.
She added: “This is really important for productivity in the remote environment because it can be quite easy, especially as an organization becomes bigger and bigger, to feel a little bit lost. And so you always have a sense of like that North Star of what you’re working toward.”
The company asks employees to keep their cameras on during meetings
As remote work has proliferated, many managers and employees have questioned whether it’s better for people to work from their bed or at a desk, or if it even matters.
At LTK, meeting with colleagues virtually means being present visually: The company has a camera-on policy.
“With the cameras-on method, it means you’ve got to get dressed and be somewhat presentable to be on camera, and you’re participating,” Gonzales said. “It does keep people focused and ensures that there’s this daily requirement of showing up for work every day from a productivity standpoint.”
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