Megan Kirk has had a busy year. She has explored her hometown of New York City, spent the summer on a beach in Maine, dabbled in surf lessons, hiked the White Mountains in New Hampshire and joined her family in Pittsburgh for important milestones.
No, she didn’t take a sabbatical. She just happens to work at Veeva, where she said she feels empowered to prioritize what she values the most in life. Kirk is a senior manager in Veeva’s marketing analytics department. Her crew analyzes massive healthcare datasets to map patient pathways and determine if digital marketing is achieving desired outcomes.
About Veeva
Kirk said the team laughs often, which facilitates an “intrinsic creativity” that spurs their work. One might assume going digital had stifled this connection. However, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Kirk said Veeva didn’t miss a beat. The company immediately transitioned to remote work and experimented with new ways to stay connected.
“As I reflect on the uncertainty, fear and confusion of that time I am especially appreciative of how quickly Veeva was able to adapt. Work was one thing I didn’t have to worry about in a global pandemic,” said Kirk.
Today, Kirk said the company has developed a “special sauce” for collaboration using a mix of screen-sharing, recording, conferencing, short impromptu video chats and a Zoom game they call popcorn. These strategies have given Kirk the ability to get her job done and connect with her team while balancing new adventures outside of work.
Built In NYC talked to Kirk to learn more about what the work-anywhere policy looks like in practice.
Describe your experience working remotely for Veeva. What has been challenging, and how did your team overcome those challenges?
I was living and working in New York City in March 2020 as Covid-19 arrived and disrupted the world.
Every employee had the option of several monitors, webcams, Bose noise-canceling headphones, an ergonomic chair and a monthly stipend for Wi-Fi available to them. From a hardware perspective, the adjustment to working from home was easy!
However, Veeva is not a company where you sit down at your desk, put your head down and work away in a silo all day. Collaboration is a crucial part of our working model and success. In our NYC office, whiteboards are everywhere. We did a lot of sketching on those boards: breaking down a technical process and seeing how we could automate it, brainstorming how to set up an analysis to answer a question that a client has never asked us before, and training new team members. It took us several iterations of experimenting with meeting structure, Zoom features and scheduling to find that special sauce for collaborating in that same beautiful and powerful manner. Now, we do a lot of screen-sharing, recording, and conferencing in our new working world.
Have you been able to accomplish anything particularly interesting in your life due to your ability to work from anywhere?
I love New York City and our work-from-anywhere policy helps me love this city even more. I have the flexibility to balance my life with more outdoor experiences and family time. As a result of Veeva’s work-anywhere policy, I was able to enjoy the sunshine and time in nature, beyond Central Park. Now, I feel healthier and happier with this new balance of living environments.
As a born-and-raised Pittsburgher, I am still very much in love with that city and my large extended family, who live in the surrounding area. Working from anywhere has made extended time with my family over the holidays or important milestones a lot easier. It is nice when a work policy allows you to easily prioritize the aspects of life you value the most.
What other company policies have helped connect remote employees?
We have several informal initiatives that help us all stay connected regardless of if we are working remotely or in the office. Our Zoom meeting culture includes enabling video when meeting so we can see each other, read facial expressions and add a more human element to a virtual environment.
Our team laughs a lot. It makes a world of a difference to see each other and connect in that way as opposed to just seeing a text box with our names. We also implemented a culture of hopping on a quick Zoom to discuss or answer a question that historically would have been answered at our desks when we worked in proximity to one another. We’ll ping a Zoom link for a five- to 15-minute-long meeting to discuss or find a resolution and move forward with our days.
It makes a world of a difference to see each other and connect in that way as opposed to just seeing a text box with our names.”
Share a recent experience from working remotely that highlights your team’s remote culture. What happened, and why does it stand out to you?
It sounds silly and simple but we added 30 minutes to our weekly team meeting after all agenda topics have been covered. We use this time to play a game we call popcorn. Each week a new team member picks a topic and we pop around the Zoom responding to the question. Through this flex time, we’ve gotten to learn each other’s most played artist on Spotify and create a team playlist, share tasty recipes that are easy to make using an air fryer, and meet all of the team’s pets.
This weekly time stands out to me because we pivot from often intangible concepts or mathematical challenges in our work to these very human-centric topics. By connecting on a more personal level we bring laughter and intrinsic creativity to our work. It helps us brainstorm, innovate and solve problems we’ve never solved before.
By connecting on a more personal level we bring laughter and intrinsic creativity to our work.”
You’ve been with Veeva for a few years; what keeps you at the company?
Veeva is a very collaborative organization that moves quickly. Every day I get to help build a new solution or product. Every quarter when I look back at what we’ve accomplished, I feel an immense sense of pride and excitement for the next set of goals we’re reaching for.
We hire great people, have clear goals we work toward and deliver. It makes every week, quarter and year feel new. This framework for how we work and are organized not only keeps me satisfied and engaged, it has helped me build a solid foundation for an accelerated career.
How does this work align with your purpose?
My passion for work centers around people and problem-solving. I work on a fairly large team so my day is filled with people. I feel energized when working on ways to engage and develop talent on our team and cross-team collaboration.
As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, we are constantly challenged by our clients, both internal and external, to answer questions that have never been posed, such as, “How has Covid-19 impacted how people are reached in a digital environment and how does that relate to the health actions they take afterward?”
We are a curious bunch so we want to find the best way to answer these questions for our own sake but we’re also driven by the fact that our answers will help improve patient outcomes. At the end of the day, our analytics help patients, and it’s important to remember that. I am passionate about my job because I get to work with good people to solve important problems that ultimately help other people.
What aspect of the company do employees seem most genuinely excited about?
It is hard to pick, but I’d have to say it is the emphasis on consistent self-improvement. This focus comes to life in our work — if you see a process or workflow that is inefficient, you work with your team or product manager to improve it. It is very empowering, especially for our more junior team members, to have a voice and influence in creating a better work environment.
The focus on improvement also appears with our 2 percent employee development program, which allows for 2 percent of our salaries to be reimbursed on expenses used for personal development. As an employee, you can reflect on skills or areas you want to learn more about and purchase books, tune in to online courses, attend conferences and shape your course.
