Hello, this is Hong Yu-kyung from Elifunt. As I write this, it has been three months and two weeks since I joined Elifunt. Since Elifunt is a B2B marketing group that generates growth through content, we have a culture of sharing our thoughts in long-form content after three months of employment. While contemplating what story to write to "waste" a blog page, I got an idea from a conversation a few days ago.
“Yoo-kyung, is work at your new company going well?”
“Yes, it’s fun (really). It’s tough, like everything you do for the first time, though.”
“Come on, but Yukyung, you work from home!”
In fact, Elifunt operates a remote work system four times a week. Yes, that is correct. We only come into the office one day a week.
It seems there are broadly two perspectives on remote work. One is, "I want to work from home too." Employees want to avoid going to the office so much that working from home for just two days like an 8% pay raise. However, the concern that "employees might become complacent" cannot be ignored either. Despite these general concerns, how is the Elifunt team able to work so densely and efficiently?
First, work intensity where commuting time feels like a waste
To keep your reading from getting boring, let's start with the key points. Why is remote work possible? It is because the workload is not low. If you ask if it is okay to write about this on a corporate blog, I’m not entirely sure myself (?), but it is true.
Actually, I believe work intensity is a subjective matter. The biggest reason I find work at Elifunt challenging is that the process of helping to create valuable services through the power of content is by no means easy.
Understanding a client's business and specific domain, as well as designing a full-funnel marketing strategy, requires in-depth study of vast amounts of data and extensive communication. The fierce determination to tenaciously cling to the task and drive the client's growth at all costs,, is the root cause of this high workload.
With the rapid growth of AI constantly changing the B2B market and the work environment for marketers, rapid learning is also necessary. Open AI CEO Sam Altman is said to have remarked as follows.
AI can automate 95% of marketing tasks. However, the remaining 5% requires human creativity and strategic thinking
It seems that it is by no means easy to be in the situation where you have to learn and produce work performance separately in order to be among the top 5% who know how to formulate emergent and effective strategies.
As a result, I accomplished these things within three months of working with Elifunt.
What an Elifunt Content Growth Marketer Did During the First 3 Months
- Established marketing strategies and led projects for 4 clients
- Project Performance Report for 2 Clients
- Planning, production, and setup of new lead magnet-based lead nurturing scenarios and CRM tools (Sales Maps)
- Planned 50 B2B marketing content pieces, directly wrote and published 12 pieces of content
- Support for an offline seminar with 130 participants
I tend to be passionate about my work, but I also feel that I have compressed and experienced work that would have been overwhelming even for a year at another company.
Second, the same work culture even when working from home
Working from home does not mean working comfortably alone. At least the Elifunt team has a culture of communicating closely using collaboration tools like Slack, Notion, and Google Meet, even in a remote setting, just as if we were in the office
It might be difficult to get a sense of the atmosphere just by saying "we communicate closely." This happened to me recently. That day, I was holed up at home, working so hard that steam was rising from my head, when a colleague, A from Elifunt, asked me this on Slack.
“Yu-kyung, I’d like to discuss some materials. Is a meeting in 10 minutes okay?”
It was a request for a casual video meeting. If I had gone to work, it would have been a short meeting with a colleague sitting across from me, with us turning our chairs around.
However, if you were in a location where conducting an online meeting was difficult or had moved far away from your desk simply because you were working remotely, you would have been flustered upon receiving such a request. Elifunt does not work that way. If there is a need to move locations, we share the details on the spot, and we operate based on a common-sense work culture, working the same way whether you are coming into the office or not.
Third, work together! A high-density feedback culture
Another characteristic of Elifunt that I noticed while working there for three months they never work alone.
For example, instead of a single PM leading a project, at least three people put their heads together to formulate strategies and find solutions. Thanks to this, there are quite a few days when our calendar is packed with meetings, much like a factory running non-stop 24 hours a day. The same applies when creating content. When feedback is requested, everyone takes the time to leave comments and strives to complete content of the highest quality.
Thanks to this high-density feedback culture, I often feel as though someone is with me, even when I am sitting alone. I frequently marvel, thinking, "You must be busy, so when did you find the time to look at this and leave such perfect feedback that scratches exactly where I needed it?!" Thanks to the feedback from colleagues with diverse perspectives, I feel every day that I am broadening my horizons and growing, despite my lack of experience.
Finally, colleagues with a tremendous sense of responsibility and a strong desire for growth
It might be a bit cliché, but I don't think I can avoid talking about my colleagues.
This is not my first experience with remote work at Elifunt. I have experienced sudden remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, worked for companies that offered remote work as a benefit, and even worked as a part-time freelancer.
As a result, I feel like I’ve seen and encountered all sorts of cases. There was a colleague who suspected I wasn't focusing on work, complaining that responses from collaborating departments were delayed whenever I worked remotely. On the other hand, I also saw some people sharing insider tips on how to "slack off" more cleverly without getting caught. I even heard gossip like a ghost story about someone who got caught working while on a trip far away without reporting it to the company.
That is why I know. It is never easy to trust that a colleague not immediately visible is working as hard as (or even harder than) me.
While working from home is a way to work efficiently by reducing commuting time, I believe it is impossible unless a work culture is established, or more fundamentally, without colleagues ready to work passionately. That is why I am happy to be working with quietly passionate colleagues at Elifunt right now.
Thank you for reading my onboarding record as a Mid-to-Senior Marketer in my third month at Elifunt. Although I have explained it in a long post, I believe that how Elifunt operates will resonate more with you when you experience it firsthand rather than just reading about it.
Elifunt is continuously looking for new colleagues. If you are someone who wants to achieve results in a fiercely competitive B2B marketing market with no set answers, or if you want to build problem-solving processes with data alongside colleagues who work even harder than you, we are eagerly awaiting your arrival. Why not grow with Elifunt? If this post has made your heart race, please check out Elifunt recruitment page via the link below.
Curious to learn more about how Elifunt works? Check out the content below.
🔗 The 3-Month Story of a Data Analyst Settling into the Elifunt Team
🔗 What Kind of Company Is Elifunt? (Ask Me Anything!)
