Top of Mind PR is a 7-person PR agency based in Florida. The team had worked hybrid for years, splitting time between an office and home. By early 2022, they were fully remote and onboarding two new team members who lived in other US states. Neither would visit the office any time soon.
"We wanted to have a really engaging onboarding and set them up for success in the best way possible. We saw that we struggled with that over the course of the pandemic. It was really hard to get people engaged with the team when we weren't available to them the way that we would be in a traditional office."
The default plan was bleak.
"My initial thought was, okay, I guess I'm just gonna stay on Google Meet eight hours a day, and if they need something they can unmute."
Then a LinkedIn post mentioning Cosmos surfaced. The team signed up, got everyone in for a first session, and the reaction set the tone.
"I'm not gonna lie to you, me and my entire team were giddy. It was insane the first day we were using it. I just kept telling my teammates, 'you have to come to this link, don't ask me questions, just come to the link and I'll see you there.' Everyone was kind of like, okay, what is she doing this time. And as people came in, they were getting really giddy about it too."
With the team excited, the office took shape. Top of Mind PR customised the base template with their logo in the conference room and stickers throughout. They also added a Christmas tree, which doubles as an unofficial status signal: when the team's manager parks her avatar there, she is walking her dog. Nobody is allowed to take it down.
"Everybody has their own preferred spot. One team member sits in the kitchen because he doesn't like to be bothered. Another sits in the upper right corner on the sofas. The rest of us take one table each."
By 9am, the team is in.
"At 9am pretty much everybody walks into the office, finds their seat, figures out where they're going for the day. We touch base in the mornings. During the day, things just disperse. People take lunch breaks. Around five o'clock, when people are wrapping up their day, they exit Cosmos. We use it really like a real office. You come in at nine, you leave at five."
The team uses statuses heavily. Most of them stay on listening all day.
"The level of flexibility you have with either being available, listening, or away really allows everybody to go to their own level of comfort. There's enough space in here that you can spread out so you're not constantly bumping into each other."
What changed most is how the team handles small questions. Instead of picking up the phone or scheduling a call, someone walks to a colleague's table and uses proximity audio to ask.
"It's a lot easier to just walk over to somebody else's table and put yourself on available, then broadcast and say 'hey, can you join us at table three, we're chatting about this,' than to pick up the phone and be like, 'okay well I'm gonna conference Paula.' It's also easier to gauge reactions because you have cameras on."
The original test was the onboarding. The two new hires came on remotely, never visited the office, and met the team only through Cosmos. It was a small case of overcoming remote-team isolation before it set in.
"We've gotten feedback from the two team members we brought on that they've really enjoyed having that level of access to us, where you can just walk up, say something, and it's like you're at a desk."
The clearest signal that Cosmos had landed at Top of Mind PR was who started using it the most. The owner of the company now sits logged in all day, set to available the way she would be in a physical office. The rest of the team stays on listening.
"Getting to dodge the usual technical hiccups and having a space where our team actually feels like a team again? That's been huge for us."
Paola Iuspa-Abbott
Founder
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