How Wistia Connects its Vibrant Remote-First Employee Community
Wistia is a complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, market, and measure their videos and webinars—all in one place. True to its mission of helping every business thrive with video, Wistia delivers its unique end-to-end product experience to over 425,000 marketers around the world.
Maintaining an innovative presence in a field as complex and fast-moving as video marketing isn’t easy, but Wistia assembled a team of supremely talented individuals dedicated to ensuring Wistia customers (like Haystack!) have the best tools in the business.
We recently met up with Inga Höskuldsdóttir, Operations Project Manager to learn how Wistia keeps this creative team of innovators connected, informed, and engaged.
Every employment journey starts with an initial attraction. For Höskuldsdóttir, it was the radiant creative energy the Wistia team couldn’t help but show.
“I remember looking back, when I first saw Wistia’s website and the videos, and being taken aback by the raw creativity. It came off as authentic, and you don’t often see that with a lot of companies.”
While the authenticity of the team’s creative drive was magnetic, that same authenticity was woven into the fabric of its organizational culture, leaving an impression on her that never faded.
“After getting to know everyone, I recognized that they weren’t just saying words about inclusivity and flexibility and the importance of work-life balance just because they sound nice. Seven years later, I’m still excited to be here because it’s all sincere. They truly care about everyone.”
Nearly half a million marketers across the world use Wistia, and an exponentially larger and broader audience of viewers interact with the content those marketers share. In order to serve that audience effectively, the team trusts and relies on its own diversity.
“At Wistia we believe that having a diverse group of people is the only way you can have a truly high-performing team,” Höskuldsdóttir explained. “We need people with different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds—not just to build the best product, or the best team, but also to have a stronger positive impact on our community.”
That community impact manifests itself in numerous ways, from the product’s design, to the organization’s charitable programs, as Höskuldsdóttir shared.
“It’s very important to us to give back. We have an event every year where we set aside funds to give to charities. Everyone submits options, we narrow them down to 10, and then employees get to decide how their individual portion of the team’s funds are allocated among them.
Diverse perspectives help us get the best thing out there, whether it’s to our product, company, or community.”
While the team’s diversity provides a strong foundation for success, organizational support and scaffolding help channel it and increase the impact across numerous areas.
“We have a broad range of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Wistia that are there to support employees,” Höskuldsdóttir shared, “but they also do a lot of work within the company. We use that work around Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) in everything that we do.
We prioritize these groups by putting budget and resources behind them, as well as broadening the impact ERGs have at Wistia by providing critical thought partnership in how we design some of our policies. We have a full-time DEIB program manager who is on the People Team with me, and it’s great to see it all embedded in the way that we work and our operations.”
Höskuldsdóttir also pointed out that life experiences, living dynamics, and even temporary circumstances can add to the mix of perspectives her organization can draw on in a powerful way.
“There are people on the team who are caregivers, and they have the time and flexibility to figure out a way to integrate their work and life. Seeing people come together and truly care for one another in day-to-day interactions is inspiring.”
“We need people with different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds—not just to build the best product, or the best team, but also to have a stronger positive impact on our community.”
As a remote-first organization, managing all these efforts while supporting collaboration and knowledge sharing across multiple time zones and locations requires considerable effort and coordination. Bolstering that foundational coordination and structure became essential—especially as Wistia continued to grow.
“We’d been talking about having a centralized knowledge hub for a long time,” Höskuldsdóttir recalled. “We had (and still do have) a lot of stuff in Google Drive. It was getting really hard to search and find things. People didn’t know if they were looking at up-to-date information.
We even had another tool alongside Google Drive for a long time, but it was increasingly challenging for teams to collaborate—especially cross-functionally.”
While it was important to have a place people could search for the information, resources, or people they needed, Höskuldsdóttir and her team were looking for something that could exceed that expectation for Wistians.
“We needed a place for published resources that people could rely on as an up-to-date source of truth. If you’re losing time searching for information and you can’t find it, you give up and ask somebody else, and now that loss of time is compounded. So, it needed to be easily searchable, and visual, so that it would not only serve you what you were looking for—but also things you didn’t know you were looking for. We were often trying to find ways to surface important resources, and let people know they even existed.
Our goal for this new system was to serve people with the right information at the right time, and in the right context.”
The team set out on a search to find a tool that could accomplish all these goals, and began to evaluate several options.
"It needed to be easily searchable, and visual, so that it would not only serve you what you were looking for—but also things you didn’t know you were looking for."
There’s no shortage of solutions that can improve knowledge management or support collaboration. But as a team delivering a product that famously empowers its users to do everything they want to with video in one place, Wistia was looking for something that could accomplish all of this and more.
“We were reviewing a lot of different tools and methods for information sharing,” Höskuldsdóttir said.
"Whatever we chose had to be engaging. I didn’t want people to go into a tool full of text that felt heavy and difficult to read. I wanted something that allowed us to put relevant information in front of the right people at the right time—and would be fun to use.”
Wistia builds and delivers a product that is frequently praised for its user-friendliness and intuitiveness, winning G2’s “Best Usability” in its industry category again this season. In some ways, that became an extra hurdle for the evaluation process, because the entire employee community was already intimately familiar with exceptional user interfaces and user experiences.
“There’s less patience for clunky user experiences because you’re used to things working quickly and seamlessly,” Höskuldsdóttir explained. “As a team with a lot of creative and tech-savvy employees, we wanted something easy to use, maintain, and update.”
After narrowing down their choices, Höskuldsdóttir and team recognized Haystack as a frontrunner.
“The visual aspects of Haystack stood out,” she recalled.
In addition to its core design, Höskuldsdóttir pointed out the value of Haystack’s no-code customization tools. “A big differentiator was being able to easily customize our homepage and let our brand really shine. Having modules and rich content to break up text helps us make posts and pages engaging for employees.”
An engaging platform is one critical pillar of adoption, but engaging visuals don’t guarantee an efficient or effective experience. That’s why the Wisita team also focused on delivering a digital experience that saved time and frustration.
“We really liked Haystack’s search—it felt very intuitive, and it was nice that it searched both the titles and bodies of documents, and brought results really easily to people. Because we’re heavy Google Workspace and Slack users, the fact that Haystack integrated with both of those tools so well was another big win for us.
Of all the enterprise solutions out there, Haystack had the perfect tailoring for the kind of employee community we have at Wistia.”
In 2024, Wistians were introduced to Haystack, or as they call it, “The Goose.”
"We really liked Haystack’s search—it felt very intuitive, and it was nice that it searched both the titles and bodies of documents, and brought results really easily to people."
Such a unique name suggests a long and storied tale, but it turns out it may just be lost to history. “The first wiki our founder built was called ‘The Goose.’ I asked a bunch of long-time Wistians where that name came from, but nobody remembered—I think we just thought it was funny!” Höskuldsdóttir laughed.
“When we surveyed the team to decide the name for our new intranet, ‘The Goose’ quickly became a toprunner. People really adopted it, and it worked out well, because we wanted a name that would be easy to say and couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.”
“The Goose” turned out to be a perfect name for Wistia’s new digital home base. It was simple, fun, memorable, and undeniably Wistian.
With the stage set, it was time to introduce Wistians to The Goose.
“Our leadership was really excited and already on board from day one—especially after I’d introduced Haystack to them as a contender,” Höskuldsdóttir recalled. “The fact that it had this visual homepage, and of course, that it integrated with Wistia was big because it meant we could bring in all our videos.”
Implementing any large-scale tool or process comes with some change management, and bringing The Goose to Wistians was no different; however, as this benefitted the team in new ways.
“There were questions about what would live in Google Drive, and what would live in Haystack, but that ended up being a great forcing function for us to develop a framework.”
Like many modern organizations—especially remote-first teams working in tech—Wistians use a lot of tools. Prior to launch, there was already some tool fatigue to contend with. Despite that, post-launch, Höskuldsdóttir found the team took to it quickly.
“It’s been interesting to see, because we had our first engagement survey since launch, and we got a lot of positive feedback about Haystack. Our engagement surveys are anonymous, so they provide good objective feedback.
I expected a mixed bag, but there was a consensus that people had seen a huge improvement in finding company information and cross-functional collaboration support, which has been a goal of ours for years. I think people have been seeing that value and are excited for it.
It was so cool to see that people were recognizing the value, not just in the work that my team has been doing with company-wide content, but also the team-specific resources.”
“Our leadership was really excited and already on board from day one—especially after I’d introduced Haystack to them as a contender."
You might not be surprised to learn the Wistia team doesn’t sit still for long. That’s great for product innovation, and it also helps deliver a dynamic digital employee experience. Höskuldsdóttir and her team continue to drive a lot of value from Haystack’s flexible layouts.
“Flexible layouts have been a huge differentiator for Haystack, because there weren’t many tools that allowed for that. I wanted to be able to put stuff out there that people might not be aware of, and bring it front-and-center.
For example, right now we have our performance reviews going on, so we have a banner at the top reminding everyone of the due date for self-reviews.
In June, we have our company offsite coming up, and we plan to take over the full homepage. When people log into The Goose, the offsite information will take center stage, because that’s what people will need when they’re traveling.”
In addition to manually updating the homepage to promote key information that is valuable to the global audience, Höskuldsdóttir touched on the value of delivering relevant content automatically.
“I love that we’re able to populate the homepage dynamically based on groups, so people see a homepage with content related to the groups they’re in.
There’s so much knowledge and information within an organization, and you want to tailor it and make it relevant for people. There are a lot of ways to customize Haystack that I love.”
One of the quickest ways to spark a team mutiny is to take away the tools everyone uses and loves, and replace them with something new. That’s why Höskuldsdóttir found it so important to continue leveraging the elements of their communications stack that worked before.
“We’re not trying to replace tools people use and love—the goal is to compliment them.
Before Haystack, we’d create something in Google Drive. Sometimes it would be a piece of communication, which we’d then send out through Slack or email, or we’d have a doc or spreadsheet that lives in Google Drive, and we’d point people to it.
All of that content—published resources, working docs—it was hard to get through everything, and there was no effective homepage to send people to.”
Instead of dismissing the entire structure outright, Höskuldsdóttir and her team took the best parts of it, and integrated them into their new system.
“Slack and Google Drive have so much history and information, and their search can be helpful in some cases, but not in a situation where you need to find a specific resource, or the source of truth. That’s where Haystack really excels.”
“We still use those tools a lot,” she explained, “but we’re using them more efficiently. Haystack can send a post out automatically via email and Slack. Our events in The Goose can be shared with Google Calendar.
It’s also helpful that we can be selective about what goes out, where, and when. For example, we might want to silently publish a resource instead of notifying everyone, or we might have something important that needs to be broadcast. It’s really nice to be able to decide that.”
Giving creators easy ways to fine-tune the way their content is distributed can have a massive impact on engagement, but Höskuldsdóttir pointed out another equally crucial factor.
“It’s important for employees to have their own individual notification settings so they have control over how they’re served information.”
In a modern work landscape where people are inundated with messages and notifications, giving individuals a means of fine-tuning their preferences can help reduce message overload and help people tune in, rather than tune out.
“We’re not trying to replace tools people use and love—the goal is to compliment them."
Anyone who has interacted with Wistia’s external branding and content knows how incredibly creative Wistians are. If you’re not already convinced, a visit from the Webinar Wizard should help.
Although the sea level of creativity on Höskuldsdóttir’s team is mountainous, she noted how helpful she and her colleagues found Haystack’s layouts and branding tools.
“It’s kind of funny, because so often on the people team, we feel like we’re not that creative compared to other Wistians. It’s been nice to lean on Haystack, where we can leverage our branding and have a library of beautiful cover photos that have already been through design and marketing, and publish things that are very visual and creative. Even writing comms and copy, it’s been so cool to partner with Wistians across the board on things like naming events, or how things are set up.
The imagery we use on The Goose mirrors the imagery we use on our website and everywhere else, so it becomes a really cohesive experience for employees.”
Höskuldsdóttir has also been finding ways to extend that cohesively branded experience across different mediums.
“One of the things we have been doing on the people team is a monthly newsletter that goes through Haystack. That has been a great way to really let our creativity out, so it’s an engaging experience to deliver to everyone, while reducing comms noise. It’s been nice to be able to use that visual aspect of Haystack to help us elevate design on the people team.”
"It’s been nice to lean on Haystack, where we can leverage our branding and have a library of beautiful cover photos that have already been through design and marketing, and publish things that are very visual and creative."
As someone who was able to build a digital employee experience vibrant enough to engage even the most creative of teams, Höskuldsdóttir was kind enough to share a blueprint for success.
“Don’t strive for perfection. Decide what your MVP is and get it out the door.
We broke our launch down into two phases: all company, and team hubs. That has worked well for us. It allowed us to get the company resources out that were relevant to all, get everyone using Haystack and understanding it before having teams build out their own knowledge hubs.
An intranet is supposed to be a living hub that changes and evolves as you grow and mature as a company. What Haystack will look like at launch will be different than later and that’s okay.
I had to switch my thinking a bit, and recognize that this is a living thing that will evolve over time.”
It’s always exciting to get to work with our favorite brands, and the Haystack team are long-time fans of Wistia. As Wistians continue to push the possibilities of video marketing forward, it inspires us to continue pushing the boundaries of “possible” for the digital employee experience.
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