Sara Bent

Working as part of a remote team comes with plenty of upsides.

We Hotjarians get to work from wherever we want, choose our own work schedules, and spend more time with friends and family. But remote work isn't always easy; for example, building a shared and inclusive culture with a distributed team takes a conscious effort.

Language plays a big part of that. Whether we realize it or not, our words can affect the people we care about, including those we work with. With team members from all over the planet, the way we address and talk to each other is important to make everybody feel included.

A few months back, we realized that a four-letter word we used a lot had the potential for making some team members feel excluded from the conversation—and this is the story of how we worked on gender-inclusive language at Hotjar and learned to say 'guys' less. 

If your team has suddenly found itself transitioning from working in an office to working at home, you’re likely facing many unexpected challenges. One of them is what to do with your new team members—how do you welcome and onboard a new team member when your company is remote?

I’m Sara, the People Ops Specialist with Hotjar. I’ve been working here for three and a half years and have amassed a lot of experience with onboarding team members remotely. We are continuously making improvements to our processes, but hopefully the lessons we’ve learned so far can help you face these challenges with your newly-remote team.