The View from my Virtual Office
I’m eight years into my work-from-home experience, and about five years ago, much of the world joined me. Now, remote culture has settled into something less like a temporary workaround and more like a culture shift for many of us. For women, especially those balancing leadership ambitions with mom roles, the change is proving transformative, which for our founder, Bekah Carlson, was one of her values when starting Carlson Integrated. Flexibility ranks among the top reasons female professionals remain in or re-enter the workforce, and eight in ten employees now say remote options boost productivity and reduce burnout, with women citing sharper focus and lower stress at even higher rates than men.
Yet the story isn’t one-sided. Researchers warn that the benefits of location freedom vary, and many have come to see that it can degrade teams and efficiency when leaders neglect to build intentional systems that foster connection, equity, and recognition.
So, how do we make remote environments that flourish for our team of women here at CI?
Remote Culture is Shaped by Values
The values that we hold dear at CI must be a part of all we do with intentionality. This helps us translate what we would experience in an office all together into our daily interactions. These team values include but aren’t limited to fun, fairness, equity, friendship, empathy, encouragement, learning, accountability, teamwork, and excellence. One of the values we hold dearly is fun. To ensure these are a part of our culture, leaders within our team intentionally infuse these into meetings, dedicated email to check in, accessibility and more.
For instance, our team infuses fun and comradery into our remote meetings and activities on a monthly basis that help us get to know each other since we don’t have as many casual water cooler conversations. This or That lets us understand our team members hobbies and preferences, Team Jeopardy lets us find out fun facts and achievements, and Shark Tank allows us to have fast fun with ideas and learning how people think and communicate.
We have also found that our remote culture thrives on rituals and infrastructure—digital team meetings, collaborative project dashboards, informal chat channels—these translate into accessible touchpoints for our team to grow and improve. Additionally, we try to infuse cultural norms into everyday work life, which may look like the following:
1. Radical schedule transparency. When teammates block “school pickup” on a shared calendar, they normalize flexibility for everyone, not just parents.
2. Deliberate amplification. Virtual meetings can magnify interruptions. Adopting a norm where colleagues reinforce each other’s points (“Adding to Anna’s idea…”) and commending others on their wins out in the open.
3. Mentorship & Teamwork. Pairing younger team members with senior leads in chat threads and on projects to recreates the hallway chat, ensuring skills transfer and mutually beneficial relationships form.
4. One on One Meetings: Creating space to connect with one another on work and other issues in less formal settings yields better interactions and more accessibility to leadership, increasing accountability in a personalized setting.
These practices aren’t perks; they are productivity levers. Research shows that teams that report high trust and autonomy deliver projects faster and retain talent longer—a crucial edge as the competition for skilled digital workers intensifies. We want our environments and culture to not only feel great to our team, but yield excellence in what we produce for our clients.
________________________________________
Future Proofing our Remote Team
• Codify knowledge. Documenting decisions and SOPs in shared documents narrows the knowledge gaps and creates on ramps for development within the team and potential new hires.
• Invest in micro mentoring. Quarterly reverse mentoring sessions help nurture emerging voices and give us a better understanding of areas we can improve.
• Measure well being metrics. Conversations about workload, belonging, and meeting fatigue catch inequities before they morph into bigger issues.
• Champion transparency. Real women experience real life and when we normalize that in our senior staff and are open with the struggles of balancing life and work related endeavors, we help younger women learn from our experience and navigate their own with better boundaries.
• Virtual Office Hours. Creating space for connection is key to belonging. Working together on different projects as if you were in a shared office space can bridge the loneliness gap that some remote workers feel on teams and provide friendships and creative input to one another.
________________________________________
Conclusion — From Remote to Remarkable
Remote culture is no longer a sideline experiment; it is the frontier where tomorrow’s growth is taking shape. When designed with intentionality and equity, virtual workplaces unlock the full spectrum of women’s expertise—strategic thinking, empathetic leadership, operational rigor—and channel it into competitive advantage.
At Carlson Integrated, we’ve watched all digital, women led teams turn challenges into better client service, convert asynchronous brainstorming into breakthrough creative, and leverage schedule flexibility to outpace burnout. The lesson is clear: remote work doesn’t just accommodate women; it amplifies their impact—provided organizations build cultures that create the environments to see values and productivity thrive.
