Leading a Global, Remote Workforce: Wrike’s Head of People on AI, Alignment, and Skills-Based Talent

Summary

How do you keep 1,000+ people across 30 countries aligned, connected, and moving fast—while AI reshapes how work gets done?

Remko Verheul, SVP and Head of People at Wrike, shares the operating system behind a truly global, distributed company. Wrike is a collaborative work management platform used worldwide, and Remko explains how the team “eats its own dog food” to create a single source of truth, drive cross-time-zone alignment, and feed product innovation.

He breaks down the rituals that matter—company-wide AMAs, leader travel, and function kickoffs—and why bringing humanity back to remote work is nonnegotiable.

Remko also details Wrike’s dual-track AI strategy: top-down workstreams with clear outcomes and bottom-up experimentation via bootcamps and internal pitches, including new workforce optimizer and performance coach agents.

Finally, he explains why HR must shift from jobs to skills to meet a gig-like labor market and dissolve silos. Expect practical frameworks you can apply this quarter.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Wrike overview: platform, org footprint, and distributed team structure

[02:18] – The big four challenges: AI acceleration, remote/distributed work, global time zones, and the gig economy

[03:55] – Building alignment: single system of record, comms cadence, AMAs, and clear handoffs

[06:35] – Remote with humanity: intentional check-ins and knowing when to switch from async to live

[08:41] – In-person rituals: executive travel cadence and team kickoffs that reinforce culture

[10:55] – AI in the product: customer-built agents and early time savings

[12:12] – AI inside HR: Human + AI = Organizational Intelligence; top-down workstreams and bottom-up experiments

[15:27] – From jobs to skills: adapting to a gig-style market and breaking down silos

Takeaways

- Operationalize alignment with a single source of truth and explicit touchpoints/handoffs across time zones.

- Make communication a ritual: all-hands, AMAs, and purposeful in-person moments; expect leaders to travel.

- Bring humanity to remote work: start 1:1s with check-ins and escalate from async to live when nuance matters.

- Drive AI adoption with a dual strategy—fund a few top-down workstreams and foster bottom-up experimentation (bootcamps, internal pitches).

- Build practical AI agents for people ops (e.g., resource allocation, performance coaching) to unlock measurable productivity.

- Shift talent practices from roles to skills to support cross-functional growth and a gig-like career reality.

- Practice “zoom in, zoom out” leadership to balance detail work with big-picture direction.

Sponsor

AllVoices brings all your employee relations work together in one place. No more jumping between spreadsheets, emails, and legacy systems just one place to document and manage reports, cases, investigations, and performance conversations. It helps you run a more consistent process, takes busywork off your plate with AI, and makes it easier to spot trends early, so you can work proactively, not just put out fires.

See a demo at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.allvoices.co/

Remko Verheul, Head of People at Wrike

HR Voices

Remko Verheul, Head of People at Wrike