Leaders Perception Magazine is currently running an interview series called – Building a Successful Remote Work Culture: Discussing strategies and best practices for fostering a productive and engaged remote workforce, addressing topics like communication, collaboration tools, work-life balance, and employee well-being
Interviewee Name: Emilie Schario
Company: Turbine
Position: CEO & Founder
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilieschario/
Emilie Schario’s favorite quote: “ E.E. Cummings once wrote: ‘To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.’”
Join us as we dive into the world of remote work with Emilie Schario, the CEO & Founder of Turbine. With a passion for transforming the way companies manage physical inventories, Emilie has pioneered innovative strategies for remote collaboration and work-life integration. In this exclusive interview, Emilie shares her experiences working at GitLab and Netlify, and how those experiences shaped her approach to building a handbook-first workflow at Turbine. Discover how embracing a source-of-truth documentation system and recognizing the importance of work-life integration can lead to enhanced productivity and a healthier work environment. Get ready to be inspired by Emilie’s insights as we explore the future of remote work together.
The Interview
Thank you so much for joining us today! Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your backstory?
Emilie Schario : My name is Emilie Schario and I’m CEO & Founder of Turbine, the next generation ERP for brands that manage physical inventories. Turbine solves the hardest inventory problems for multi-channel businesses, helping them order the right items at the right time and operate more efficiently across procurement, inventory, supply chain/operations, and accounting workflows.
Outside of work, I live in Columbus, GA with my husband and two boys. We spend our weekends enjoying the water, and cooking great food. I love to read and have always preferred non-fiction.
How do you ensure effective communication and collaboration among remote team members? Can you share any specific tools or practices that have been particularly effective for your organization?
Emilie Schario : I truly *learned* how to work remotely in the time that I spent at GitLab. I joined the company at about 250 employees and quickly became an evangelist of the way of work, after years of working in companies that were trying to make remote work without any of the experience or knowledge to do that.
Having a handbook-first workflow is the number one thing that truly transformed how we worked. I took it with me to Netlify and now to Turbine https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/handbook-first-documentation/#terminology-documentation-handbook-first-single-source-of-truth
What this means, in practical terms, is that the handbook *is* the source of truth. Everyone works in and contributes to the same documentation because the documentation is how we communicate with one another.
Maintaining work-life balance can be challenging in a remote work environment. What strategies do you recommend for remote employees to create boundaries between work and personal life? How can organizations support their employees in achieving a healthy work-life balance?
Emilie Schario : I don’t believe in “work-life balance.” I believe in work-life integration. One week, my kid is going to be sick and I’m going to have to log fewer hours. The next week, I’m going to have a big customer deadline we’re working up against and I’m going to log more hours. The big thing is figuring out a system that allows your responsibilities to ebb and flow in a way that supports your personal and professional goals.
Organizations should recognize that people are whole people, including lives outside of work, so when there is a discussion around someone having to log off because of sick kid/parent or other personal situation, we need to respect that people need to take care of their lives in order for them to do their best work.
Leaders Perception Magazine would like to thank Emilie Schario and Turbine for the time dedicated to completing this interview and sharing their valuable insights with our readers!
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