Working From Home With: Kim Walls, Co-Founder & CEO of Furtuna Skin

This week we chatted with skincare brand co-founder, Kim Walls.  As the CEO of Furtuna Skin, Kim has experienced the COVID workplace switch first hand, and here are some of her best insights and tips.

What is your company’s work from home policy (WFH) now for COVID?

At Furtuna Skin, we knew from day one that we support work from home. We hired (and still hire) people who we believe can thrive in a work from home (or personal workspace) environment. We believe that supporting families and the new economy means that we need to trust people to care about the work they are doing enough to get it done well, and to trust that they will go beyond because they are inspired to do so from within. We hire people who have an inner drive to contribute, perform and excel in a remote environment. Because we started with the core belief that support of sustainable remote work is critical to our future, we were ready for COVID even though we didn’t know it was coming.

Did you have any WFH policies before COVID? 

Furtuna Skin leverages many tools to facilitate remote work. We store our data on the cloud, chat through Slack, organize with Asana, collaborate through shared Google docs and sheets, and execute successful team building exercises and regular meetings through Zoom or Google hangouts. Our policy has always been that team members have unlimited PTO – don’t ask, must tell. We respect family life, time to reset, and taking care of the home-front and mental health priorities as the first key to triumph in a successful work experience – whether we are working from home or not. Many organizations offering unlimited PTO have team members who won’t take time off. Not only do we encourage it, we celebrate vacations and family time on weekly calls – encouraging people to refresh, rejuvenate, and to come back with 120% to offer to their work experience. We believe in balance.

Any successes/insights that you’ve gained from the WFH switch?

Work from home looks different for everyone. One of the most critical factors of success is ensuring that everyone has the technology they need to participate successfully as they endeavor to work from home. I’ve found it very important to remind people to ask for what they need to be successful. We don’t always know what people need, and there’s not one right answer. When people have the trust and confidence to feel respected when they tell you what they need, everyone wins.

What are the major challenges you’ve had since switching to WFH and how did you overcome them?

We see new challenges with WFH every day. As with any challenge in business, I think we find the greatest success when we can respond quickly and with an aligned effort when we find out that we are falling short. When our team felt they wanted to know each other better, they got together and found a way to make it happen. They led team building exercises that they came up with themselves. They implemented and participated in new ways to learn about each other’s quirks and nuances. From a leadership perspective, I think the best thing we can do is empower our people to feel confident and supported in their efforts to solve their own challenges.

What does your typical WFH day look like now?

I wake up every morning with a conflict that resides in the fact that I wrote something down the prior day that would be my priority to complete or move forward the next day, but while I sleep (or maybe better said – while I’m in that haze between sleep and wakefulness that happens pre-dawn), I think of something new that I want to start. So, I start every morning with a conflict, but put it aside long enough to enjoy coffee and go for a walk. I do my best to schedule a conference call in the morning where I can be walking. COVID has put a dent in that habit because more people want to be on camera more of the time now, so it has become harder to get the walks in on conference calls. I try to do that “one thing” that is needed to move a bigger idea forward in a day and fit everything else in around that. Of course, I spend time playing with the dogs all day intermittently because they bring me great joy. Now that my boys are teenagers, they don’t want for much, but when they do, I feel lucky to be needed and wanted and do my best to oblige.

You can find Kim on LinkedIn and on Instagram @KimWallsLA.