How NMI Is Creating the Best Company Culture in Fintech

NMI’s Journey From Office-Centric to Remote-First

When I first joined in 2018, NMI was an office-based company. Despite this, I was hired as a remote-first CEO, working from my home in San Francisco and traveling to visit our three hubs in Chicago, Salt Lake City and Bristol, U.K. With very few exceptions, everyone at NMI worked in one of those three offices, and we only hired people who were already nearby or willing to relocate.

Then the pandemic hit and like most companies, NMI rapidly transitioned to a full work-from-home arrangement.

At the time, the wider discussion around this global transition centered on the challenges, hardships and risks that it would bring, and a lot of executives were worried. As a remote-first CEO, I saw things differently. Because I was already aware of how effective remote work could be, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when it worked for my team, too.

As a payments technology company, we were in a unique position because the sudden acceleration towards digitalization actually grew our business. That meant that not only were we navigating an enormous and sudden change to how and where we worked, but we were also expanding. And, while there were certainly plenty of growing pains and hiccups, our team carried the extra load and continued delivering like they’d been working from home all along.

When the pandemic ended, and the dust settled, we came out on the other side even stronger than we went in, and we realized that there was no reason to force everyone back into the office. NMI was now a remote-first company, for good.

Three Key Lessons Our Transition to Remote-First Taught Me

Remote Work Was and Largely Still Is Poorly Understood

“Remote workers aren’t productive. Remote teams can’t form bonds or collaborate effectively. Remote work is a tech and security nightmare.”

In 2020, you could open the Wall Street Journal or any business publication and be inundated with the challenges of remote environments. 

Nowadays, although remote work is more widely accepted, there is still a great deal of contention around whether businesses should continue following this model or require their people to return to offices full-time. Some argue that remote work is the only way to go, while others push for hybrid or fully in-office work arrangements. In my opinion, nothing in life is as black and white as the media makes this issue out to be.

I’ve learned from my experience at the helm of NMI’s journey that remote work is ultimately just work. It’s a channel, a tool. And, like all tools, it isn’t inherently good or bad; what you get out of it is completely determined by how you use it. Used poorly, and it has the potential to be rife with problems. But, used well, it can be a huge benefit for companies, and NMI is proof positive of that. 

There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Solution for Organizations or People

Great organizations are powered by great people. But not all great people have the same needs or working styles. Some love remote work and are at their best in that environment, while others thrive in offices and hate working from their living space. Some people really miss the connectedness and social aspect of in-office work, while others are far happier and more productive working at home alone.

There is no single archetypal employee, so why would there be a single, one-size-fits-all answer?

At NMI, we’re fine-tuning a blended, remote-first working model with the goal of enabling our people to do their best, no matter how or where they prefer to work. The vast majority of our team takes advantage of the fully remote option. We’re still figuring out how to provide locations in hubs (i.e., places where we have natural clusters of people that formed) where they can meet periodically or even work out of a conference room together on a regular basis. At this point in time, we only have three offices: Bristol U.K., Capetown and NY. We’re going to monitor the situation and determine where we can find creative solutions to provide workspaces if they are used regularly.

Remote Work Puts the Right People at Your Doorstep, Even if They’re a World Away

Great people make great companies, but finding them can be challenging, especially since competition for top talent is fierce. In my opinion, anything that opens you up to a larger pool of excellent people is a good thing, and that’s exactly what remote work has done for NMI.

During the pandemic, we acquired two fantastic companies and their teams — IRIS CRM and USAePay. After the pandemic was over, we acquired two more teams with Agreement Express and the commercial division of Sphere Commerce. Not only did these new NMIers enrich our company, but integrating them was critical to accomplishing the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs) we’d set out for NMI. 

Could we have accomplished that mission-critical expansion as seamlessly if we were still an office-first company? I don’t believe so.

That’s because when we were an in-office company, we missed out on a lot of great people because they weren’t willing to relocate. Remote work has since removed that requirement, which means we can go out and get the best person for the job every single time, regardless of where they are. Now, just half a decade after requiring people to live in one of three cities, we have people all around the globe.

Advice for CEOs and Executives Transitioning to Remote-First or Blended Work Environments

Prioritize Getting Together

The further apart your team gets geographically, the more important getting together becomes. That might seem counterintuitive on the surface, but I can’t emphasize enough how much more valuable and productive real face-to-face interactions become when they’re not the everyday norm. 

Regularly hosting in-person events and meetups facilitates team bonding, communication and, ultimately, results. I view it like a bee hive, where the bees are constantly going out to collect pollen and returning to the hive to make honey and feed the colony. But in the corporate world, it’s reversed — the ideas are pollinated best when everyone comes together as a group, and then everyone heads back out individually to make the honey and “feed” the company’s goals. 

If you are considering moving to a remote-first environment (or are already leading a remote workforce), I recommend allocating a budget to ensure your teams are regularly coming together in person. And not just for the highest-level strategic planning sessions — all of your teams should ideally be meeting face-to-face at some point to strengthen bonds and build stronger communication channels that they can benefit from year-round. 

Rethink How You View the Intersection of Work and Life

I was recently listening to a podcast featuring our Chief Product Officer Tiffany Johnson, where she talked about how the concept of work-life balance is giving way to a new paradigm — work-life integration. The idea is that rather than juggling two distinct and separate aspects of their lives — work and home — many people are now finding ways to seamlessly blend the two in order to get more from both. 

When done right, work-life integration is about empowering your employees to take more control over how, when and where they work. It’s about giving people the tools and the agency necessary to create an ideal working environment for their unique needs. Unsurprisingly, it can have a hugely positive impact on their output and, most importantly, their well-being.

If you’re hesitant about giving your team more remote work opportunities, just remember that it’s one of the most powerful ways you can help them create a healthy work-life integration, and that benefits everyone. 

Embrace a Radical Focus on Results

A lot of executives fear remote work because they feel like it strips them of a certain level of control. After all, how can you ensure your employees are being productive if you can’t see them? How can you ensure they’re focused on work when they’re surrounded by the distractions of home? How can you promote collaboration if you can’t walk into someone’s office?

Although this may be difficult for some to accept, the reality is that if you’ve built a great team, it’s important to trust them to do the job you hired them for. All that matters is that your teams are accomplishing the goals and achieving the results they set out to. At the end of the day, whether they’re in suits or sweatpants while they work towards their goals doesn’t particularly matter. 

My advice is to focus less on monitoring your people and focus more on monitoring the results of the well-defined, measurable goals your teams have laid out. As an executive, focusing on results instead of control will free you. As a manager, it will demonstrate trust in your team’s ability to take the ball and run with it, which will bring out the best in them. And as an organization, this mindset will push you to clarify the outcomes that truly matter and to do a better job of quantifying them. All three will make your company much stronger as a whole.

View Remote Work as a Litmus Test for Your Company’s Health

A lot of things remote work gets blamed for are actually deep-seated organizational or cultural issues, and remote work is just a very bright light being shined on them. 

As an example, it’s true that you might get less from a poorly motivated remote employee than you would from that same person in the office. But that shouldn’t cause you to question remote work — it should cause you to question why that employee is unmotivated. And if it’s becoming a wide-scale problem, that tells you very quickly that there is either a problem with your culture or a problem with your hiring. Remote work isn’t causing the problem — it’s helping you identify it. 

Forcing employees into an office might feel like it’s a quick cure for certain ailments, but it’s actually just a band-aid covering up symptoms. If you’re transitioning into a remote-first environment, embrace the idea that the growing pains you experience aren’t a consequence to begrudgingly accept — they’re actually opportunities to identify weaknesses, solve problems and spur growth.

At NMI, we haven’t fully cracked the puzzle; there are downfalls to having a remote-first culture that we’re still working on. However, giving our team flexibility and choice over their work styles has led to enormous growth, and I’m optimistic that we’re heading in the right direction. If you’d like to join our growing and thriving team, visit our careers page here to learn more about us and see if there are any open opportunities you think you’d be perfect for.