In this episode of Make Yourself @ Work, Matt Tverberg sits down with Casey Flores, Manager, Global Workplace at Cribl, the AI platform for Telemetry that helps IT and security teams manage, route, and analyze massive volumes of machine data. He shares how his team builds programming that earns the office visit, why he stopped obsessing over headcount, and how Cribl layers badge data with Envoy's presence integrations to get near-perfect occupancy accuracy.
In this episode of Make Yourself @ Work, Matt Tverberg sits down with Casey Flores, Manager, Global Workplace at Cribl, the AI platform for Telemetry that helps IT and security teams manage, route, and analyze massive volumes of machine data. Casey has spent about five years in facilities and building operations, building out offices in San Francisco, and now helping Cribl expand globally.
He shares how his team builds programming that earns the office visit, why he stopped obsessing over headcount, and how Cribl layers badge data with Envoy's presence integrations to get near-perfect occupancy accuracy. Some key lessons from the conversation include: occupancy is a number, but it can't be the only one, the best programming ideas come from the people who choose to show up, and every office needs its own playbook.
This episode is a must-listen for workplace and facilities leaders at remote-first or hybrid companies, employee experience professionals, and anyone rethinking how to measure the value of an office.
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Quotes
"I'm a big believer that if we as a workplace team are managing a remote-first company, occupancy is a number, but it cannot be the only one."
“ The thing that I realized is just people do have a desire to come into the office when there's good programming to bring them in.”
“ I really had to take my playbook, throw it out, and say, "Okay, what is best for Cribl?" Not for what I think Cribl should be, but for what the employees actually want.”
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Timestamps
(01:03) What Cribl does
(01:59) From bakery counter to workplace ops
(04:34) Running a remote-first workplace
(06:05) Programming that earns the visit
(09:04) Closing the feedback loop
(11:29) Why occupancy can't be the only metric
(16:44) What an intentional in-person day looks like
(22:54) How Cribl handles booking desks
(28:16) The data leadership actually cares about
(32:14) Getting near-perfect presence data with Envoy
(41:21) Advice for leaders stuck defending occupancy
(42:58) How Casey Makes Himself @ Work
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Links
Connect with the guest and host on LinkedIn!
[00:00:00] Matt Tverberg: Hi, welcome to Make Yourself @ Work. I am your host, Matt Tverberg. I'm very excited to introduce our guest today. Today I'm joined by Casey Flores from Cribl. And a little bit of background on Casey. He has been working in facilities and building operations for about five years, has a lot of experience building out offices here in San Francisco, and is now helping his organization expand into other sites throughout the globe.
And what Cribl does is they're an AI platform for telemetry that helps organizations manage, route, and analyze massive volumes of machine and telemetry data. So with that being said, Casey Flores, my man, nice to see you. Thank you so much for being here, and I'd love to just start there. Like, why don't you tell me just a little bit about the organization and-
[00:01:01] Casey Flores: Yeah
[00:01:02] Matt Tverberg: how you got involved there.
[00:01:03] Casey Flores: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And you hit the nail on the head. We are the AI platform for telemetry, and we partner with IT and security teams of big enterprise companies out there and allow them to have control over their data like they haven't before. And, uh, we're here to provide a solution that allows vendor-agnostic tools to come into their portfolio, and, you know, Cribl is really just the one-stop shop for all data management solutions.
[00:01:27] Matt Tverberg: Have you learned more about data-
[00:01:28] Casey Flores: Definitely ...
[00:01:29] Matt Tverberg: than you ever thought you would?
[00:01:30] Casey Flores: Absolutely. Yeah. No. I, I've, uh, in these past few years at Cribl, I've been soaking up a lot just being in our offices and hearing people chat about it. It's definitely a whole new world for me, but one that I am fascinated by and one that I'm very excited to be helping Cribl grow and expand.
[00:01:44] Matt Tverberg: I know you've spent majority of your career in workplace. Yeah. And you'd mentioned from building the whole front desk experience at Samsara to now helping build out Cribl's experience across multiple offices. Uh, what, what pulled you into this type of work?
[00:01:59] Casey Flores: This is actually my favorite topic to talk about because I come from a background of customer service.
Like, I was... Right before I joined Samsara, I was assistant manager at a bakery in San Francisco, and I just had years of customer service experience. And right place, right time, I got an opportunity to start with Samsara as a contractor, and I was shocked to realize how much of my customer service experience directly translated to workplace.
I mean, we have customers to serve here. We, our employees are our customers. And how much of that skill set really just immediately hit the ground running there. And the passion just hasn't stopped since then. And, and I think the thing that has just surprised me the most is just being able to make a difference in people's everyday lives.
As small things, it could be, like, snack selection here. I see you guys got some great stuff here. But meal catering, the whole experience, just being able to enable people to do the best work that they can possibly do has been such a really calling of mine, and I've really been grateful every day that I've been a part of it.
[00:02:57] Matt Tverberg: 5:00 a.m.s at the bakery, is that how the-
[00:02:59] Casey Flores: Yes, early morning starts at the bakery. Yes. I'm, I'm grateful that I'm not waking up quite as early for that, but, uh, I have been always an ear- early riser, so it works out for me.
[00:03:08] Matt Tverberg: As someone who also is, you know, at the end of the day, I'm in customer service. Right.
I'm a customer success leader here at Envoy, and I'd love to hear from you. Like, what, what do you think is, like, the golden rule or the key thing of Of customer service in general. Yeah. And what you maybe took from that experience and that regardless of the service role, what, what would you say is tried and true?
[00:03:33] Casey Flores: Yeah. No, I, I think for me, my philosophy, and you'll hear this a lot in customer service, is, you know, I- the answer is never no. I'm always gonna find a way to find an alternative solution to what you're looking for. If I can't give you the exact thing that you're looking for, the, the problem doesn't stop there.
I'm gonna keep going and find a way. What is the best next possible experience, whatever the quest is, to come in to make sure that you're satisfied and feeling supported by our workplace team. So I think that has been one thing that has definitely translated over from, from previous experiences, you know.
[00:04:06] Matt Tverberg: So a little bit about, uh, Cribl, and I explained kind of what the company does. Ultimately, they are building this infrastructure for large enterprises to handle a, like, an explosion in, of data. For people outside of this world, what does a remote first workplace leader, 'cause you're a remote first- Mm-hmm
company. Yeah. What does that actually mean to your day to day? Yeah. Given that the, the company is remote.
[00:04:34] Casey Flores: Yeah, no. Remote first for us is, you know, we use this phrase, uh, internally a lot, remote first, but not only. And our company Cribl does a really good job of taking these moments to really foster in-person connection in a remote-first environment.
So our offices, we have one in San Francisco and one in London, are these places for teams to come together and collaborate. And we're, you know, seeing constant teams coming in and out of our door. You know, engineering, finance, sales, whoever it is, coming in and collaborate, uh, collaborating on site. So I think the, the way that that manifests is yes, no one is required to come into our offices, but we're seeing people all day, every day from, from all areas of the globe, which is extremely rewarding on my end 'cause my, my customers change every day, and I get to meet all different types of business departments and see all ty- types of functions come in, and it's been really unique.
Very different from what I'm used to in my previous, in my previous work too, so I'm sorry, it was quite different. And so at Cribl, we are just, uh, as a workplace team, we are constantly trying to think if our main interaction with people is coming in to do off-sites and, and you know, we do have a small Bay Area contingency of people who come in as regulars, like, what's the best way we can serve them?
And it's not the same answer that I was using my entire career. My, that answer had to change quite a couple number of times in the past couple years.
[00:05:52] Matt Tverberg: And how are you remaining nimble then in that, on that front, given that-
[00:05:56] Casey Flores: Yeah ...
[00:05:57] Matt Tverberg: the occupancy could be different from day to day, and just how do you try to add predictability to the unpredictability?
[00:06:05] Casey Flores: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's honestly one that I, I kinda pushed up against for a long time, switching from my previous company to Cribl. And the thing that I realized is just people do have a desire to come into the office when there's good programming to bring them in. So as a workplace team, I'm always pushing our teams to come up with fun programming to make sure that there's a reason to come in the office, of course, voluntarily.
A great example, we've been airing the World Cup games recently, and that has, it's been so awesome seeing people come in and grabbing their lunch and s- huddling around the projector and watching the game. Stuff like that, just trying to think of little touches that we can do to make sure that if you're coming here, that you're gonna have a good time and there's gonna be a reason to bring you in.
[00:06:43] Matt Tverberg: You s- have a team still, still in the hunt?
[00:06:46] Casey Flores: I, you know, I was trying to come into this neutral, but, um, team Norway right now is, you know-
[00:06:50] Matt Tverberg: Hey,
[00:06:51] Casey Flores: I'm Norwegian ... yeah,
[00:06:52] Matt Tverberg: yeah So we're the boat.
[00:06:52] Casey Flores: Yeah, Haaland is, is great. It's been fun to watch.
[00:06:55] Matt Tverberg: We've been d- having some viewing parties here too, and- Yeah ... nothing like the World Cup to bring people together.
It's true. It's true. You know? It is. It's been very fun to watch. So Instagram's CEO called five days in person a winning culture But with Cribl, as I'd mentioned, that, that you're remote first. So when office isn't required, it has to earn your visit, and you were alluding to it a little bit, like the World Cup.
How, how have you seen success in that? And you also mentioned a little bit about, like, the leaders helping contribute to these events and the types of things going on in the office. How are you, I guess, holding them to that and, and building a culture around these types of activations, I guess you could call them?
[00:07:44] Casey Flores: Yeah. No, I think it's a, a, a really good point, and I think You know, as we are thinking of programming, obviously getting leadership involved and, and having them sponsor events and, and, you know, um, in my first, uh, year at Cribl, we did, like, a video game tournament that was, uh ... had some execs, uh, participate, which was really fun to see.
And we're always thinking about ways to bring them in or, or bring them part into our c- programming. But a lot of our, our leadership is Bay Area based too, so you'll see them walking around the halls, which is, you know, really great to stop and chat with them whenever they have a free second. It's interesting, the, the, the shift from, you know, being in office to remote first, and that
the difference between a culture that is a little bit more, "Hey, you should be here," versus, you know, you, you don't ... "You can work from wherever you want." It has really put the onus on us as a workplace team to make sure that those who do choose to participate, to really make sure that they're having a good time, and that was actually the big shift I was talking about going from previous companies to new one, is I need to stop worrying about how many people are coming in every day, and, uh, we'll probably talk about this later, but, like, the idea that, you know, we're obsessed with numbers and how many people are coming in, and more focusing on the people who are coming in and making sure they're having a good time, 'cause that is where the real, I think, value lies on our side, is making sure that we're serving that customer base first, the ones who want it, you know?
[00:09:04] Matt Tverberg: And with that, like, uh, how are you facilitating feedback, I guess, after these types of things? I'm sure that that's an ongoing ... so you can e- evolve.
[00:09:14] Casey Flores: Yeah. All the time. And, and we invite feedback constantly, and I'm very thankful that our employee base does so much on a frequent basis. They're always coming to me or posting in channels.
But we do two surveys a year, two main surveys a year, where we invite feedback, and then I ... Well, and one thing I'm a big passionate supporter of is after that survey is done, we post a recap and a summary and- Mm ... kinda give people a sneak peek, and if we can, as much as humanly possible, give a timeline of when changes are happening.
So not only are we soliciting the feedback, but we like to give people a sense of, like, your feedback is not just, you know, going into the void. Right. It's, it's going somewhere, and it's ... And I, I've said this to many of our employees. Y- if you put something in that feedback survey, I promise you we will read it and consider it.
Nothing is ever tossed away. All feedback is important and necessary. Actually, a lot of our best changes have come from those feedback surveys. Uh, stuff that I didn't even think about, which is why I think they're important to do them.
[00:10:07] Matt Tverberg: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, the survey's only as powerful as the action that comes from it too.
[00:10:11] Casey Flores: Exactly.
[00:10:12] Matt Tverberg: That's awesome that you take the additional steps that I think is required to Have people believe that change will happen.
[00:10:19] Casey Flores: Right.
[00:10:20] Matt Tverberg: Yes. I think that that's probably the biggest piece that's missing from a lot of feedback gathering surveys- Yeah ... is there's no a- action taken.
[00:10:26] Casey Flores: Right, right. You just do it, and then you kind of forget about it.
Yeah. And you're like, "Wait a minute. Didn't... Wasn't there a survey a little bit while ago?" But no, I, I, I think it's important that a survey kind of has two components, the before and the after. It's like, sure, you know, try and get people to f- submit as much feedback as possible. I'm happy to say every time we've done a survey, we've gotten more engagement every time we do it.
That's great. And I think that's largely in part because our employees realize that their action is then, you know, taken into stuff that they can tangibly see in the, in the office, which is really cool.
[00:10:56] Matt Tverberg: Yeah.
[00:10:56] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:10:56] Matt Tverberg: They d- more inclined to give feedback when they see the things that they've asked for previously-
[00:11:01] Casey Flores: Right
[00:11:01] Matt Tverberg: come to fruition.
[00:11:02] Casey Flores: Yes.
[00:11:03] Matt Tverberg: Yeah. A
[00:11:03] Casey Flores: lot of good snack recommendations.
[00:11:05] Matt Tverberg: Oh, it's, it's crazy what the food will do- Yeah ... for feedback.
[00:11:08] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:11:09] Matt Tverberg: So a lot of workplace teams, including ours, we get measured on occupancy and, you know, we are a workplace technology, so being in office, obviously super tried and true to our culture, and we love that.
But trying to move past that, like, what do you think's wrong with occupancy as a s- as being, like, a scorecard?
[00:11:29] Casey Flores: Yeah. I've been talking about this a lot with other colleagues who run remote first companies, and this is a big topic of discussion just internally. But I'm a big believer that if we as a workplace team are managing a remote first company, occupancy is a number, but it cannot be the only one.
I think, like I kinda alluded to before, I really like drilling into more employee satisfaction surveys and making sure that there's avenues for them to submit feedback to us to make sure that they're... Like we were just talking about with surveys. But also a number that I've been kind of thinking about a little bit differently is because I mentioned that we are such an offsite focused office, I was really fascinated about how much our offices are being used to offset costs that we might do offsites in hotels, and where they charge a lot for AV and food, and all these little things where we can maybe, you know, swing offsites to be more in our HQ focus.
How much money are we saving if we're trying to plan an offsite HQ as opposed to somewhere else? Those are the types of monetary differences that I think actually make a pretty actionable impact here at the company, where if we show that, hey, if you host an, uh, an event at our HQ, you're gonna get help with catering, you're gonna get help with access, you know, AV support.
You're gonna get the full treatment from our team, and your, you know, the offsite attendees will be more happy, and you won't be, you know, at a hotel. You'll be surrounded by Cribl branding and all this stuff. I think we've made a pretty good case to show that, you know, planning an offsite HQ is... There's a lot of value in it.
[00:12:59] Matt Tverberg: Yeah. It's... I almost think about it as maybe an office is treated more like almost a stadium or an event space where-
[00:13:06] Casey Flores: Yeah ... they're
[00:13:06] Matt Tverberg: measured on activation.
[00:13:08] Casey Flores: Definitely.
[00:13:09] Matt Tverberg: Not necessarily, like, how many butts are in the seats, but- What have, what has been the impact of the events that we've held over the, the course of the year?
[00:13:18] Casey Flores: Definitely. I would consider them that the space was built for in a collaborative environment. And I think if you walked into our offices, you would see that there's a lot of spaces around the office. There's a lot more lunch seating, a lot more- Mm ... you know, tables and place couches are facing each other, people to lean in and kinda collaborate.
And I think it's cool to see that our office philosophy has really been built into our, you know, design of our office too, which I think it's, I think there's a very one-to-one correlation there.
[00:13:45] Matt Tverberg: And one final thought I'd love to hear from you on is You know what, when a leader would maybe ask, who insists on seeing a building as full to justify the cost, but you were kind of talking about some of the other metrics.
[00:13:59] Casey Flores: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:59] Matt Tverberg: Like, what, what would you say to them to justify the spend if it's not a full office all the time?
[00:14:05] Casey Flores: Yeah, no, als- it's... That's another thing that we talk a lot, a lot about, and I already alluded to, like, off-sites and how much that can be a cost for a business if they're doing constantly in hotels or, you know, temporary event locations where a lot of pricing is very expensive, and you have to do everything piecemeal.
But also, I think, you know, in, in a post-COV- COVID world, I think w- there's a natural kind of concentration happening of, like, yeah, I don't know if Envoy has this, but, like, a Tuesday through Thursdays, like, core days. I know you guys are four days a week, but I think our core days are very busy in the office, and that happens naturally without any kind of, you know, any kind of mandate or anything around that, and that's because people genuinely wanna be here, or they have an offsite here.
And it's really interesting to see how our Tuesday through Thursday contingency has cons- continued to rise since we've started and since our workplace team has really gone in there and started fostering programming and, and, and snacks and meal stuff. You know, we've been doing so much stuff to make sure that when people are coming through our doors on Tuesday through Thursday, there's something to engage with.
[00:15:14] Matt Tverberg: Mm.
[00:15:14] Casey Flores: And I would kinda say that, you know, I'm pretty pleased with how the results have been just from, just from employee retention base.
[00:15:24] Matt Tverberg: Right.
[00:15:24] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Matt Tverberg: Yeah, that's awesome to see the fruits of your labor, I guess. Yes.
[00:15:28] Casey Flores: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is very satisfying as a workplace leader. It really is.
[00:15:32] Matt Tverberg: I, I think people, for the most part, I won't speak on the behalf of 100% remote people, but I think a lot of people were tired of being at home all the time, so having these really great places to go and, and do your best work-
[00:15:47] Casey Flores: Yeah
[00:15:47] Matt Tverberg: uh, is really what people are, are after. Uh, so kudos to you for, for building that type of experience at Cribl.
[00:15:55] Casey Flores: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, to... As a callback to what Cribl is a f- as a product is a flexible solution for IT and security companies. I love that our company embodies that value in their, in their, you know, work policy.
We allow people to work from wherever they wanna work, but you're right. There are people who do love working from the office, and I wanna make sure that that contingency is taken care of when they do come. Honestly, they're the best people to kind of come up with programming for, 'cause they genuinely want it.
They're there- Right ... 'cause they wanna get out of the house, like you said, or maybe they have construction going on next door, and they w- need a place that's quiet to, to take a call. Like, this, this contingency of, of employees has been just a joy to, to get to know and, and hopefully continue to improve, improve their, their work.
[00:16:37] Matt Tverberg: Awesome.
[00:16:37] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:16:37] Matt Tverberg: Thanks for that, Casey.
[00:16:38] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:16:44] Matt Tverberg: So you talk about the offices being a place to bring people together with intention. What does an intentional in-person day look like?
[00:16:50] Casey Flores: Yeah, that's a good question. It definitely has to start with, you know, not just there being a place to sit or, or having a monitor at your desk, but I, I would, I would say what is the complete experience of an employee coming into our offices?
Is their entrance into the office, you know, frictionless? Is it easy? When they get in, they're... the kitchen is the first thing they see, so there's a good stuff to attract them to, "I'm gonna stop in the kitchen, grab a drink," or, "I'm gonna grab a bar or something before lunch." And when they go and, and go into the seating area, is the area, you know, distractionless?
Is it... Is there something where they can go, set up, put on their headphones, and really do their best work? I think these kind of things, which you'll probably find in common with other offices too, but, like, for us, I think as a remote first office we're, you know... We wanna make sure that when they come to our offices, they're generally coming 'cause there's a reason why they wanna get out of their house.
So they find that they do their best work in person, surrounded by maybe even colleagues who are sitting next to them. Maybe they can take off their earbuds and kind of ask a question to their neighbor. That type of environment I think that we're trying to foster, and I think we do pretty well, is, is a reason why I think people might intentionally come here as opposed to, you know, not.
[00:18:01] Matt Tverberg: Do you find teams coordinating their in-person days, and did that happen organically, or did you have any technology in place to help them do that?
[00:18:11] Casey Flores: Yes, we, we did. Um, and there's, I, there's several groups I can think of who kind of... We have lunches on Tuesday and Wednesday, so naturally Tuesdays and Wednesdays are gonna be our busiest office days.
So it's very interesting seeing different teams picking different days to come in and, and kinda have lunch and, and be able, just to be able to... We have a patio in our office, so be able to go outside, get some fresh air, and spend that time to collaborate. And, and that's another thing too that I, I, I've realized that there's a real opportunity to not...
L- Like, collaboration is very important, and I wanna make sure that when they're coming here, there's... They can do their best work, but also making sure we have happy hours, board game events, just things that get them outside of their normal day-to-day work stuff and ma- you know, let them, you know, turn off their brain for half an hour, an hour, get reset and relaxed and do something fun so that they can go back and do their best work.
So yeah, definitely. I've been... It's been very, it's been very rewarding to see groups kind of naturally start forming and, and kind of picking their own routines, and it just so happened to line up with other people. And they might even actually be in different departments, but, you know- Right ... they naturally gravitate towards, you know, similar days.
It's... We definitely have our regulars. We have a, a good cast of regulars, and that, seeing that cast grow and grow has been really cool.
[00:19:25] Matt Tverberg: Yeah, you, you've really done a great job of describing what and how you draw people in bef- besides mandating them in. Yeah. You have any other thoughts besides what you've already spoken about, about, you know, where's that line between drawing people in and mandating it?
[00:19:40] Casey Flores: Right. I, I mean, ultimately, we're a remote first company, and we value the idea that you can choose to where you wanna do your best work. And as a workplace leader, I think as we are... What's on top of my mind is as we are getting older, how can we as a team start thinking of programming that loops in more of our employee base?
I think- foundation was let's, you know, get the people who are coming into the office, make sure that they're having a great time. But there's a whole remote workforce out there, and, and now we're starting to think of, now we're getting into fun, like, hybrid ideas where we might- Mm ... do something in the office and broadcast it out to the entire company.
You know, something where, you know, oh, I can't make it to the office, but there's a live stream going on. We're starting to come up with more programming like that. We d- we just recently did a, an office wellness week that was a whole week of programming around rest and relaxation and wellness, and we live-streamed out this, uh, it was like a yoga morning relaxation thing where you could follow along from home if you weren't able to be in the office.
And the pers- the instructor was actually with us in person, and we streamed it out to the entire team. So that is our next frontier of programming, and the thing that I'm most excited about, and I'm, I'm encouraging our team to start thinking about more, is, is how can we start... You know, we've, we've gotten a pretty good system going with the people who do come.
How can we start bringing in some more people who, who might not have the opportunity to come in?
[00:21:00] Matt Tverberg: Cool. Yeah. And I'm sure that now you have some new, interesting problems to figure out with your AV team, like how do we now set- Yes ... your space up to do these types of experiences?
[00:21:11] Casey Flores: Luckily, we have some tech already in place to do that, but yeah, absolutely.
It's, it's, we're definitely trying to gauge how much we can do within our space, but turns out it's quite a bit, and we, I think we have a lot of room to grow within what we have.
[00:21:22] Matt Tverberg: And remind me what the, like, full capacity is of your space here in San Francisco?
[00:21:26] Casey Flores: Um, uh, I think the full capacity is somewhere in between 100 and 120 of- Okay
but we're not, we're not in that, in that realm. We're, we only have 12 desks in our office, so- Okay ... so we're really lean into more of the collaborative seating- Wow. That's a great- ... than, than we do- Great picture ... than we do- Yeah ... in the, the, the seated kind of capacity. Got it. Yeah.
[00:21:46] Matt Tverberg: Makes sense. So a little bit about how maybe your CEO thinks about things.
Mm-hmm. Clint, he's been super clear that agentic AI is, it's here to stay. It's reshaping our work. A lot of the discussion around that is because they're doing 5, 10x the work in an automated fashion than humans do. It's about infrastructure on the data side versus the physical side, which is what you kind of lead.
But if part of the workforce is now AI agents that never book a desk or walk through the door, then what, what's the a- office actually for?
[00:22:20] Casey Flores: Mm-hmm. Well, the good, the good thing is, is as our company is the AI platform for telemetry, we need people to build that, and a lot of those teams are actually coming into our office.
You know, a lot of our AI teams who, who deal with that are, are, you know, physical members of our office who come in and see that. So I would say, you know, it's actually those types of teams who are helping build these platforms for other, you know, IT and security teams to use, has been really fascinating to see because, you know, I, I would say they, they need a place to build that stuff.
And what better place than, you know, if they happen to be in San Francisco and they wanna come to the office, they have that choice to do so.
[00:22:54] Matt Tverberg: And you've mentioned it, you run two offices Yeah ... San Francisco, London, and you have a hot desking model there, and you use QR codes to book the desks- Mm-hmm
instead of, like, hardware How did you choose and land on that-
[00:23:09] Casey Flores: Yeah ...
[00:23:09] Matt Tverberg: as your setup?
[00:23:10] Casey Flores: This is a, this is a fresh new program. This is, like, two weeks ago that we just launched this. And we landed on QR codes 'cause this was, uh, in our view, the easiest, most frictionless experience that we could provide. You know, uh, it's, it's great that, you know, Envoy allows us to, to book desks on demand.
So quickly someone bring out their phone, there's a QR code to download the Envoy app. Boom, just scan it to download the desk. I think it's been amazing to kind of see our employees quickly adopt to this new system. That was actually a concern of mine, is this is a new change, change management, and kinda teaching a new process, and I think Envoy makes that pretty simple for us to get it up and running.
Um, yeah.
[00:23:49] Matt Tverberg: That's awesome, and for those that come in, and maybe the desks are all at capacity, are you finding that they're just using more of the collaborative spaces and just kind of organically being made drawn to their teammates- Yeah ... or?
[00:24:00] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:24:00] Matt Tverberg: And what have you... What is maybe some mention that, that's, that you've observed?
[00:24:05] Casey Flores: It's definitely one of those, with, with only being 12 desks, I think there is definitely a little bit of a, a need... You know, there's some employees who might not get one. But one thing that we've started doing, and something that we've been reinforcing, is that we bought, um, external monitors that we rent out at front desk.
So if you didn't get one, you can always set up at one of our lunch station areas, bring a portable monitor, set it onto the thing, onto the desk, and give yourself a little mobile desk wherever you need to go. You know, it's not quite a, a sit-stand desk, but it's the next best thing we can offer you. But yeah, no, that's definitely been something that we've been keeping an eye on, is making sure that people feel that they have a good place to work.
And, and with 12 desks, that can be a challenge. But it, it's definitely one of those things where we realize that people generally do like sitting in areas that, uh, allow for social, communal, natural aspects to happen. Like lately it's been the World Cup is... We've got on all day long, so it's been very interesting, people seen using our, even our all, our all-hands area, just kind of sitting in there, kind of coming and going from the games, uh, is a great example of just...
Our seating is very dynamic, and it's many different types of it, and I think our employees have gotten used to this idea of there's different places to work for, work, you know, work, um, at, and that they find that, you know, they can change their scenear- scenery at any point throughout the day, you know?
[00:25:21] Matt Tverberg: It almost sounds like your front desk is like a, a library of sorts- Yeah
where you're checking. Have you found any challenges in, like, maintaining and organizing your inventory of gear?
[00:25:32] Casey Flores: Always, alwa- it's the eternal struggle of a workplace versus making sure that your, your cupboards are organized, and it's, it's ... I always say, and this is the same as Samsara too, is you always have to be organizing 'cause you'll look away for a second and it gets
You know, it's very easy for the whirlwind to happen, and you're like, "Wait a minute, I just organized that a few days ago." So my... Yeah, I think our direction for the team is always be or, you know, have a day, a Friday, always make sure that things are getting back to where they used to go. You know, some- something's left on a desk, clean it up.
It's an active thing that us workplace members have to do on a constant basis. Sure. I'm sure, sure other workplace team members would know what I'm talking about.
[00:26:06] Matt Tverberg: Are, are you doing anything to also ... As speaking of World Cup, I love seeing, like, Japan leave the stadiums cleaner than they found them. Mm-hmm.
You know? And I was always raised, like, put things back where- Right ... you find them.
[00:26:18] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:26:19] Matt Tverberg: And I know, you know, we get busy. How are you trying to, I guess, build and educate the company around that, that type of maybe culture?
[00:26:27] Casey Flores: Yeah. No, it's... And this is something we talk a lot about, too, where, you know, in certain select areas we have some light signage to help guide, um, s- some best practices.
We also do a weekly Friday comm in our main office channel, and we also do a monthly newsletter. And we really started leveraging those places as where we can just every week or every month put a couple reminders just for a little repetition to make sure that there's places that we're reminding employees of best practice for the offices.
But luckily our, our employees are great, and they do understand that this is a shared common space, and that we treat it well and, and, you know, n- not a lot of friction there, which has been really... I'm very thankful for and, and very minimal signages need to be posted or anything like that. Our employees are really great and responsible.
That's
[00:27:10] Matt Tverberg: great. Yeah. Do- are you using, like, a digital signage way or?
[00:27:13] Casey Flores: Yeah. Yes, we are. A combination of both, actually. We use- We have, um, digital signage dashboards that we put in the office, I think last year, and, and, you know, some, some sign- you know, regular hanging signs.
[00:27:25] Matt Tverberg: And other teams, I'm assuming, like, ask if they can get content on the digital signage?
Yes. And, like, what... Does that process come through you all?
[00:27:33] Casey Flores: We do have a, we do have a process around that, and, and we've, you know, we've advertised it out to our, you know, marketing teams in particular saying, like, "Hey, if, you know, we've got a customer coming through the office, you wanna throw up, like, a sign," we have a very easy access to our dashboard.
And actually, we kind of manage it with our IT team, which has been great that, you know, we have ultimately the power to tick stuff on and off, but they are there as a support team, make sure that we're not messing anything up too badly as not the IT professionals. And, uh, yeah, no, we definitely advertise it out there, and it's, it's been a great...
Honestly, talk about another place for putting out reminders and stuff. Using that rotating signage is a really good place- Sure ... to get messages out there. Yeah.
[00:28:11] Matt Tverberg: Yeah. It's... And when it's subtle, you know-
[00:28:14] Casey Flores: Yes ... it's effective. Yeah.
[00:28:16] Matt Tverberg: So you've talked a lot about- How you're justifying the office in all of these creative ways through organizing events and ju- and, you know, really just making it a welcoming place for your employees.
And I'm sure a lot of that then leads to discussions with leadership about how the office is being used. Curious, like, what they're curious about and what data you present to them around, you know, the, the office and how it's being used, and how you're painting a picture of how effective the spaces are.
[00:28:50] Casey Flores: A big thing at, at Cribble, and, and I think goes for all workplace teams, is making sure that you're keeping track of your data and making sure that you're reporting the right numbers, and that is something that I think took me a little bit of time as compared to where I was before at Simsari to figure out what those metrics are.
So I think, you know, a little bit, um, here we've kinda realized, you know, I'm more interested in reporting some of the numbers around, you know, how our lunch satisfaction is going, how many lunches we're ordering or, you know, how many, uh, on our core lunch days, what's the correlation of attendance versus non-core days?
Just more data that matters for us, data that I think is a little bit more of a compelling story than, you know, showing what maybe our Mondays and Friday numbers are, which, you know, I'm sure a lot of offices all over the SF area are probably having small Monday and Friday a- attendance. I don't think that's as interesting 'cause it's pretty common.
I think what's more interesting is on the days that we are trying to attract people, days that we have events, that's another one, like what's attendance like on those days, uh, versus, you know, satisfaction reports that we're getting on those days versus non-event days. Just trying to find those little levers of, you know, f- flip for these certain types of data reports to give them the most accurate sense of what's going on in our offices on a day-to-day basis.
[00:30:06] Matt Tverberg: And the trends that you've been seeing in the data, are you then making downstream decisions based on that data? So, like lunches is a great one. A lot of people leverage their Envoy data to essentially offset cost savings- Mm-hmm ... in w- we don't order too much food now because we know with a pretty close degree of accuracy of- How busy the office is gonna be.
Are you making decisions like that?
[00:30:34] Casey Flores: Yeah, I mean, I, I think one of our direct- we, we- not to get too in the weeds, but we, we were ordering for people before when I started. We switched to Forkable right now, which is a order on your own system.
[00:30:44] Matt Tverberg: Okay.
[00:30:44] Casey Flores: That was something that we realized, you know, as our Bay Area contingency was growing and growing, we need to give the hands of ordering into the control of the employees to make sure that, exactly your point, that we're not ordering too much or too little.
So that came directly from just listening to the community and listening to the, our employees and saying, you know, you know, "I'd love to give you a, a more choice in your lunch selection and, and easier on our end on the operational logistical side, that we don't have to be there guessing how many people are coming into the office each day."
But a lot of what we're seeing from the data that we are reporting is we are trying to lean into those days that we're noticing people are grafting onto. I actually think when we, we did a, when we launched our second lunch day, we originally had one, we graduated to two lunch days, which was great. When we launched our second lunch day, that was something that was directly given to us by employees.
We kind of put a note out there saying, like, "Between Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, what days would you like to come in for a second lunch day?" And it was very clearly it was, you know, this day was gonna be the one that we were gonna do it. And that was a decision that we did not make, but the data helped by the numbers that we're doing and from going before from employee survey and getting their immediate em- you know, uh, feedback in, they helped us make that decision, not, not just us making it in a vacuum.
[00:31:58] Matt Tverberg: Awesome.
[00:31:58] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Matt Tverberg: Well, I think you keep going back to the, your employees are your customers- Mm-hmm ... and you're doing a great job of acting and, and gathering the, the feedback from your customers, so which, you know-
[00:32:10] Casey Flores: Yeah ... customer service
[00:32:11] Matt Tverberg: 101
[00:32:11] Casey Flores: at its best. It really is. Yes, yes.
[00:32:14] Matt Tverberg: Well, you all are an Envoy customer, and I know your team put a ton of effort- Mm-hmm
into getting one of our presence integrations spun up. And for folks that may not know that, we have ways to gather occupancy numbers without the employees having to do anything or manually sign in. With that in mind, what pushed you to invest into the effort to get one of those presence integrations stood up, that the employees don't have to think about?
[00:32:43] Casey Flores: Mm.
[00:32:44] Matt Tverberg: Like, was that a workplace call, a security call? Was it a collaborative thing?
[00:32:48] Casey Flores: It was actually a workplace call, and a lot of our efforts with Envoy recently to get some of that presence control stuff up and running in, in different ways is we really wanted to, like, how can we capture some... You know, data's not perfect, and tailgating, uh, is a big thing.
You know, is a... It can be a big problem sometimes. If we have big groups of people coming in for off-sites, one person badges in, it's kinda hard to capture all that data. Some of the efforts that Envoy has been helping us, making sure that, you know, we're capturing all that, all the other people who happen to sneak in through that, through, you know, through the door.
And we can do our best to try and curb tailgating as much as humanly possible, but I think most workplace people know it's kinda hard to do it unless you have some real physical things to stop it. So this was a way for us to just make sure our data is even more tighter and more accurate. For the most part, we always knew the ballpark, but Envoy has allowed us to get even more accurate with our data, which has saved us so much time in manual, like, going down, 'cause, like, I think I saw five people come in.
Okay, like, did, did they get marked down? No, they didn't. And just wasting a lot of time doing that, and, and now we don't have to do that, which is great. It's been saving us a bunch of time.
[00:33:54] Matt Tverberg: So would you say for other workplace leaders the, like, having two different signals... So it sounds like we're ga- gather the badge data- Mm-hmm
and then if they can supplement it with something like what you all did, which is the Okta integration-
[00:34:06] Casey Flores: Yeah ...
[00:34:06] Matt Tverberg: uh, that's really been the, the sweet spot for you all.
[00:34:10] Casey Flores: Absolutely. And, and I, I will say, you know, a, a big topic of conversation amongst workplace, workplace folks and colleagues is how are they leveraging AI in their, in their workforce?
It's been really great being able to pull a report from Envoy, take it to our badge system data, say, "Hey, compare and contrast these two. Okay. Who's, you know, already covered in one of them? Who isn't?" And that has been a ba- a way that we've been leveraging AI to help us save time, is, you know, let's not manually pull badge reports anymore.
Let's- Sure ... let's have AI help us with that, and we don't have to sit there going through spre- spreadsheets anymore. Huge time saver. Yeah.
[00:34:43] Matt Tverberg: Amazing.
[00:34:44] Casey Flores: But yes, two data sources is... If you can do more, that'd be great, but yeah, two, two is a good start. Yeah.
[00:34:50] Matt Tverberg: Yeah. We've been s- seeing that a lot, that, you know, we can get in the 90 percentile with a single signal.
Mm. But there's no stopping the tailgaters.
[00:35:00] Casey Flores: Right.
[00:35:00] Matt Tverberg: And when you have multiple, we're, you know- We'd like to say we can get near 100% accuracy.
[00:35:06] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:35:06] Matt Tverberg: Which I think helps with our security story too, 'cause a lot of people will use our system for sending emergency notifications, and now I know with a very high degree of accuracy who the heck's actually here.
[00:35:19] Casey Flores: Exactly.
[00:35:21] Matt Tverberg: So you're bringing the same model to London now, which is exciting.
[00:35:25] Casey Flores: Mm.
[00:35:27] Matt Tverberg: What translates across offices and cultures and what doesn't?
[00:35:30] Casey Flores: Yeah. This was a, this was a pretty eye-opening thing for me 'cause this is the first time I've opened an, uh, an office in Europe. And also happens that a large, you know, contingency of our employee base in London is sales.
And so the differences between both culturally with our UK folks and sales, I realize a lot of my playbook that I was doing in San Francisco did not translate well. And luckily, a couple months after I opened, um, the offices, I was able to hire a coordinator over there who helped, helped me kind of learn a, that employee base a little bit more and gave me that kind of insight into what employees like there.
But I think in general what we've realized is that, you know, in London there's a lot... Here in San Francisco, too, we love getting together. They really like getting together. And, and having that kind of, you know, post-five o'clock, you know, go to the pubs after work or that camaraderie after work is, is something that we really wanted to start f- fostering our engagement and our, uh, engagement opportunities and make sure that we're making sure that we're meeting their needs and, and what, what they're looking for.
And, um, yeah, no, the- it's, it's been very rewarding to see how the London office really uses that space because it's, you know, at, in San Francisco, we have a, a floor in a building. In London, we have a space in a co-working space, so it's a little bit smaller. It's a satellite hub. But has not stopped our employees from really, really taking advantage of that space, just as we do here in San Francisco.
And we're seeing, like, again, you know, our core days are very busy. When there's event days, people are coming in and supporting the events, and it's been really rewarding to see... I guess the shared DNA is, like, collaboration and social connection. Mm. You know? And it, it's been really rewarding to see. Very different, though.
Very different clienteles between the two.
[00:37:13] Matt Tverberg: That's awesome.
[00:37:13] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:37:15] Matt Tverberg: You get over there?
[00:37:17] Casey Flores: I was there twice when I opened up the office. I opened up the office, and then I, I went back a couple months later. Um, and it was, what an awesome city. I mean, in general. And, and where our office is located, too, it's ... I'm jealous of them that they get to work over there.
It's very cool. It's very neat. Yeah.
[00:37:32] Matt Tverberg: Yeah, we have an au- um, a London office, too, and it's ... There's a lot of similarities, but certainly differences. In a, in a good way. Yeah. You know? Even across our Austin office, it's, you know, it's different from even there.
[00:37:44] Casey Flores: Yeah. No, I, I, I ... Those little nuances I find so fascinating.
It's like ... And it goes to show, like, you can't come up with a playbook and just say, "Okay, this works everywhere." And I think if you try to do that, you're only gonna be pulling your hair out. Like-
[00:37:57] Matt Tverberg: Right ...
[00:37:57] Casey Flores: uh, even just coming into San Francisco, like here, I, what I le- learned at Samsara and what I had going over there did not work for Cribl because it was a different company.
And I really had to take my playbook, throw it out, and say, "Okay, what is best for Cribl?" Not for what I think Cribl should be, but what, for what the employees actually want.
[00:38:16] Matt Tverberg: Awesome.
[00:38:16] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:38:19] Matt Tverberg: Well, workplace is evolving and it has evolved. You know, if you think pre-2020 to now, how all these organizations are dealing with all sorts of different hybrid, on-site, remote.
There's so much that's goes into that. Where do you think the workplace role goes in the next couple of years? Will it merge into real estate, IT, people team? What, what's your thoughts?
[00:38:46] Casey Flores: I think you bring up the real estate aspect of it too, and, and I find it very fascinating what the workplace and real estate teams have learned in a post-COVID environment.
I think something that was really interesting just from prev- looking at other companies and colleagues is, you know, a lot of companies were left hanging with a lot of extra real estate post-COVID. Mm-hmm. And I think the message that workplace and real estate people took from that is, let's not over-invest in real estate, and I think it's actually something Cribl does really well is we do not rush to open offices because we want to.
We do it 'cause there's a business need, and it makes sense. And I think as a workplace and real estate leader, it's a responsible thing to slow roll it as much as humanly possible or, or at least right-size your solution for whatever your business is. You know, I, I... Sure, would I love an office in Sydney?
Sure. But does it make sense? Does it make sense right now to do that? Maybe not. And, and at the end of the day, I think just the lessons that workplace and real estate teams are learning from COVID has been really fascinating to watch and corroborating a lot of this information with some, you know, colleagues of saying, you know, "You know, we were going pretty fast.
Maybe we're gonna slow down in, in, you know, in 2022, 2023. Let's not rush to open up real estate w- in a, in a post-COVID world." So that's been really fascinating.
[00:39:59] Matt Tverberg: Yeah.
[00:39:59] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:40:00] Matt Tverberg: It's certainly better to, to use data to drive these decisions because real estate is typically one of the highest costs outside of salary for an organization.
[00:40:10] Casey Flores: Right. I think a, a lot of people think employee groupings in one area, boom, that means an office. But in my opinion, I think a responsible thing to recommend to the company as what the next business dec- decision should be is w- is exactly that. Is there a bus- business decision? We opened a London office 'cause we had a sales contingency, and there was a need to open an office there 'cause there was a desire to bring customers on site and partner visits and all this stuff.
Does it make sense to do that in a place where there won't be as much of that going on? I don't know. I mean, I... At the end of the day, I wanna make sure that we're doing the right thing by Cribl and not just mindlessly opening office space 'cause I want to as a workplace leader, 'cause I think it would be fun.
Like, I think we'd all love that, but there has to be a reason. There has to be a business reason, and I love that there's employee enthusiasm, but it cannot be the sole determining factor. Right. You know?
[00:40:57] Matt Tverberg: Yeah, absolutely. And especially around teams, a lot of team-based attendance I've, I've seen and have talked with other leaders about where, like, sales folks specifically really thrive when they're together in person.
Right.
[00:41:12] Casey Flores: So
[00:41:12] Matt Tverberg: it's
[00:41:12] Casey Flores: cool to hear that that was one of the leading
[00:41:15] Matt Tverberg: decision-making factors of opening that office, 'cause that makes perfect sense. Huge, huge
[00:41:19] Casey Flores: factor.
[00:41:20] Matt Tverberg: Yeah. For a workplace leader stuck defending their office on occupancy alone What's the first move you'd tell them to make?
[00:41:29] Casey Flores: Like what we were talking before about having more than one data source for, uh, uh, getting presence control kind of figured out, I think it's the same way for, for this type of stuff as, as well.
Make sure that you have more data report than just occupancy. And I would argue too that, you know, ultimately do what makes sense for what is your company's model. And for us, I find it far more interesting to look at the people who are choosing to say, "Yes, I do wanna come into office," and find out what they're liking about it, and that type of data is far more interesting than squabbling over numbers about, you know, who's coming in on certain days.
I think it's far more interesting to see how many off-sites we're doing in a month versus, um, different months. Like seeing how our attendance is going up and down based off of the seasons of the year and stuff like that. Summer right now, you know, might be a little slow 'cause there's a lot of people on holiday, but it's gonna pick back up in a couple weeks.
Those types of differences that allow us to do our jobs I think is far more interesting than just pure occupancy as the one and only data source, I think. And I think other people are starting to realize this too, and I've been talking to people that we're moving away from that being the sole determining factor for companies like Cribl and, and remote first companies too.
[00:42:44] Matt Tverberg: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Supplement your data.
[00:42:46] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:42:46] Matt Tverberg: I think that makes a lot of sense, and same thing with the occupancy, right? We... Or with the signals taken out of the occupancy.
[00:42:52] Casey Flores: Ex- exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:54] Matt Tverberg: Two's better than one.
[00:42:55] Casey Flores: Sure. Maybe even three.
[00:42:57] Matt Tverberg: So th- this is Make Yourself @ Work. What does that mean to you?
How do you Make Yourself @ Work?
[00:43:04] Casey Flores: So I've really enjoyed the title of this, and I was kinda thinking about it on my walk over here. And I think, you know, as a workplace leader and, and someone who's gotten the pleasure to work at two big companies now and, and, and starting to get more experience in this world, although I will acknowledge I have a lot more journey to go, I really think that every day I'm coming and challenging myself to do something I did differently the month before, the quarter before, the fiscal year before.
I think what's working well for a team one year might not be working well the next year. We might be growing and we have new problems to solve. I think the hardest thing as a workplace professional is just being nimble. Also just, like, reinvent yourself every once in a while. So I ask myself when I come into work saying, "Okay, what have I been doing the same for a while, and how can I look at it differently?"
Oh, yeah. And I think that- And I, I try to impart that onto our, onto our team too, is how can we then manifest that into our programming and what we bring into, for, for our employees? And I think hopefully that leads to an evolution. You know? It, it shouldn't stay the same. Like, if we're doing something well, we should be building on it, not just kind of repeating the same playbook.
So that is my goal, is just don't get too stagnant in what you're doing. Just always push yourself. Even if you think it's going well, just saying, "Is it? Could I be doing better? What can we be doing differently?" And I think it's led to a lot of great changes around our offices and, and some of the stuff that we've been doing.
I'm looking forward to seeing where that goes in the next couple years.
[00:44:31] Matt Tverberg: Oh, that's awesome. Well, you heard it here first. Don't ever stop reinventing yourself.
[00:44:35] Casey Flores: Yeah.
[00:44:35] Matt Tverberg: Well, Casey, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much- Thank you so much ... for being here.
[00:44:39] Casey Flores: This was a blast. Thank you. Uh,
[00:44:40] Matt Tverberg: this has been Make Yourself @ Work.
and we will see you all next time.