By Leaders of Tech Member, Mark Fitzgerald
More than a year has passed since my first article, so I figure I have something at least half-interesting to share.
For context, we're now 18 months into our smart working journey. My first blog simply covered what we did to launch the initiative and the quick wins that sped up adoption.
Looking around the office, it's clear smart working has been embraced. Our physical footprint is now 40-50% of what it once was - so much so that back in December we swapped office floors with our EdTech sister company Wriggle Learning, which is growing fast.
In July we ran a short three-question staff survey (built in about three minutes with Microsoft Forms) and asked everyone: ‘What value do you place on the ability to work from home in your role? (0 – none to 10 – huge value)’. The average score was 9.
Smart working has been built into nearly every role we've recruited for. Happily, our very first remote hire, Barbara from Mayo (March 2018), is still with us and has reached legendary status. We added another star, Jerry from Kerry, in March this year, who welcomed his first child, Tara-Lee, into the world this summer. And the excellent Laura joined us as Technical Program Manager… enjoying the luxury (or misfortune) of living relatively close to the offices from her Wicklow home. We've also hired more in-house roles this year.....all equally brilliant. But the point is simply that the reach of talent goes well beyond Dublin!
Two challenges we expected from the start were Communication & Community. We have a great culture, but not everyone on the team would now be interacting in person. Moving our weekly sales/projects/operations meetings to Microsoft Teams was seamless. Funnily enough, it took a brand-new hire turning on her video camera for the first meeting to make us ask why we'd never done it before. Now video is central to every Teams call and the default.
However, that recent staff survey showed senior management that our company communication could still improve. So we put our heads together and in September launched two new communication forums:
First: An informal company update for everyone (just FYI, a team of 35 staff here at Typetec). Recorded via Teams, with people in the boardroom, dialling in or watching later on demand. The days of dragging everyone into the office - and the scheduling headache - are gone. In this 20-minute meeting we share company progress against two key metrics (seat count growth and Net Promoter Score). We also use the moment to recognise any staff nominated by peers as a ‘Legend’ that month for going above and beyond to help someone on the team. In short, from Finance to Service to Sales, everyone knows what's happening and how we're doing.
Second: A weekly upload from one staff member sharing something topical or interesting that week, plus something the team probably doesn't know about them. It's a bit of fun and socially driven - in a way replacing some of the water cooler chats remote staff miss. The video ends by ‘tagging’ someone you don't regularly work with who is up the following week. Our youngest team member, Andy, set the bar high in the first one and only raised it week by week (props, augmented filters, you name it!). Our CEO has just been called out this week, so I think we'll need to order the popcorn.
These Teams recordings are posted to our internal SharePoint site…..effectively the ‘go-to’ place for company news and updates etc.……and now with a high probability of embarrassing video content!
Technology and trust are really all you need for smart working - people tend to overcomplicate it. Many companies already have these toolsets in their current Microsoft licensing, so it's an adoption decision rather than an investment - just ask your IT partner or colleague.
It's still early days, but it's fascinating to watch our new community develop. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions about what we've done.