Although I’ve been attempting to explain it to them their whole lives, my children still don’t understand that adults don’t get a 10-week summer vacation from work as they do from school. Sound familiar? As soon as school is out for the summer, I constantly hear phrases like these… “Can you take us swimming now? Can we have friends over today? When are you done working? Can you drive me to…” But thanks to Kognitiv’s flexible remote working structure, the full support of my team, and trust from my leadership, my whole family found a happy medium: A modified schedule working from a lake house to meet everyone’s needs!

When I found Kognitiv in 2019, I was literally Googling “remote Workday jobs” every day. I was burnt out from the 2.5 hrs of commuting and scrambling to pick up kids from daycare on time after sitting in traffic, at the whim of so many variables I had no control over and I wanted to take charge of my life. That daily stress and minimal quality time at home was very unhealthy, to the point that I started having migraines for the first time in my life. (P.S.A. - if your job is causing health problems for you, get out now and don’t say “I’ll give it another year” like I did.) 

However simple my search terms, there just weren’t a lot of options to fit my “dream job” description at that time. There were only so many options in Maine, Covid hadn’t hit yet so remote work wasn’t popular then, and I couldn’t be one of the amazing traveling “road show” Workday consultants I admired so much while I had young twins at home.

This one name that kept coming up in my Google search was “Kognitiv,” based in Newton, MA but fully remote, and it just seemed too good to be true. I was interviewing with a few other local companies in Maine but they all wanted at least 3 days in-office which still meant 2.5 hours commuting plus a daycare center raising my children on my behalf. So I threw the dice and applied at “Kognitiv”! Shortly after, I received this email from “Luke the CEO” saying he’d like to interview me. Yeah right! So many red flags are going off at this point. Does this company even really exist? CEOs certainly don’t do interviews for this entry-level role, and definitely not the initial phone screen. Surely they are about to ask for my Social Security and credit card numbers next, right? 

So I’m very guarded at this point but take the chance, and it turns out my dream job and dream company do exist! The CEO was interviewing every candidate himself to ensure he was hiring people that would embody the critical value of “act like an owner,” and building out the employee-first collaborative culture that he knew was needed to attract and retain top talent in the Workday ecosystem. Amazingly, after interviewing with 4 others and worrying I did horribly on the technical, we all agreed it was meant to be and they took a chance and hired me! I’d finally found a company and a manager that not only trusted me to work on my own terms with a flexible schedule, but even emboldened employees so much as to create their own paths and fostered our ideas to grow the company from within. 

I’ve now been working remotely with Kognitiv for over 5 years and I don’t know what I would have done without this amazing company during the pandemic. At any of my previous jobs I’m sure I would have had to quit in order to manage the chaos at home during those years. I ended up homeschooling my twins for second grade, and was still able to work full time on a flexible schedule of my own determination. Kognitiv has always trusted employees to get our work done and do our best every day, so we are able to set our schedules and work from anywhere. Our founders developed our core principles around “employees first” and that is still true to this day.

As much as I love the remote work life, I've recently begun to realize how important it is to set firm boundaries and make sure you get out of the daily routine from time to time. I was starting to feel in a bit of a rut and realized I’d barely left the house since the kids finished up school and spring sports in mid-June. So one week in July, amidst the barrage of, “can we go swimming?” type questions, we spontaneously decided to pack up and move to a lake house for the week! We enjoyed…

• Sunrises, sunsets, and epic lightning shows (even better than the fireworks on July 4th!)
• Coffee and reading on the dock each day, followed by a morning swim and cooking breakfast together
• Mid-day work sessions while kids get to take a rest break from the sun and have play time with their friends
• Picnic lunches together and afternoon swims
• Evening kayaking and watching the loons with their babies
• Staying up late playing cards while screening some classic movies my kids had never heard of
• Kids enjoying their summer vacation and sleeping in late while I catch up on work from the balcony or dock again in the morning
• And repeat! 

As my kids are entering middle school, it feels more important than ever to connect with them, and this whole week at the lake allowed all of us to break from our home routines and enjoy each other’s company more, while still fulfilling my commitments to my team and clients as well. I communicated my set working hours in advance with full support from my manager. I had my whole team to lean on and cover things that may come up while I’m offline, and I didn’t feel like I needed to check my phone for Slack messages or emails the whole time we were there. This mutual trust is something I never experienced at other companies before, and I am so grateful for it!

It is too easy to let work consume more of you than it should when it’s always just a few steps away. We all know the trap of, “I’ll just go do this quick email… just one more task… oh I forgot to review that thing today…” that can lead you down the rabbit hole and soon you’ve lost all track of time, it’s gotten dark outside and you’re somehow having tea with the Mad Hatter. This is your friendly reminder: don’t let the days go by. Shake things up. Find a workplace culture that aligns with your own values and supports employees to have fulfilling lives outside of work.

Thank you to Kognitiv for empowering us to take control of our schedules and allowing flexibility for us as individuals to develop our own unique flavors of life/work balance that meet our needs, preventing burnout and increasing productivity. I can’t wait to enjoy my company-sponsored 5-year “bucket list” life experience, and I may be even more excited for my 7-week sabbatical!