A great company begins with a great team. At GAF Energy, our team has found its strength not within the walls of one corporate office but within the flexibility of GAF Energy’s culture of remote work.
We’re accomplishing our mission to create energy from every roof, driving each team member to do their best work by providing them autonomy over their workspace and balance between work and personal life.
As we established the core team over the past year, we met frequently in person in San Jose, California, and Parsippany, New Jersey. Trust comes from knowing people–not just as voices on a call or a tile on a Google Hangout–but as real people. A thriving remote culture starts with deliberate in-person time and focused, intentional team activities that yield key work outcomes and are just plain fun.
We support remote work, but we still make sure that new team members get ample face time with the whole team as they begin their tenure with us.
In addition to the intentional in-person foundation building, our team stays connected through a regular cadence of meetings and video conferences. Our leadership team, software team, and product teams are clustered in California and gather weekly in one of the Bay Area offices. Team members are encouraged to leave their camera on during virtual meetings, and the whole team participates on video in our once-a-quarter all-hands meetings, bringing the faces and voices of our team together to set targets for the next quarter and to celebrate our wins.
Developing an environment to promote productivity is critical to supporting innovation, and each employee’s ideal workspace varies.
Sam, a product head with small kids, works best when he works from home a few days a week. He picks his kids up from daycare, and chats face-to-face with his teammates in New Jersey over video in the afternoons. Melissa, one of our operations leaders, feels most productive when bouncing ideas off her coworkers, and is energized by the open floor plan at an Oakland coworking location. Karen, a sales manager from upstate New York, loves the freedom and inspiration of her private home office. She also meets with roofing partners throughout the week in-person.
Ollie, my collie with an incredible focus on his ball-retrieval skills, inspires me to be “in the zone” with projects. In my home office, I like working alongside him.
With locations in San Rafael, San Jose, and Campbell, California, and Parsippany, New Jersey and support for a remote work culture, Sam, Melissa, Karen, and I can each build our ideal workspace while staying connected to our colleagues and families, wherever they might be.
The integration of work life and home life built by a remote culture also saves team significant time and money, providing us the space to invest in ourselves instead. Remote employees could save as much as $7,000/year by reducing transportation, food, and clothing costs (after all, you determine the dresscode for your home office) associated with a daily commute to an office. Fewer commuters each day on our freeways means a decrease in carbon emissions, promoting the clean energy future GAF Energy is committed to building.
At GAF Energy, we deliver a power that protects to our customers, believing that every roof is an opportunity to generate clean energy. We bring that same power that protects to our team members, believing every space is an opportunity to generate great work. We count on one another to innovate, inspire, and stay connected. If we’re seeing great results from everyone, we let our employees decide where they want to be; in one of our company offices, their own home, at their local coffee shop, or a mix of all of these.