lobal Credit Union has expanded from Anchorage to include team members in multiple states and around the world, as its branding adopted earlier this year indicates. Thus, the credit union has long experience working with technology and communications tools to bring its distributed workforce closer together.

It is not feasible for customer-facing employees in many of its branch locations to work remotely; however, many of the credit union’s remote and hybrid workers fill administrative roles behind the scenes and perform duties that do not require an in-person presence.

Having a decentralized workforce has worked well, according to Chief Administrative Officer Rachel Norman, and it has created opportunities for hybrid arrangements throughout the credit union. “It allows the best of both worlds in that there is office time for collaboration, team interactions, et cetera, but also work-from-home time can be more convenient for employees,” she says.

Global Credit Union has adopted resources that help its employees stay connected. This includes the use of Microsoft Teams, which allows employees to come together virtually much like they would in a conference room. “Additionally, we communicate with employees through a variety of mechanisms, which allow us to connect through the written word, through video, and even allows us the opportunity to present material and follow it with an open forum question-and-answer session,” Norman says.

Also referred to as a remote workforce or remote teams, a distributed workforce is essentially a group of employees who are not co-located in a physical office or workspace.

Distributed staff rely heavily on technology and communication tools to effectively collaborate, communicate, and perform their job duties. While the specific technologies vary—depending on organizational preferences and requirements—some of the most common tools that facilitate off-site work are related to video conferencing, messaging, project management, cloud storage and file sharing, time tracking and productivity, employee engagement, and cybersecurity.

GCI is “all-in” when it comes to using a distributed workforce, says Chief Communications Officer Heather Handyside. GCI makes extensive use of a broad combination of collaboration, messaging, and video conferencing to support its distributed workforce, which includes many remote workers. “Our most robust tool is probably Microsoft Teams and many of its functions, including video conferencing and calls, messaging, Viva Engage, calendars, and task trackers,” she says.

Many of the teams at GCI also use the project management platform Asana to track the progress of a variety of GCI projects. GCI also leverages Microsoft OneDrive for cloud storage and virtual private networks to ensure secure and encrypted connections that help protect sensitive data when it’s being accessed by employees outside the office. “Our distributed workforce model has been nothing short of a resounding success,” Handyside says.

Hybrid work is also a preferred work model at MTA . The Palmer-based telecommunications company currently emphasizes flexibility, with nearly 80 percent of its workforce equipped for hybrid work setups, says IT Manager Diana Escobar. “We ensure they are equipped with the necessary hardware for office and field employees,” she says. “Furthermore, our commitment to improving field operations sees us testing new equipment frequently to enhance mobility and responsiveness.”

At MTA, Microsoft Teams is the backbone for fostering seamless collaboration and communication among its distributed workforce. It facilitates an array of essential functions such as meetings, information dissemination, file storage, third-party integrations, and team chats. “To ensure inclusivity and cater to diverse preferences and requirements, we provide in-person and virtual meeting options, thereby offering employees the flexibility to choose the mode that suits them best,” Escobar says.

In addition to relying on Microsoft 365 applications like Teams and Outlook for communication, MTA is enhancing its operational efficiency by upgrading its internal tool, which helps keep its employees informed and connected no matter where they are located. “We have introduced the MTA University platform to ensure that our team remains technologically proficient and adaptable,” Escobar explains. “This platform provides on-demand tech training opportunities for our employees to stay up to date with the latest technologies and tools, helping them excel in their roles within our distributed workforce model.”

Like many organizations, New Horizons Telecom employs a distributed workforce model based on the work environment. The Palmer-based company, which provides telecommunications infrastructure statewide, uses integrated project management and accounting tools to better support design and field installation as well as customer reporting. “We have adapted some of those tools to make more efficient and real-time reporting for installations,” says President and CEO Leighton Lee. “What that does is facilitate remote work for our administrative and professional personnel… If you have a good data stream coming from your field operations, you can stay out of the office longer.”

In general, the remote and hybrid employees at New Horizons Telecom rely on terrestrial or low-Earth orbit broadband for reliable data streaming, Microsoft Teams and Smartsheet for collaboration, and Sage Intacct accounting software.

New Horizons Telecom has more than 100 employees in Alaska, and about 30 percent of them work on a hybrid basis. Less than 10 percent of its employees are full-time remote, which includes those who work in accounting, engineering, project management, and even senior management.

Like many other companies, GCI was forced to dramatically change its business operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from only 5 percent of its employees working remotely to more than 70 percent being remote-eligible. “It started off as a bit of an experiment, but over the next couple years, the distributed workforce model proved to be incredibly successful both for the business and GCI employees,” Handyside explains.

Once employees settled into the rhythm of remote work, GCI found that productivity overall was just as good, if not better. “Several months into remote work, we checked in with our employees and found that more than 80 percent said their preference was to keep working from home full time with occasional office visits,” Handyside says. “Surveys found GCI employees were happier and had better work-life balance. They had more time to spend with their families, spent less on gas, and saved money on food because they ate at home. Many also felt more productive because they had fewer distractions during the day, and the outcomes spoke for themselves. So, instead of calling employees back to the office like many other companies, GCI leadership decided the company’s distributed workforce is here to stay.”

Global Credit Union, on the other hand, has employed a distributed workforce for many years, as it has branch locations in multiple states as well as a redundant operations center in Glendale, Arizona. However, the pandemic pushed that distribution model a step further. Currently, the credit union has employees in a variety of work environments, including 100 percent in-office, hybrid (who report in at a minimum one day per work week), and fully remote, according to Norman. “Today we have nearly 700 employees working fully in-office, more than 1,200 employees working in a hybrid scenario, and approximately 200 employees in a fully remote status,” she says.

Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic enforced a more distributed workforce model at New Horizons Telecom. “It basically was the last straw that pushed everybody to it,” Lee says. “It was what pushed us into a more digital stance.”

Global Credit Union learned a great deal about using technology over the course of the pandemic, and it implemented several programs to facilitate new work environments. Team members who are remote or hybrid were given access to technological resources both at home and in the office. “With anything of this nature, safety and security were our top priority, and we implemented tools to manage the additional work location, and we created specific guidelines to make sure our employees were safe and safely working,” Norman says.

As part of these guidelines, the credit union continues to have employees work from home when cases of the flu or common cold spike. It also conducts routine check-ins for people who are working on a remote or hybrid basis to help ensure their professional success.

GCI also made some adjustments to address the changing needs of its employees. While GCI employees are in favor of the distributed workforce model, many also say they miss water cooler conversations while they were in the office, Handyside says. “To help fill that gap, we created what we’ve called the Gravity Series to help our employees stay connected with each other and maintain what was traditionally a strong company culture,” she says. “The Gravity Series is largely virtual and gives us opportunities to talk about important topics and break down silos and get more interaction with our co-workers during work hours. It’s not just heavy topics, though. There are sessions on gardening, pets, fly tying, cooking, and more.”

Not only is GCI utilizing technology to support its distributed workforce but the company has completely reimagined how it uses office space—albeit with a 70 percent smaller footprint than before. Due to the nature of GCI’s business, some employees and departments still require space because of specialized equipment or the need for a secure environment. Individuals who wanted a quiet space to work outside of their homes needed hoteling desk space, where office resources are booked like hotel rooms.

To meet those needs, GCI launched its new Base Camp facility to enable the business to adapt to new ways of working, communicating, collaborating, and managing without traditional office and meeting spaces. The new facility is replete with sixty-five-plus hoteling desks, twenty-two conference rooms, eleven smart boards, seven quiet phone booths, three kitchens, several open collaborative spaces, a printing suite, and plenty of coffee. Handyside says, “It’s like GCI transplanted a Silicon Valley tech company campus and set it down in East Anchorage.”

New Horizons Telecom recently expanded its service offerings by adding its own IT services division. The new line of business grew out of the pandemic and the evolving need to substantiate internal cybersecurity for the company’s clients. “Those instigators led to the development of that ‘customer-facing’ service which, in turn, has made us more capable in our own turnkey delivery of communications infrastructure,” Lee explains.

Lee, who works away from the office about 10 percent of the time, says he personally prefers a hybrid work model. But this model is situational. Whether an employee works remotely often comes down to practicality: the nature of the business, role of the employee, and work being performed. “At certain points in the day, it’s easier to grab that guy across the hall than set up a meeting,” he says. “But if you’re always being grabbed, you may not have time to sit down and focus.”

Many employees prefer a distributed workplace model because it gives them more control and flexibility. “Specifically, I have observed that having more flexibility and more actual time not commuting or working a rigid schedule has led to a real reduction in stress from time pressure,” Lee says. “Having an employee not miss their child’s extracurricular event or having the ability to watch an aging relative while working isn’t necessarily tangible to the bottom line—but it’s immensely valuable. We also have a policy of allowing employees to handle critical personal business, regardless of the deliverable at hand, because there is real value to everyone in having those distractions addressed quickly. Home and work are tough to balance, and the world moves so fast now that we’ll take advantage of any way we can to make that balance easier.”

Global Credit Union has also seen the positive effects of leaning into a distributed workforce model. Its employees have reported a more positive connection and work-life balance through annual surveys and have expressed an appreciation for how quickly the credit union was able to embrace the new workplace environment, Norman says. “We also find that when we broaden the search area for certain roles, the pool of available applicants is much larger, giving us opportunities to hire the right individuals for the right roles,” she adds. “Even though we’ve been working for many years in a variety of different states, the last few years have allowed us to implement tools that have brought us all closer together through new technologies and communications and have given our organization the ability to extend the opportunity to work remotely or in a hybrid schedule.”