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 * 03-09-21


THE 10 MOST INNOVATIVE WORKPLACE COMPANIES OF 2021


HAS THERE EVER BEEN A TIME THAT DEMANDED MORE WORKPLACE INNOVATION? THESE
BEST-IN-CLASS COMPANIES DEVISED NEW AND BETTER WAYS TO KEEP US WORKING
EFFECTIVELY THROUGHOUT A TUMULTUOUS YEAR.

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More Like This
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By Fast Company Staff7 minute Read
THE WORLD’S 50 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES
Wellness
AdvertisingArchitectureArtificial IntelligenceAugmented Reality & Virtual
RealityBeautyBrandingConsumer ElectronicsSocial ResponsibilityData
ScienceDesignDiningEducationEnergyEnterpriseFilm &
TelevisionFinanceFoodGamingHealthJoint VenturesLive
EventsLogisticsManufacturingMediaMusicNot-for-ProfitRetailRoboticsSecuritySmall
& MightySocial GoodSocial MediaSpaceSportsStyleTransportationTravelUrban
DevelopmentVideoWellnessWorkplaceNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEurope, Middle East,
and AfricaAsia-Pacific
Workplace
North America

From providing a road map for an effective remote workforce to building stronger
connections to offering tools that enhance productivity from home, these 10 Most
Innovative Companies offered workplace solutions that helped businesses continue
operations during the most disruptive year in modern times.



[Illustration: Zara Magumya]


1. ASANA

For helping teams meet their goals

The work-management platform is used by more than 89,000 organizations, along
with 3.5 million individuals who rely on the free version. The company launched
Asana Goals in July 2020, enabling teams to better track progress, and by the
end of the year had released more than 130 features, including integrations with
Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. While competitors focus workflow around a
single area or “container,” Goals, says Asana founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz,
is cross-functional, allowing people to stay on task even while working on
broader assignments. “Most projects are actually collaborative across
departments,” he says. “The vision for the future is for individuals to have
fewer distractions in their work lives so they can have greater focus and flow.”


2. ZOOM

For providing socially distanced workers and students the tools to connect with
one another

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The ubiquitous video conferencing platform reported $777.2 million in Q3
revenue, up 400% year over year, and it expects to quadruple its revenue year
over year again in the fourth quarter. The company now has 433,700 subscribers
with more than 10 employees, up from 370,200 last quarter, and it grew the
number of customers delivering more than $100,000 in revenue over the prior year
to nearly 1,300, from around 1,000. The communication company has met the
increasing demand for its products with smart and timely products meant to
secure Zoom as essential workplace infrastructure. That has meant security
updates, including a user experience to fortify password protection and increase
the security such as through two-step authentication, along with developing
conference devices (Zoom for Home) and new hardware (Zoom Room and Zoom Phones).


3. SLACK

For expanding lines of communication for a locked-down distributed workforce

At the beginning of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak in the spring, the messaging
and communication platform added nearly 2.5 million simultaneous users over 15
days in March. The company also worked to make the platform easier and safer to
use for heavily regulated industries, as well as updating its in-platform
“channels” to function more like email threads. During the summer of the
coronavirus pandemic, the company added additional features to make
communication on the platform easier, including Slack Connect, a secure platform
for communication, which operates similar to email but without the threat of
phishing and spam messages. Other initiatives include building information walls
between teams (such as putting up privacy barriers between traders and
investment bankers at an investment firm), and international expansion for data
storage, which comes in handy for teams operating outside of the U.S.




4. GITLAB

For showing us how to work remotely, providing extensive documentation and best
practices

GitLab is a software company focusing on every step of the DevOps cycle. The
largest company with a distributed workforce, it created a comprehensive guide
to remote work, which has been downloaded tens of thousands of times since the
beginning of the pandemic. The company has also begun consulting with businesses
struggling to manage their suddenly distributed workforces. In October, GitLab’s
“head of remote” transformed the company’s guide into a Coursera class aimed at
high-level managers and executives, covering everything from onboarding a new
employee remotely and communication best practices to how to shut down your
offices and transition to a distributed workforce without too much disruption.
So far, more than 11,000 people have taken the class. To add To that, in June
2020 the company’s complete remote-work content, including a weekly web show and
a newsletter, netted 143.6 million impressions.


5. ATLASSIAN

For improving collaboration with tools that streamline tracking, planning, and
management



Atlassian is a Sydney-based workforce software behind Jira, Trello, and
Confluence. In conjunction and on their own, these tools help streamline team
collaboration. Jira’s tracking and planning capabilities go hand-in-hand with
Confluence’s project management use. Trello, acquired in 2017, focuses on
large-scale visualization of projects. The suite of collaboration of tools is
used by 180,000 companies; Jira alone is used by more than 65,000 companies,
including the nonprofit Cancer Research UK and Cochlear, the maker of the
hearing implant. In 2020, Atlassian generated nearly $1.6 billion in revenue (up
33% from the previous year).


6. CHIEF

For connecting female executives at all levels for coaching, mentorship, and
support

A network for high-ranking professional women to develop connections with other
VP and executive-level leaders, Chief prides itself on its “Core” groups, which
organizes members into smaller groups of similar professional rank. These Core
groups provide a space for community and learning, via leadership coaching. The
company cheekily calls these smaller groups “personal board of directors.” Chief
currently has 3,000 members who work across 1,000 different companies. In the
last year, the company has expanded into four new cities and the company’s
waitlist has grown to 8,000. This year, Chief launched a proprietary and private
app to members in order to make connection-building easier during the pandemic’s
shutdowns.




7. CULTURE AMP

For building an HR platform that uses data analytics to increase employee
engagement

Offering an HR platform that uses data analytics to improve employee engagement,
the company aims to enhance manager’s understanding of what is good management,
as well as develop leadership skills. During the pandemic, Culture Amp
introduced a new set of tools for managers to connect more with employees and
improve overall company culture. A new beta development of the platform smooths
the manager process to provide feedback and coaching, through a series of
skills-building micro-sessions that are just frequent and short enough not to
overwhelm leaders. Through its library of content, Culture Amp gives managers
the tools to deliver effective feedback and communicate more clearly with
individual workers.


8. TURING

For placing remote developers at firms across the globe via an AI-powered
vetting process



Turing is an international hiring platform that brings together remote software
developers to work on small and large companies. In today’s remote environment.
The Palo Alto-based company is well-positioned to cater to a distributed
workforce by vetting and hiring remote software developers, who can work from a
small town or from a studio apartment in a crowded urban center. The founders
distinguish their platform by using an AI-based vetting process that tests
developers’ skills but also how they work in groups and teams. The developers
remain contractors to Turing, who built a secure virtual environment for outside
contractors to work within. And in a mutually beneficial move—when a Turing
developer gets hired, the company receives a fee. Since its general launch about
a year ago, Turing has gone from $17,000 to $10 million in annualized revenue.
Today, the company has a body of contractors of 170,000 working from over 50
different countries. The company shares it has added about 10,000 new developers
to the platform each month.


9. BLUESCAPE

For organizing remote tech tools into a single centralized and integrated hub

By collecting disparate tech tools, from Zoom to the G-Suite, in one place
Bluescape makes it easier for remote teams to visualize and share content. The
company’s hub-like capabilities brings together disparate tools in one central
location. Since March 2020, the collaborative software company has grown by
300%. And since 2019, 1 million users have created workspaces on Bluescape.
Through Bluescape’s integrated format, companies can access a variety of video
conferencing tools, like Zoom and Webex, so chatting and taking notes becomes
less of a pain. The company’s exponential growth is reflected within its ranks:
Bluescape has increased its number of employees by 60% since the beginning of
the pandemic.




10. HUGO

For enhancing documentation through an integrated note-taking tool

Launched in 2018, Hugo is a meetings note-taking tool that makes meetings more
productive by helping employees prepare agendas, take and share notes (with
people inside and outside of the company), assign follow-up tasks, and
disseminate takeaways. The platform, which integrates with nearly two dozen
major workplace tools, from Asana to Zoom, takes the knowledge sharing that
happens in meetings and transports it seamlessly throughout a team, company, and
beyond. In an era of remote work, where online meetings take on even more
significance, the platform is growing quickly. In June, Hugo released a Chrome
extension, allowing users to set meeting agendas and take notes while on a video
call or navigating their calendar for the week. Between February and May 2020,
Hugo blew past their past user number early in the pandemic by more than
doubling daily active users.




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A version of this article appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Fast Company
magazine.

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