Manage a Remote HR with Joanna Yeoh - VP of People at Nansen

In today's episode of Scaling Today, we had the pleasure of speaking with Joanna Yeoh, VP of People at Nansen, a cutting-edge blockchain analytics platform. Joanna shared fascinating insights into Nansen's remote-first culture, revealing both the challenges and strategies that have helped them succeed.

 Joanna also explained how Nansen leverages a global talent pool, their groundbreaking Universal Salary Scale, and network feedback-based performance management.

The Universal Salary Scale is the gold standard for a lot of remote companies, but I think Nansen is one of the very, very few who actually have it in practice.

Here is the transcript of our conversation:

Yuying Deng: 

Hi everyone, welcome to Scaling Today, the podcast where we explore how companies scale and also the future of work as well. I’m your host Yuying Deng, and today we have a very exciting episode lined up for you. Our guest today is Joanna Yeoh. She is the VP of People at Nansen. So, Nansen, I’m sure many of you who are in the blockchain industry have heard of it before. It is a very well-known blockchain analytics platform, right? 

I’ve actually known Joanna Yeoh for more than 10 years by now. We were initially introduced by my husband Bernard, while both of them were working at SingPost. Since then, Joanna Yeoh has moved on to senior HR and talent positions at companies such as MeraConnect and one before ending up at Nansen. So, Nansen is a fully remote company. I’m very excited to dive into their unique approach towards remote work and also how Joanna Yeoh has enabled it as well. Welcome to the show, Joanna Yeoh. Would you like to say a few words to our audience?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Sure, thanks Yuying Deng. It’s a real delight to be here and I’m honored to be one of your first guests and even more excited to be able to share Nansen and what we do.

Maybe a quick introduction about myself. I’ve spent the last 30 years doing strategic HR and talent management, mostly in organizations that were either going through very intense transformation or hyper-growth. I’ve worked both in corporates like AMD and SingPost, as you mentioned. I’ve also been in consulting with Mera and PwC. So, I think the best of both worlds, seeing the consulting frameworks and then being able to implement them in practice, has actually helped me in this new role at Nansen.

Yuying Deng: 

I do recall that SingPost was undergoing a transformation at the time you joined, and you really helped that process along, right?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Yes, that was a really exciting transformation, taking it from a postal practice to e-commerce logistics.

Yuying Deng: 

I heard a lot from Bernard about that, actually. Joanna, a question for you: because I do know that Nansen is fully remote—one of the rare companies in Singapore that is fully remote—how did you see the benefits in this approach? Were there any pros and cons that you saw?

Joanna Yeoh: 

So, let me first maybe correct—we didn’t start in person. Nansen was born in the midst of the pandemic, so we were fully remote by default and also by design. In fact, our founders at that point in time were based in Singapore, Norway, and Thailand. The company was built out, and they only really met in person two and a half years later.

Yuying Deng: 

Did they know each other before that?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Well, two of them knew each other, and they were interconnected by Alex Svanevik, one of our co-founders.

Yuying Deng: 

That required a lot of trust, for sure. So fully remote by default because the founders were in different countries.

Joanna Yeoh: 

That’s right.

Yuying Deng: 

And did you see any benefits to the distributed approach?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Absolutely. I think, currently, we have 80 people across 28 countries at the last count. What has really worked for us is it gave us instant access to a global talent pool, and that has really helped, especially in an area like blockchain and crypto, where there’s talent scarcity. It helps to be able to source talent from wherever they are.

Yuying Deng: 

I’ve noticed that a lot of blockchain and crypto companies are very remote, so I guess that’s for the reason you mentioned—just to get hold of talent wherever they are. Being fully remote must come with a lot of challenges. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with a distributed team while growing your company, and how have you overcome them?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Let me answer this from a strategic HR perspective, which is my background. I think the two main things, logistically, that we need to balance when building a remote company are: the hardware piece and the “heartware” piece. One is HR and the other is human engagement.

The hardware piece is about compliance—making sure employment contracts are in place, payroll is set up, onboarding people safely, giving them access to systems, and ensuring security. The “heartware” is about how you engage people when they’re spread across three time zones and how you get them to work together and perform at a high level.

So, these are basic HR questions that we’ve always thought about, but there’s an added layer of complexity and challenge, which is also very exciting. That’s one of the reasons I took this job at Nansen—the opportunity to build out new tools and practices that have worked very well for us.

One of those is something called the universal salary scale, and how we link it to performance. The universal salary scale is the gold standard for a lot of remote companies, but I think Nansen is one of the very few that actually has it in practice. What that means is we are location-agnostic. We pay people for the work they do, not based on where they are located. For example, whether a data engineer is passing data in New Delhi or New York, it doesn’t matter—they’re doing the same work, so they should be paid on the same scale. We use Singapore benchmarks as the scale. That has helped us tremendously to hire top talent, especially from developing countries around Asia and Eastern Europe.

Yuying Deng: 

I can imagine, because the salary difference between someone in India versus Singapore could be three times. So, this person would easily be earning three times the salary they could earn by working for an Indian company.

Joanna Yeoh: 

Exactly. So, we find that it works for us. We’re in an industry that values fairness, equity, and transparency, and this approach allows our team to put in all their effort knowing that the person working with them, pulling in the same direction, is paid the same. It helps with bonding and fairness. If we’re paYuying Deng somebody above market for where they live, it’s only fair to expect top performance from everyone, regardless of country.

We also have performance check-ins twice a year, but being fully remote, it’s impossible to expect feedback to come only from the manager. People are spread out and work with everyone all over the world. So, what we do is collect network feedback. Anyone can give anyone feedback at Nansen.

We use a system called Confirm, based on the science of organizational network analysis. We start by asking four simple questions:

• Who energizes and excites you at work?

• Who do you go to for advice when completing a piece of work?

These two questions quickly show me who the key influencers at Nansen are.

Yuying Deng: 

I would assume it would be the extroverts.

Joanna Yeoh: 

That’s where Confirm has done research and shown us that it actually surfaces introverts too. Extroverts like to talk to big audiences, while introverts prefer one-to-one or smaller group communication. So, when they add value, they still get surfaced as influencers, even in smaller settings.

The next two questions are:

• Here are three gold stars—who would you give them to?

• Here are three red flags—who have you worked with where there’s been friction or blockers?

I do not use this information in a punitive manner. We use it to surface signals of where there are issues, and then dive in with managers to resolve them. Often, it’s just a misunderstanding due to cultural differences or practical issues like time zones.

Yuying Deng: 

I would assume that’s quite common with 28 countries—different people, cultures, genders, and ages—so misunderstanding must be common.

Joanna Yeoh: 

Exactly, and sometimes the issue is simply where people sit in the organization, or time zones. The information gap creates misunderstandings, so filling that gap can make a big difference.

Yuying Deng: 

And you mentioned two things you’ve implemented—the universal salary scale and performance management systems. What else have you put in place to foster company culture?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Culture is foundational, and it starts with values. Our founder, Alex Svanevik, was very intentional about this. He and the other founders sat down and decided on four core values: transparency, speed, courage, and curiosity. These are the immutable values of Nansen, and they are lived out daily.

For example, transparency: From day one, any new hire at Nansen has access to our live revenue numbers. You can see it all on our dashboards in Metabase. In most companies, even as a director, you might not know the revenue until the end of the year, but at Nansen, transparency is key. Of course, this also means when times are tough, the challenge is motivating people and redirecting negative energy.

For speed: We’re in the fastest industry on Earth. Tokens can go from $1 million to $100 million in 48 hours. So, we have to be fast. When I joined Nansen, I put in three HR systems in three months—something that would take years in a traditional company. Courage is about doing things differently. For example, implementing a universal salary scale from day one—that was an act of courage, swimming against industry norms.

Yuying Deng: 

That’s quite unique, and I imagine that the idea of Yuying Deng people the same globally might lose you some talent from high-wage countries like the U.S.?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Yes, that’s a deliberate choice we made. When we looked at salary benchmarks, we realized we couldn’t compete with Silicon Valley without burning through our runway, so we decided not to compete for U.S. talent. Instead, we focused on Asia and Europe, where the Singapore benchmark works well.

Yuying Deng: 

Interesting. And what about maintaining productivity without using tracking technologies?

Joanna Yeoh: 

We don’t believe in tracking technologies. We measure output, not input. Just because someone sits at their computer from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, shaking their mouse, doesn’t mean they’re productive. Instead, we rely on performance feedback from peers, and we also have shout-out channels to recognize good work.

Yuying Deng: 

Do you train managers to manage remote teams, especially when they’re used to managing by sight rather than output?

Joanna Yeoh: 

Nansen was remote by design, so our systems were built for this. We use Slack for synchronous communication, and channels are open to everyone. For asynchronous communication, everything is documented in Notion. We ensure everything is written down so people can access information easily.

Yuying Deng: 

Onboarding and offboarding remotely must be challenging. How do you handle IT equipment and support?

Joanna Yeoh:

We’re pragmatic about this. New hires purchase their own laptops, usually Macs, and we reimburse them in their first paycheck. For security, we install a system called Kanji. If they leave, they can either purchase the laptop (after we wipe it with Kanji) or return it to us.

Yuying Deng: 

You mentioned high agency and autonomy being key for remote employees. What kind of employees thrive at Nansen?

Joanna Yeoh: 

We’ve found that experienced professionals with functional mastery thrive at Nansen. They don’t need hand-holding—they see problems and fix them. We recently decided to focus on hiring more senior people who can operate autonomously, rather than fresh graduates who need more structured guidance.

Yuying Deng: 

And how do you see remote work evolving? Are there any trends or tools you’re excited about?

Joanna Yeoh: 

I will never go back to an in-office job where I have to commute and sit there all day, waiting for the boss to leave. Remote work has allowed me to balance my career with caregiving for my aging mother, and I think it’s the future, especially in aging societies like Singapore. Technology is only going to get better and make remote work more accessible.

Yuying Deng: 

I fully agree. It’s not just a change in technology, but a change in management mindset that’s required for remote work to succeed. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Joanna Yeoh. Where can our listeners find you?

Joanna Yeoh: 

You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active there as I handle recruitment for Nansen.

Yuying Deng: 

Great! Thanks again for being with us today.