Five years after the pandemic and the move to remote and hybrid work, 2025 has seen a wave of return-to-office (RTO) policies, with industry giants such as Amazon, AT&T, and Goldman Sachs mandating their workers to return to work in the office five days a week. The response?
There has been a mass talent exodus, with one survey revealing that S&P 500 companies are seeing quit rates leap 14 percent, especially among female, more senior, and more skilled team members.
The flexibility, healthier work-life balance, and decreased burnout and fatigue associated with hybrid and remote working arrangements have profoundly impacted today’s workforce.
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 60 percent of workers want to work hybrid, with one-third preferring fully remote work and less than 10 percent preferring to work onsite full-time.
However, remote work also has its downside. Respondents in the same poll reported having less access to work resources and equipment, feeling less connected to their organization’s work culture, and decreased collaboration with their team as their top three challenges.
What is HR Ops’ involvement in culture and engagement?
Research by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School found that happy workers are 13 percent more productive. As the HR function dedicated to building high-performing teams, HR Ops is essential in supporting company culture and employee experience.
Building culture in distributed teams is an even greater challenge. By selecting the right HR tools, HR Ops can enhance employee experience through improved communication, collaboration, and supporting diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Let’s explore how you can leverage Bob to improve employee experience and create a cohesive culture, especially among distributed teams.
Fostering a strong culture to attract and retain top talent
A positive work culture makes a lasting impact, attracting top talent, boosting productivity, and increasing retention. HR Ops is integral for building the processes that define the employee experience throughout the employee lifecycle and forging a community-like atmosphere that creates a sense of belonging.
Providing a positive onboarding experience
A warm and engaging onboarding process is critical for employee satisfaction and retention. According to a 2025 AIHR study, employees with exceptional onboarding experiences are 2.6 times more likely to be satisfied at work, ultimately reducing turnover.
Montu, a fully remote Melbourne-based company, wanted to provide their people with an excellent onboarding experience—a considerable challenge with their people working from home. Using Bob’s onboarding workflows, Montu’s people team built tailored onboarding experiences for their new hires according to role and seniority, offering a solid introduction to the Montu culture, and employee feedback has been extremely positive.
Jade Harvey, GM of People and Talent, explains how integral Bob is to working at Montu: “With us working as a distributed workforce, without a central office space, people are able to use Bob to kind of find out who’s who in the zoo, learn a little bit about people if they’ve filled in their superpowers and all of those additional bits and pieces. It just really helps with that initial engagement and keeping people connected as well.”
Creating a sense of belonging
While a positive onboarding process is critical, employee experience doesn’t stop there. IDH is a global organization spread across 15 countries and various time zones. Wanting to align their distributed team with the company values and purpose, they sought an HCM to help them create a sense of community and belonging for their people working around the globe. As Daan Wensing, the CEO, explains, “Besides supporting HR and talent development, Bob helps us with our ‘One IDH agenda.’ We are a global organization spread over 15 different time zones, and Bob allows everyone at IDH to tap into what’s happening and connect with each other.”
Bob helps Montu and IDH build a unified culture across their distributed teams, improving the employee experience and helping them retain their top talent.
Choosing the tools to enhance communication and increase productivity
As the function that plays a big role in selecting tools for the HR tech stack, HR Ops understands the challenges associated with communicating and working across hybrid, remote, and global teams.
What tools can replace the daily banter and water cooler chats associated with working in the same office? How can you facilitate meaningful working relationships among people who’ve never met their co-workers face to face?
Bob helps people on distributed teams to get to know each other better. The engaging homepage shows who’s in and who’s out, who’s celebrating a birthday or work anniversary, and interesting facts about employees, such as the percentage of people who are parents or who like reading books.
Helping people connect
SmartRecruiters, a remote-first company with people spread across six countries, loves how Bob helps people get to know their peers. Bob’s Org Chart visually represents the company hierarchy, helping their people understand the company structure and who reports to whom. They also use Bob’s Clubs to form groups of people with similar interests and encourage more personal interactions outside of work.
Another global company, The Brand Power Company, has people working from 11 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and wanted to find a way to keep their people connected. They love Bob’s Shoutouts, which they use to highlight company initiatives and outstanding performance. Anthony Tsoukas, Director of People and Culture, explains, “We see a lot of Shoutouts. When teams are performing well and when there are social engagements. It’s a great way of showing what Malaysia is doing for Chinese New Year, for instance, and what our German colleagues are doing for Oktoberfest. That social element suddenly becomes a part of the way we work.”
SmartRecruiters and The Brand Power Company use Bob to build a thriving workplace culture that keeps people happy and engaged and drives productivity.
Using data to measure diversity and employee satisfaction
HR Ops understands that beyond compliance, having a diverse workforce stimulates innovation by challenging conventional thinking, encouraging fresh ideas, and promoting creative problem-solving. As the HR function responsible for tracking workforce trends, HR Ops needs access to real-time metrics to provide insights on their people and help them reach their goals.
Exploring diversity data
Bob’s Analytics provides deep workforce insights, including dashboards on headcount and retention and a DE&I dashboard that offers a diversity breakdown based on gender, pronouns, disability status, ethnicity, and more.
As a company passionate about building high-performing teams, Knix’s people team and board are invested in creating a diverse and inclusive work environment. They use Bob’s DE&I dashboard for real-time diversity data—company-wide and within teams—critical for ensuring diverse thought and business success. Christine Song, Knix’s CPO, explains Bob’s ease of use, “When we looked at the capabilities in Bob, the reporting, the graphs, they were so beautiful. We didn’t have to do a single thing. We take a lot of data from there and incorporate that into our board decks.”
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Increasing employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction scores also provide a window into morale and turnover risk. The Energy Collective, a global retail energy and technology company based in New Zealand, experienced rapid growth, acquiring additional business entities, adding offices in Australia and India, and hiring 50 new staff in just one month.
They searched for an HR platform to help them nurture their caring and fun corporate culture across sites, and discovered Bob. A few months after implementation, they saw a recognizable shift to a more community-like feel at the company, with increased engagement and people feeling a genuine sense of connection with each other. At the same time, their eNPS score increased from 34 to 45, and their engagement scores grew from 76 percent to 82 percent, highlighting a noticeable increase in employee satisfaction and company loyalty.
Bob enables HR Ops to continuously track culture and engagement metrics, which is critical for enhancing the employee experience and improving retention.
Driving engaged, high-performing teams in remote, hybrid, and global workforces
HR Ops is pivotal in driving culture and engagement for distributed teams. By selecting the right tools and strategies, HR Ops can ensure that people feel connected, valued, and empowered— no matter where they work.
With Bob, HR Ops can foster a strong culture, streamline communication, and recognize achievements in meaningful ways. From employee engagement tools to data-driven insights on diversity and retention, Bob helps HR Ops bridge the gap between remote and in-office teams—boosting collaboration, engagement, and productivity.
Want to discover more must-have features when choosing an HCM? Get the checklist.
