In late July, the entire Pure team spent three days together as a team in Daylesford.
That may not sound particularly unusual, but our team works remotely from almost every state in Australia. Bringing everyone into one house from Tuesday afternoon through to Friday morning was therefore significant.
Remote work gives us enormous flexibility. It enables us to recruit exceptional people wherever they live and allows people to build work around real lives, rather than forcing life to fit around work.
This is the approach to culture that earned Pure a spot in The Australian’s Best Place to Work list in early July. Not only were we named Australia’s number one Best Place to Work for Women, we were also recognised as a Top 10 Best Place to Work among small organisations, and highly commended for employee wellbeing.
I am extraordinarily proud of that recognition.
But I do not see it as evidence that the work is finished.
I see it as confirmation that we have built something worth protecting, and as a responsibility to continue strengthening the clarity, capability, systems and accountability that allow it to thrive.
This is at the heart of what it truly means to build a healthy, high-performing remote working culture.
Such an achievement does not emerge simply because people are given permission to work from home; it must be designed deliberately.
Building a culture you can be proud of
At Pure Public Relations, our model depends on trust, senior capability, ownership and accountability.
We can offer a high degree of flexibility because we work with experienced professionals who can exercise sound judgement, manage competing priorities and take genuine responsibility for outcomes.
But that trust is not blind.
We examine results, client happiness and the quality of our work with considerable rigour. Quality-control measures sit across every aspect of delivery, and we look closely at what is working, what is not, where expectations may be shifting and where intervention is required.
For flexibility to work in a genuinely high-performing way, the culture, systems and operating disciplines beneath it must be intentional.
The objective is not simply to enable people to maintain delivery from different locations. It is to create the conditions in which they continue to grow, refine their judgement, contribute ideas, challenge assumptions and innovate.
That requires robust systems, clear decision rights, disciplined review and a higher-than-usual standard of communication, feedback and collaboration.
It also requires substantial investment in people.
Our investment in training and development exceeds typical business standards, and certainly outpaces what is common across the public relations industry. We invest deliberately in capability, professional growth and helping people understand and work to their strengths.
Alongside that support sits a correspondingly high expectation of performance.
We expect people to take ownership, exercise judgement, communicate early when something is at risk and, wherever possible, exceed the high standard required of them.
Purpose and performance reinforce each other
Purpose is central to this model, because it helps create performance, and performance is strengthened by purpose.
When people understand why their work matters, who it serves and what they are collectively trying to achieve, they bring greater care, initiative, discernment and energy to it.
For us, that purpose operates in two directions.
It is about delivering exceptional outcomes for clients, but it is also about creating an exceptional working environment for one another.
There is a great deal of care within this team, and a high degree of collaboration. People want to contribute, support each other and help solve problems, even when the work does not sit neatly within their assigned client or role.
That generosity is an important part of our culture.
So is the accountability that ensures generosity does not become compensation for unclear ownership or underperformance.
The strongest version of our culture combines both: people who care deeply about one another and people who hold themselves and each other to a high standard.
Culture is not something a founder creates and then hands to a team.
Everyone shapes it through the way they communicate, take ownership, uphold the standard, support one another and respond when something is difficult.
That is particularly true in a remote environment, where trust, communication and judgement are tested in more visible ways.
Why bringing a remote team together still matters
Our Daylesford offsite was not simply a social retreat.
We spent time examining where the business has come from, where it is going, what our clients need from us and how clearer ownership and stronger accountability will make us better.
We worked through difficult questions, filmed content, learned from one another, celebrated significant personal milestones and created the kind of unstructured conversations that are harder to reproduce through a screen.
Those informal moments matter.
They deepen trust and help people understand one another beyond tasks and deadlines. They make future collaboration easier because relationships carry more context, warmth and confidence.
A remote team does not need to be less connected than a co-located one, but connection cannot be assumed. It must be created intentionally.
The same is true of clarity, capability and accountability.
Designing for flexibility, growth and excellence
Remote teams do not need to be less connected, less accountable or less ambitious.
But connection, trust, purpose and performance all need to be designed.
Flexibility is not the absence of structure, rigour or ambition. When it works well, it is enabled by all three.
The goal is not merely to create a workplace people enjoy. It is to create an environment in which people can do the best work of their careers, deliver exceptional outcomes for clients and continue to grow.
Sometimes the best investment a remote business can make is to bring people together, create space for honest conversation and send them home with greater clarity, stronger relationships and renewed conviction in what they are building together.
Built the same way we build for our clients
The trust, rigour and accountability that shape how our team works together are the same standards we bring to every client relationship.
If you are looking for a PR partner who takes genuine ownership of outcomes, not just outputs, get in touch and let’s talk about what that could look like for your business.
