A new generation of professionals and skilled workers are choosing Roanoke as home for obvious reasons.
Aaron Spicer
Grab your laptop and head to the great outdoors for a refreshing work day in sunshine and fresh air.
When the signs announcing “Virginia’s Technology Corridor” first went up along I-81, Greg Brock couldn’t help but chuckle. He’s not laughing any longer. Last year, Virginia’s Blue Ridge ranked second in the state for telecommuting workers. The workers have landed in the Star City and its ’burbs for a reason.
“Virginia’s Blue Ridge has an ideal mix of the urban and the outdoorsy,” says Austin King, communications manager for the Roanoke Regional Chamber. “It has everything a mid-sized city should have, while being just a few minutes away, in every direction, from beautiful scenery and countless natural resources. That’s why they are choosing to come here.”
King chose Roanoke after spending his days in a co-working space in D.C., where the view at his office was “a concrete jungle, if you could see outside at all. You ask yourself ‘What is keeping me in this place where all I do is work?’ If you live in Virginia’s Blue Ridge, you can step away from your desk and boom! You feel the nature.”
Listen to 40-year-old Matt McKimmy, director of support for RideAmigos, a sustainable transportation software company: “While [wife Becky and I] grew up in the Roanoke area, neither of us ever anticipated moving back here after we left for [Virginia Tech]. After college we lived in Indiana for 10 years. When we were ready for our next move, we weren’t initially considering Roanoke, even though we still have family in the area.
“However, as we considered Roanoke compared to other larger metro areas in the region, we realized it had everything we were looking for in a place to live: easy access to outdoor recreation, good restaurants, just-the-right-size making it easy to get around, inexpensive cost of living and it’s a community on the upswing. Those where the things we’re interested in and care about.”
Becky McKimmy, website developer with Adopt a Pet, says, “I want to be here. I grew up here and thought it wasn’t big enough, didn’t have the culture I wanted, wasn’t an outdoor city. We’re mountain bikers. We came back to visit and found all that was here, so we moved back to the biking, hiking, water, all I ever wanted.”
Taylor Reschka
Remote workers can enjoy a craft beer at our local breweries like Starr Hill.
That was not a lonely refrain. Roanoke has been aggressively pursuing people who were once called “Yuppies” (young urban professionals) and are now Gen X and Gen Y with tech backgrounds. The McKimmys can name a legion of their new friends among the newly recruited and, says Matt, “We are evangelists for Roanoke.”
“People are making the decision to live and work in Roanoke for the livability, the ease of living,” says John Hull, executive director Roanoke Regional Partnership. “The outdoors couldn’t be more on trend in the middle of a pandemic, especially last year. Paddling, hiking, biking, the greenways and the Roanoke Outside campaign were big lures for this region.
“We launched a remote worker campaign last summer. For the first six months or so of the pandemic we got nearly four million impressions, signed up several thousand people. We know the population growth rate increased quite a bit from 2019-2020. The effect is positive. There are a lot of links between demographics and economics, and we know attractive remote workers hits the important points. These new workers are a mix of middle-to-high income. There is an economic multiplier effect of them being in this region.”
Laura Bradford, an executive at Bookalicious, a national technology company that encourages children to read, says, “Flexible work environments have been key to our ability to recruit amazing talent. For example, our CXO, a former VP at Scholastic, is located in Florida; I’m in Virginia; and my co-founder, Lea Anne Borders, is in California.
“We have an entire team of nationally known literacy experts across the country and building a team with that level of expertise would not have been possible if we were constrained to a physical location. I don’t think it’s an either/or question though. As we grow, we need to query our team to see what works best for them and create options that allow the entire team to perform at their highest level. For now, remote works best for us, but I think our long-term plan will incorporate a hybrid option.”
Madison Kantor, a Roanoke native who wears several hats at Bookalicious, hadn’t been in the office for eight months as this story was being researched. The situation “gives me the freedom to be what I want it to be. I thought it would be a lot harder to do, but when you’re given trust and freedom from your boss, you want to work well. It is good for mental health and professional development.”
Kantor graduated from Roanoke College and immediately moved to Richmond where she worked for traditional companies but found herself “spending so much time in Roanoke because I love it. My best friend, who lives in Denver, wants to move back, too.”
Greg Brock, who heads Firefli with partners John Cornthwait and Matthew Sams, has implemented a hybrid. His workers work where they are comfortable, take unlimited vacation and sick leave when they need, snack at a loaded kitchen (including beer), schmooze liberally or work at home—wherever home is, including Texas. And it is a happy, productive, enthusiastic, talented bunch. “You can be in a treehouse if you get your work done,” says Brock.
The freedom to work “is incredibly popular,” he says. However, “you need a high level of trust” to incorporate the liberal workplace that Firefli has become. In fact, that very philosophy has helped recruit “extreme A-level players here. We have valedictorians, people at the top of the industrial game.”
“Bigger corporations are absolutely looking at [telecommuting opportunities],” says King. “At small to mid-sized companies, it often depends on the flexibility, or adaptability, of those in leadership. Some won’t pivot because they view it as too big a change. Others are sensing what is becoming a massive, industry agnostic shift, and are changing policies to attract talent.”
Are those choosing telecommuting happy with it? Says King, “It may be too early to say for sure due to a COVID filled year. But I’ve yet to hear from someone who regrets it.”
“My experience has been that the highest-performing teams are ones that also recognize the needs of the individuals who make up the team, which is both a location and agency question,” says Bradford. “I don’t think there is a ‘one size fits all’ approach. There are several factors that have to be evaluated, including whether or not some work can be done asynchronously and/or remotely, determining if the team has the tools to enable remote/hybrid work. Meeting people ‘where they are’ improves morale and performance.”
There are side benefits that Bradford recognizes. “I think remote/hybrid workplaces, if created thoughtfully, can definitely be a competitive advantage for high-performing teams. It can also be a financial advantage. Building this team in Silicon Valley, where we are headquartered, would be exorbitantly more expensive than building a remote team. On an individual level, I am better able to focus and be more efficient in a remote setting, and I appreciate not having to factor in commute time”
“We plant the flag that we are employee first,” Brock emphasizes. “That helps us retain clients that fit us personally. A toxic client can run people off. Working remotely is not new, but since the pandemic, it has grown as a phenomenon, and many believe it will remain a significant part of how industries operate in the future.”