In the office vs work from home debate, I’m on the left-centre of things. Strong office preference, but an understanding of the appeal of WFH.
I’m a big fan of working in an office, especially in our industry, one which thrives on creativity, conversation and ideas – sitting together around a table, or just in an office, it’s invaluable and when it happens, it’s when our best ideas and collaboration happen.
But, I understand why so many people prefer to work from home – saving time, saving money, convenience, the ability to keep on top of the house, more opportunity to take / collect kids from school, walk the dog and visit the gym, or go for a run at lunch – I get it.
So, why is Northern Bear a hybrid working business?
Well, for a few reasons;
- One of our team moved away from the area and we didn’t want to lose her, so she became our first fully remote member of the team
- We then employed someone who lived 4 hours from the office – our second remote team member
- We had requests from more local team members to switch to a hybrid working model, which we granted
- We now operate a flexible working model, with no mandatory minimum number of days on the office
How does hybrid working, work at Northern Bear?
Overall, I’d give us 6.5/10 on our hybrid working.
- We have decent processes in place to ensure people are connected and communicating
- We use Monday.com as a live project management and tracking board – it’s our holy grail and everyone uses it
- We have a 9:30 call every day to check in and make sure everyone has what they need for the day ahead
- We have a channel on slack where everyone posts progress, so the accounts team can plan for the next day
- We use Slack for regular communication throughout the day, encouraging using ‘huddles’ in the same way as you’d pop over to some ones desk, or stick your head up and ask’ have you got a minute
- People have permission to decline those calls, if they’re in the zone
- We also have statuses to show availability, or when people should only be interrupted for urgent stuff.
Whilst we have these processes, we aren’t quite there yet with making it happen.
- When we’re not in the same room, communication is (generally) less than if we’re in the same room. No matter how hard we try, ‘calling’ someone seems so much more intrusive then saying someone name who’s sat 6 feet from you.
- The 9:30 calls are great for pragmatic work chat, but not great for general conversation and connecting with each other
- There are no ‘organic’ conversations, or contributions – those conversations that start between 2 people and gradually collect participants as people hear problems they can help to solve (this is my biggest miss with having a full office).
- Personal relationships aren’t as strong – largely because of the lack of those natural opportunities to chat about friends, family, weekends, kids, animals, hobbies – just life in general.
How can we keep improving?
We’re working on creating those moments and we try to meet up in person as a whole team every 1-2 months and have a day of working and socialising to make these connections. Again, from a work point of view, this is excellent, but the social side of things can sometimes feel a little more forced. We’re putting everyone together, rather than it just happening because some says ‘fancy grabbing a coffee / drink / lunch’ from the local eatery or even just sitting in the office eating lunch together.
I think genuine, human connection is what makes a business, and is a lot of what makes a culture – sure, the business can have good values, and treat the team well, but culture comes through connection – to each other, and to the business.
I think that’s the thing that’s hard to achieve without regular time together, in person.
It’s something I need to figure out how to keep and improve in our business, as the world continues to want to grow further apart.
