Moving organizations towards virtual work environments is progressing in fits and starts.  After the COVID-19 pandemic, many scaled back work-from-home policies. While virtual work presents challenges, it also offers opportunities for greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and reach—advantages traditional workplaces often cannot match.

In this issue of Community Magazine, we explore a fundamental question: Does a workplace still need to be a place?

From its inception, AMPLIFY Girls was intentionally designed as a virtual organization. By embracing a virtual structure from the start, it has operated efficiently while expanding its reach cost-effectively, allowing the team to focus on making a virtual organization work.

A Closer Look at the Co-CEOs

Zack Fowler and Lucy Minayo are co-CEOs of AMPLIFY Girls, bringing a collaborative leadership style to guide the organization’s strategic growth. Together, they share a passion for amplifying the voices of community-driven organizations serving adolescent girls.

Zack has two years as Head of Strategic Partnerships at AMPLIFY Girls and is a seasoned nonprofit professional with experience in gender, health, and education initiatives across four continents.

Lucy is a human rights lawyer with over twenty years of experience in the development sector. Before joining AMPLIFY Girls, she served as Executive Director of NurtureFirst, a global funder and capacity-builder for home-based childcare providers.

Source: www.amplifygirls.org/

Why Go Virtual

Q: The decision to be, from the outset, a virtual organization is unusual. Why did the governance of AMPLIFY Girls take this avant-garde step?

(Zack): Working remotely was never really a choice for us; it was a necessity. We set out to build an international team that brought together deep expertise and lived, on-the-ground experience. That meant having team members based in Africa to help shape strategy for African organizations, while also drawing on the networks, experience, and access to resources of early contributors in Canada and the United States. Given these goals, a remote structure was the only way to ensure all those voices were in the room.

Q: Adopting a virtual approach can be controversial. What were the main concerns and opportunities, and how were they addressed?

(Zack): I don’t think we ever considered anything other than this.

Q: As a virtual organization, HR must approach workforce formation differently. How do you communicate this to candidates and onboard people virtually?

(Lucy): This approach isn’t unique, particularly in the African development context, where remote work has become the norm. As a result, we haven’t faced challenges in presenting this model to potential colleagues or team members at AMPLIFY Girls, and it aligns well with broader trends among funders.

These conversations have been relatively straightforward, and the flexibility of the model is a strong draw. When engaging potential collaborators, we emphasize the opportunities that flexibility creates, which has helped us build a diverse and dynamic team we’re excited to work with.

Q: In terms of reaching talent, how has being virtual extended or impeded this reach?

(Lucy): Virtual work hasn’t impeded our ability to reach talent at all. If anything, it’s expanded by removing geographic limitations and allowing us to focus purely on finding the best people for the role, regardless of where they’re based.

(Zack): Our East Africa team is spread across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. For example, our Head of Communications is based in Uganda—not because we relocated the role there, but because the strongest candidate was already there, and our model allowed us to hire without geographic constraints.

Q: Similarly, how has being virtual affected the organization’s staff demographics in terms of gender and geographic diversity?

(Zack): From a gendered, feminist perspective, remote work is a powerful driver of accessibility—especially for women at different stages of their careers or family lives. I’ve seen this firsthand throughout my career, having worked remotely long before AMPLIFY Girls.

Many women step away from the workforce to have children and later face barriers to re-entry. Remote work offers the flexibility that makes returning possible, allowing us to recruit mid-career women who are ready to re-engage but may not be able or willing to commit to rigid hours and long commutes. Several of these women have become exceptional members of our team—talent we likely would have missed if in-office work were required.

(Lucy): There’s also another side to this conversation: remote work creates an opportunity to challenge gendered narratives about roles within the home. It opens space for a more equitable sharing of family responsibilities and makes those shifts more visible and achievable.

In this sense, remote work is deeply deconstructive. It has the potential to reshape how we think about work, family, and community, and to help redesign societies that are more equitable and inclusive. By doing so, it expands access to opportunities for people who were previously excluded from the workforce due to the kinds of constraints Zack mentioned.

Defining the Virtual Work Environment

Q: Does AMPLIFY Girls use any fixed physical locations?

(Zack): We don’t have permanent physical space, though we do occasionally use shared spaces. For example, when it makes sense, we’ll bring the Nairobi-based team—our largest cohort—together at a co-working space or even coordinate a shared lunch at a nearby café.

While our team spans multiple countries, these informal meetups allow for in-person connection from time to time. Overall, our model remains fully flexible and truly remote.

Q: Is there an established periodicity for in-person meetings and activities?

(Lucy): Over the past two years, we’ve been able to make in-person connections more regular. We hold an annual meeting that brings the full team together in one physical space, and we also organize additional in-person gatherings around specific activities or events. The annual meeting, however, remains the fixed point on our calendar.

As Zack mentioned, teams in Nairobi and Tanzania have had more opportunities to connect locally. With five staff members in Nairobi and two in Tanzania, it’s been easier for those groups to meet and collaborate face-to-face when needed.

Q: Are these organized on a unit or cross-unit collaboration?

(Zack): Most of the time, we stay on schedule with our in-person gatherings. We’ve just returned from our annual year-end strategy retreat, where the entire international team comes together to reflect on the past year and plan ahead. These retreats are intentionally flat in structure, with no hierarchy or segmentation; everyone is in the same room, collaborating and contributing equally.

Q: Are there standards where AMPLIFY Girls defines a virtual workspace?

(Zack): We don’t provide strict guidelines or standards; what we offer is more of a resource. Staff receive an annual and monthly stipend to invest in their home office, helping create a comfortable space for remote work.

We do have expectations around communication—responsiveness, clarity, and participation—but physical setup is flexible. We don’t monitor backgrounds, seating, or location.

For example, even before I started working in AMPLIFY Girls, a remote team member with chronic pain would sometimes take meetings lying on the floor, saying, “Today is a floor day.” Her setup allowed her to participate fully, and we welcomed it. Flexibility like this is exactly what remote work is meant to support.

Q: Is virtual work typically carried out at home or in other locations, and is the choice a decision of the staff member or the organization?

(Zack): Absolutely. I’ve worked while traveling, from coffee shops, and all over the place. I often joke that my only in-person colleagues are the baristas at the café down the road—I see them more than anyone else during the week!

(Lucy): That’s what makes remote work so interesting. While many organizations see it as disruptive—prescribing where you sit, how you present yourself, or even what you wear—remote work shifts the focus. It asks organizations to prioritize results and outcomes over rigid, visible routines.

Q: Are there guidelines that define the physical attributes of an effective virtual workplace?

(Lucy): One requirement we do have for some roles is location. Certain staff need to be ordinarily resident in a specific town or area—not to limit flexibility, but to ensure practical accessibility: reliable internet, the ability to attend in-person meetings, and other role-specific needs.

Q: How does AMPLIFY Girls assist a staff member in setting up a virtual workplace?

(Zack): We provide an annual stipend for home office setup and a monthly stipend for communications, internet, and related expenses, added directly to everyone’s pay. An HR specialist manages this, having established the standards a few years ago. The amounts are based on averages from similar organizations, reflecting typical practices in the field.

Managing the Virtual Work Environment

(Lucy): Another advantage of remote work is nearly 24-hour coverage of the CEO role. It’s an often-overlooked benefit, the ability to respond across time zones and ensure the right people are available when needed.

Q: That’s certainly an advantage. At our organization, we require people to turn on their cameras for virtual work to maintain eye contact. Does AMPLIFY Girls have a similar requirement?

(Zack): We do require cameras in specific instances, but otherwise, team members have flexibility, and usage usually ends up about 50/50. During weekly or biweekly meetings with team-building or reflection activities, we ask everyone to turn cameras on and engage fully. For routine check-ins or quick updates, we’re much more flexible.

Q: How does AMPLIFY Girls prepare new hires for virtual work? 

(Zack): Our onboarding emphasizes the systems we use to stay connected. While every workplace introduces new hires to tools, for us, it’s front and center—team members rely on them to connect, coordinate, and collaborate, sometimes more than in-person organizations.

For example, getting someone up to speed on Slack channels and WhatsApp groups is the virtual equivalent of walking around the office and learning how work gets done, so it’s a key focus from day one.

Q: How are issues around stress and isolation in a virtual work environment managed?

(Lucy): Sitting in the same physical space doesn’t automatically prevent isolation, and the same is true for remote work. To stay connected, we hold biweekly team meetings and use tools like Slack and WhatsApp to coordinate across units. Supervisors keep in touch, and everyone has ways to check in with one another.

Isolation isn’t just about distance—it’s cultural, shaped by practices that foster inclusion, safety, and connection. This includes creating space for staff to reach out, providing mental health support, and encouraging collaboration and care.

We do our best to address this, though it’s not perfect. We continuously learn and adapt to improve the remote experience for our team.

Q: How are issues related to pay equity and equivalent worth addressed in a virtual environment?  Are issues related to variances in cost of living a factor?

(Lucy): At AMPLIFY Girls, our compensation philosophy is simple: equal pay for equal work. Salaries aren’t adjusted based on location; instead, we aim for fair remuneration for all staff and address equity within existing pay bands. Equity considers factors like experience and length of service, but the core principle remains: doing the same work means being paid the same.

Q: The three markets are quite different, with Nairobi more robust than Kampala or Dar es Salaam. Do you base compensation on Kenyan levels, or do you also consider international pay benchmarks?

(Lucy): We recently completed a job evaluation and compensation review, which was very illuminating. For example, Nairobi is a dynamic market with significant pay differentials. When setting midpoints, we averaged across various markets to determine rates that make sense for the organization. In less defined markets, individuals may benefit, but we aim to balance interests and ensure no one is undervalued simply because of where they’re located.

Q: Salaries are obviously subject to taxation, which varies by country. How do you ensure staff clearly understand your pay philosophy, how it’s applied, and that it’s fully transparent?

(Zack): We do exactly that. At our recent strategic retreat in Nairobi, we held a session laying everything out plainly—our philosophy, why we chose it, and what it means in practice.

We encouraged the team to speak up if they had questions or concerns, aiming to prevent anyone from leaving thinking, “I’m not happy with this,” without saying anything. Any changes to our structure or philosophy are fully transparent, and we have no issue explaining how and why these rates are set.

Q: At least internally, do you publish your pay scale?

(Zack): Yes, the pay scale, yes.

Q: How are issues around benefits related to insurance and pension addressed?

(Zack): We manage this by using different employment structures in different locations, ensuring full legal compliance and accountability with our staff. A central HR specialist supports the organization as a whole, while local HR support helps navigate location-specific issues. For example, our Nairobi-based specialist advises on tax changes and their impact on Kenyan staff—not to set compensation, but to ensure compliance and fairness across locations.

Lessons Learned

Q: What has been the greatest challenge virtual work poses for building and sustaining cohesion within a team and across the organization?

(Zack): One of the biggest challenges of remote work is maintaining energy, focus, and continuity on a single issue. Team members may join a conversation late, step away, or return the next day, while others have continued the discussion.

The challenge is ensuring everyone stays informed, invested, and comfortable contributing. Sometimes this means pausing to bring people up to speed so no one is left behind. Remote work requires intentional reintegration to make sure every voice is heard and no input is lost.

(Lucy): A big part comes from my years of doing remote work. Without daily in-person interaction, it’s sometimes hard to know what people are thinking or feeling. Cameras may be on or off, and it’s not always clear if someone is disengaged from the process, the work, or the team.

What’s helped me is assuming good intentions—that everyone is committed to the mission and doing their best. That mindset has been invaluable in guiding me to support the team effectively.

Q: Does the absence of a physical center to the organization pose any difficulties in engaging with clients and collaborators?

(Zack): I don’t think so—if anything, it’s a huge benefit. Just today, we met with people across multiple countries. Working with team members in different international locations is a priority for us, and I honestly can’t imagine doing that in person. Remote work is clearly advantageous.

(Lucy): Of course, there’s another side—the human connection that sometimes only happens in person. Virtual engagements often lay the groundwork, but in some cases, face-to-face meetings truly unlock a relationship.

Remote work hasn’t been a barrier for us; no one has said, “We don’t want to work with AMPLIFY Girls because we’re remote.” Instead, we see in-person and remote interactions as complementary, using each strategically when it adds value.

Q: Is the concept of career different in a virtual organization?

(Lucy): The building blocks are the same, whether I’m working in-person or remotely.

(Zack): For me, the biggest benefit of always working remotely is that my career feels inherently open. I wouldn’t hesitate to consider opportunities in other locations or work arrangements. One challenge has been location filters on job sites, though more platforms now offer remote options, which helps.

Remote work has given me flexibility in both personal and professional life and the ability to build connections across locations. Over the past ten years, I’ve worked remotely for two nonprofits while living in three different states across various time zones—and it never affected my ability to work effectively.

Q: Overall, is being virtual a necessary challenge or an asset in maintaining and building AMPLIFY Girls’ corporate culture?

(Zack): Every model has pros and cons, but for us, remote work is overwhelmingly an asset. If we were forced to go fully in-person, I honestly don’t know how we’d manage it—and I wouldn’t want to. Shifting away from remote work would be extremely detrimental. Even considering a change would likely confuse our team, partners, and funders, who might wonder why we’d abandon the structure we’ve carefully built.

(Lucy): It also reflects our philosophy on administrative costs and serving partners. We don’t believe in spending resources to build that kind of infrastructure when those funds could be better used directly for, or in service of, our partners.

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This interview is part of the inaugural edition of Community Magazine, Birches Group’s publication on workforce management. Subscribe to receive the full issue and future updates. Subscribe here

What’s the context? 

As part of a broader initiative within the United Nations system to simplify and clarify job evaluation and build linkages to other HR processes, UNAIDS agreed to participate in a pilot project to link job evaluation and performance management criteria. Through such a linkage of job grading and performance measures, it was intended to assess how individual staff serving at the same grade level could be consistently evaluated. Taking such an approach, it was also decided to test the possible use of a multi-rater (360°) framework. 

What was the challenge? 

The approach to performance appraisal within United Nations agencies is determined by each agency; however, all agencies generally use a method known as MBO—Management By Objectives—based on cascading objectives from the organization to the individual. The structure of the objectives is not linked to the grade of the job, nor is there any process to align objectives across grade levels. This results in a discrete performance assessment for each individual, which can only be completed by the immediate supervisor, limiting the perspectives in performance assessment.

What was the solution? 

For the pilot, UNAIDS adopted a new performance management solution that changed the basis of assessment from MBO to using the standards of job evaluation, which provide consistent criteria by grade level. The UN classification standards are based on a simplified and transparent table of values against four factors of classification. A set of corresponding values to measure performance was established to provide clear and consistent measures. The new measures also enabled the testing of the 360-degree feedback, since the standard was easy to understand and relied solely on the evaluators’ experience working with the individual being assessed. 

The nomination of peer evaluators was left to each staff member following criteria defining a good cross-section of evaluators, while supervisors reviewed and approved the list on a strictly confidential basis. 

Another change under the pilot program was the introduction of a four-point rating scale, replacing the existing five-point scale. The new rating scale was introduced to align more closely with the focus of the assessment, which emphasizes the confirmation of achieving the expectations of the incumbent’s grade level. Using grade-level-specific measures, evaluators were asked to answer three questions:

• Did the staff member display competence in the subject area of work? 

• Did the staff member listen and take into account perspectives from the team and the client? 

• Did the staff member deliver the needed services/outcome, meeting expectations in terms of timeliness and quality? 

An online platform was created for capturing performance data with a review timeframe of five weeks established for the conduct of the exercise. 

What was the outcome? 

The exercise covered some 400 staff serving in 80 country offices, including staff at UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva. Within five weeks, more than 2,000 evaluations were completed, covering eighty percent of the staff. Examination of the ratings showed a broad correlation between supervisor and peer assessment, validating the multi-rater approach. Participants also indicated the pilot system was generally easily understood and accessible across the user community. 

As a comparison, the prior system used by UNAIDS achieved just a six percent completion rate over twelve months. 

What’s the takeaway? 

Linking performance to the same factors used to evaluate jobs and anchoring them to what makes their job level distinct simplifies performance management. A simple performance standard facilitates 360° feedback. 

You can learn more about Community™ Performance here.

What’s the context?

A regional network of civil society organizations in Africa is committed to advocating for fair, equitable, and transparent tax systems across the continent. Through grassroots organizing, capacity building, policy advocacy, and research, the organization empowers communities and institutions to challenge tax injustices and promote sustainable and inclusive development. Coordinating these efforts is its Secretariat, strategically located in Nairobi, Kenya. Given its mandate, attracting, retaining, and developing a multidisciplinary and multinational workforce is essential for the organization to effectively realize its vision of an Africa where tax justice prevails. To achieve this, it partnered with Birches Group to design a grading structure that clearly articulated the differentiation and progression of work in the organization, along with a pay scale guided by a compensation philosophy defining its target market and position.

What was the challenge?

The newly established grading and pay structure provided the organization with a solid foundation for managing its diverse workforce based on the principles of equivalent worth and significant difference. To fully utilize this structure, the organization recognized the need for a comprehensive framework to manage individual pay progression within salary ranges, inform promotion decisions, and recognize employees’ varying levels of experience and knowledge.

The challenge was two-fold: bridging the structural framework with the people within it, and establishing sustainable pay equity practices to maintain fairness and effectiveness over time.

What was the solution?

Guided by the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, the organization, in collaboration with Birches Group, implemented a clear and transparent framework to address both challenges. This framework, Community™ Skills, expands upon the principle by explicitly defining the knowledge gained through experience as the primary determinant of value. In this approach, equity involves consistently and transparently measuring and remunerating the value of experience—recognizing that individuals have varying levels of experience and should be compensated proportionately.

Through Community™ Skills, the organization established a framework with clear criteria for pay management by articulating the progression of knowledge across five distinct stages—Basic, Proficient, Skilled, Advanced, and Expert. Each stage directly aligns with specific pay points: Minimum, 1st Quartile, Midpoint, 3rd Quartile, and Maximum, respectively. By adopting this structured approach, the organization has achieved greater clarity, consistency, and precision in managing workforce compensation and career progression.

What was the outcome?

A persistent gap in HR has traditionally been the disconnect between structure and capacity—the divide between what is considered “hard” vs “soft” HR. By building upon a solid job-based foundation and integrating a skills-based approach, the organization effectively bridged this gap. This resulted in a systematic and efficient approach to managing resources for salary increases and provided actionable insights into workforce capabilities. It also positioned the organization to make informed promotion decisions and to strategically reinforce skills growth through targeted learning and development.

What’s the takeaway?

Now in its fifth year of implementing the Community™ Skills framework, this regional network of civil society organizations in Africa serves as a prime example of how there is an alternative to the conventional, often imprecise practices of utilizing time-based steps or performance as proxies for experience. Instead, it explicitly measures experience for what it is—knowledge, expertise, and skill—enhancing transparency, fairness, and effectiveness in workforce management.

You can learn more about Community™ Skills here.

What’s the context?

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is a focused multilateral development bank (MDB) and international organization committed to fostering a strong community for its staff. To remain competitive, CDB has progressively refined its compensation strategy and closely monitored developments among comparator institutions.

What was the challenge?

Competition within the multilateral banking and international organization community can be quite demanding. While being a smaller institution, CDB faces direct competition from organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations, which have active programs in the same countries where CDB functions. In building its market model for setting salaries for its internationally recruited staff, CDB has found the greatest challenge in market competition has been for its more senior-level staff. CDB recognized that staying competitive in this area is essential to effectively serve the Caribbean region.

What was the solution?

In building the sample of comparator employers against which CDB would examine its levels of compensation, it recognized that the pay progression found in the development banks is indeed more aggressive for senior management roles than in other international organizations. As a result, CDB decided to give greater “weight” to the market data from the development banks, whereby 80% of the market reference would be drawn from these comparators for senior management roles.

What was the outcome?

By placing greater weight on development bank data for senior-level roles, CDB has been able to more closely match the progression of compensation found in these key comparators. Since this adjustment in market assessment was limited to senior roles, CDB has been able to sustain its critical market position in a very cost-effective manner by focusing on these critical roles where there are limited numbers of staff.

What’s the takeaway?

Refining comparator weighting in building the market sample is a very effective approach to targeting and optimizing market position. It enables an organization to focus on critical roles in a broader context of market positioning.

You can learn more about Community™ Market here. To see other client experiences related to optimizing market position, click here. 

We are proud to announce Birches Group’s achievement on August 15, 2024, of SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, a critical step in our ongoing commitment to data security and privacy. This certification, awarded by an independent third-party auditor, underscores Birches Group’s commitment to maintaining the highest standards of security, confidentiality, and availability for our clients.

What is SOC 2 Type 1 Compliance?

SOC 2 (Service Organization Control 2) is an auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and is widely recognized as the gold standard for companies that need to demonstrate their commitment to data security and trustworthiness.  The SOC 2 Type 1 audit requires rigorous assessments and testing to validate an organization’s ability to protect the security, confidentiality, and availability of its clients’ data.

Achieving SOC 2 Type 1 compliance confirmed that we have implemented the necessary controls and procedures to ensure our systems are secure and our clients’ data is protected.

Why SOC 2 Type 1 Matters

With the ongoing threat of data breaches, it’s critical for companies like Birches Group offering HR management solutions to prioritize security.  We understand the importance of security as our clients trust us with sensitive information, and we want them to rest assured knowing that their data is protected.  We want to thank our clients for their continued trust and support in Birches Group.

Key Highlights of the Certification:

• Security: Birches Group has implemented robust measures to protect against unauthorized access, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of client data.
• Confidentiality: The company has established strict protocols to safeguard sensitive information, ensuring it is only accessible to authorized personnel.
• Availability: Birches Group guarantees that its systems are reliable and available to meet the needs of its clients, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous service.

“We are proud to achieve SOC 2 Type 1 certification, which reflects our firm commitment to data security and operational excellence.  This certification is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team, and it reinforces our promise to provide secure and reliable services to our clients.“

— Jeffrey Slater, Birches Group LLC Co-founder & Partner

Next Steps and our Continuing Journey

Achieving SOC 2 Type 1 involved a detailed process including risk assessments, reviewing policies, and improving our robust security controls. In early 2025, we aim to complete SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, further demonstrating our dedication to data security.

Data security is an ongoing commitment at Birches Group, and we will continue to assess the threat environment, keep abreast of emerging technologies, and adapt our policies, processes, and tools to maintain data security, confidentiality, and availability to provide the best possible service to our clients.

For more information on SOC 2 Type 1 compliance or a copy of our report, please contact us.