How Apartment Life connects 125 employees across four time zones

Challenges

• Full-time team spans multiple time zones

• Contractors host in-person events & need to collaborate with remote employees

• Keeping calendars free from meetings

Apartment Life is a non-profit working in the multifamily residential space. Their purpose is to turn residents into neighbors. As they say, “Community is good for people and business.” And their model is a simple one: partner with apartment owners to create meaningful connections among residents within their communities. The result is an increased sense of community, which is good for people, and longer-term residents, which is good for business.

The Team

Apartment Life’s team is fully remote, with 122 full-time staff spread across all four US timezones and Canada. In addition to full-time staff, Apartment Life employs 1,000 consultant coordinators who plan and host hospitality events in Apartment Life communities.

Before Covid, Apartment Life had offices in Florida, but after the team successfully navigated the pandemic remotely, they decided to maintain their fully remote workforce.

“We all work remotely, and our success is because of Marco Polo,” said Sean Bailey, national vice-president of customer experience.

Sean Bailey, National VP, Customer Experience

Key to our success: Leadership embraced the new tool
Leadership previously hosted quarterly Town Hall meetings on Zoom. They moved the meetings to Marco Polo, which enabled them to more closely reflect the company’s values–being real, caring, and playful. The meetings went from formal shareouts with little interaction or participation, to everyone being able to join, whenever they were available, and they could join the discussion and feel involved in where the organization was headed.

“Marco Polo became a great way for us to get ideas out there so that everybody felt like they had a voice,” said Sean.

With leadership leading the way, the benefits of asynchronous connection for distributed teams became clear, and usage spread throughout the entire organization. 

Apartment Life Community Event

Key to our success: Collaborating asynchronously to reduce live meetings
When your team is remote and distributed across timezones not all communication can be done in real time without filling calendars with unnecessary meetings.

Smaller project teams used Marco Polo to collaborate when it was right for every member of the team. 

Sean’s team, which covers client relations and recruiting, has created different Marco Polo groups for different topics, from conference planning to strategizing client coverage to informal brainstorming sessions.

"This morning, I went for a walk with my dog and caught up on Polos for work. Things that would have taken me an hour or two worth of Zoom calls now take me 15 minutes,” said Sean.

New employees are also added to two or three groups where they can ask onboarding questions and get to know staff and leaders working in similar areas.

Coordinators, who plan events and attend those events live, play a vital role in the organization, and their success is pivotal to the success of Apartment Life’s endeavors as a whole. Marco Polo has helped Sean and his team get in front of them in a more personal way, and, again, at a time that works for everyone no matter what timezone they are in.

Community Event Space

Result: A thriving remote team

Given that Apartment Life operates in all four North American time zones and the U.K., team members find that connecting over Marco Polo on their own time helps create an enjoyable balance.

“We very much value spending time with the family and not overloading on work and meetings,” said Sean, “and Marco Polo is an integral part of maintaining that part of our culture.