KeyedIn Inc. is the latest tech firm to announce that it will keep remote work as an option for its employees beyond the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Business-software firm KeyedIn employs 105 people worldwide, Chief Marketing Officer Shaun Dickerson said. Its revenue is around $10 million to $25 million each year.
KeyedIn employs people around the world, though three-fourths of those people are based near one of KeyedIn's offices in the U.S. and Europe.
However, that balance may be shifting: Of the six people KeyedIn has hired during the pandemic, half don't live in places where KeyedIn has an office. Those people are working remotely full time, Dickerson said.
Moving forward, KeyedIn will try to offer more options to its employees about how they choose to work, a trend other tech firms have said they'll also embrace.
"We’ve definitely learned that one size does not fit all," CEO Lauri Klaus said in an email to the Business Journal
KeyedIn is headquartered in Bloomington, where it has offices in the Normandale Lake Office Park. It moved into the complex in 2018 and reopened its office in June 2020 on a voluntary basis. About five people regularly go into the office now, Dickerson said. Most employees say they'll wait to return to the office until vaccines become more widespread or Gov. Tim Walz announces the lifting of all Covid-19 restrictions.
KeyedIn has no plans to give up those offices, said Carol Thuente, KeyedIn's HR specialist.
That's because employees still like the sense of community an office provides, especially younger employees. According to multiple internal surveys, millennials at KeyedIn have struggled the most with the lack of contact, Thuente said. While the company has scheduled what it calls "water-cooler chats," or unstructured social time for employees, younger workers still say they want to return sooner rather than later.
"It really did catch me off guard that that was the group that wanted to come in," Thuente said.
