Creating the best workplace for every Speakapper

2020 is a year for the history books. We have been catapulted into a new way of working from? which we may never, nor want to, return. To this day, we are doing phenomenal work here at Speakap from all sorts of different places – be it bedrooms, living rooms, or studies. And we like it!?

The events of the past year have accelerated our thinking about the future and more specifically how we work together in the future. Over the last few months, we’ve been interviewing? Speakappers to learn more about individual experiences and preferences. And this feedback has?guided our post-pandemic reopening strategy and how we’ll work going forward.?

As employer, we realize that we now have the perfect opportunity to create the best workplace for?every Speakapper and with this article I hope to inspire you to do the same for your employees!

We're aiming for a workplace that allows us to be more connected to each other, find more? balance between work and home, ultimately leading to increased innovation, employee happiness, and eventually, better business outcomes.?

Our beliefs are

• In the old world, work was somewhere you went, our office. In the future; the new normal, work is something you do. And in our new world, we’ve discovered that it doesn’t matter?where you are.??
• In-office work and remote work are complementary when it comes to achieving? performance. Each way of working brings its value, but neither can replace the other.?
• Balance is not the same for everyone, and people must have the freedom to find their work ?balance. With a hybrid way of working, we believe that people have the flexibility to? discover their personal work balance. Giving our people more flexibility will support a better? work-life balance??
• Effectiveness can’t be measured by how many hours you spend at your desk in our office –? instead, giving people the freedom to choose where they work will boost effectiveness. ?

Changing how we work?

Many of the Speakappers don’t want to lose the new “freedoms” experienced during the lockdown - and we understand that. The elimination of the daily commute to work or traveling to meetings means people have more personal time. But more importantly, working from home offers a more significant? opportunity to meet work and life commitments.?

When we asked what people enjoyed most about working from home; the following topics where? shared:??

• 46% of the interviewed shared; less or no commute;??
• 37% more focus by a reduced amount of distractions allowing to get more done;?
• 24% more flexible hours;??

Does this mean Speakap won’t have offices anymore? No, it doesn’t. Does it mean teams are?being forced to work from home? Categorically not. There are plenty of times where face-to-face? interaction is critical, more appropriate, and sometimes even better.?

Although working from home does have many benefits, most Speakappers either can’t or don’t?want to work entirely remotely; 56% of us want to go into an office, 50% of the time. Our employee? interviews showed that the majority, 75% of us, wanted to maintain a connection to the office.? Almost everyone said that they are missing colleagues, the social talks, and even feeling lonely? sometimes. This tells us that our office will remain an irreplaceable source of human connection? and inspiration.?

Our office will be available for people to use if they want to. But we’ll almost certainly use our office differently. We want to position our office as a “social hub,” a place that fosters social capital, culture, and co-creation through collective experiences. Exactly how, will be defined in practice.?

We believe that the time to start transitioning into becoming a hybrid workplace is now. Here’s how we’ll get there:

1. Flexible way of working?

In our post-pandemic workplace, we want to combine and leverage the best of both worlds, in office work and remote work. We want to provide our employees with greater flexibility, autonomy, and remote?working options. Speakappers decide what’s right for them. We trust them to find this balance for themselves and their?team.

So, we won’t be asking you to return to the office but there are plenty of times where face-to-face? interaction is critical, more appropriate, and sometimes even better.

Think for example of: Team meetings, Brainstorm sessions, 1:1 sessions & Meetings with other teams. And of course for the fun stuff :-): Bumping into your colleagues at the coffee machine, Having lunch together, Playing games and chill out?& Company events??

To crown it all, there will be a budget per team to book an external location twice a year! Would they like to organise a meeting at the beach? We've got their back on this - what could be more?inspiring than a brainstorm session with the North Sea as your back garden!??

2. Book office days?

The office will be a multifunctional space, an office where employees can focus, where they can have meetings, where they can meet their colleagues and have lunch or coffee together. We made sure to reorganize the office, and implemented Okku so that Speakappers can book their office days and the space they need for a specific activity.??

3. Team?

We love to see everyones efforts to stay connected as a team! And we trust our employees that they can decide what works the best and see that most teams have a specific office day to connect in for real!

4. Company events?

To stay connected and see everyones smiling faces, we will be organizing office events as we did last week. Both in, and outside the office so we can really reconnect and have fun together!??

5. Work abroad?

In the pre–COVID-19 era, we’ve all had those days where you’d rather work from your? neighbourhood coffee shop or, you know, a tropical paradise than your desk. So, given the choice,? where would you work if you could work remotely abroad???

The conditions?we've set to make this (operationally) work:

• Working from another country is possible for a maximum of 120 days a year. The 120-day rule?prevents people from paying tax on their salary in two countries and determines in which country their salary should be taxed.
• For highly skilled migrants, this maximum is also crucial; you have to have?your primary residence in the Netherlands. Main residence means that you live in the Netherlands? and you spend most of your time here. When you move your main residence to a place outside the? Netherlands, your residence permit can be revoked or not be extended.??
• For the continuity of the business, we've decided that it is important that Speakappers can work in the Amsterdam time zone for at least 4 hours a day.

6. Virtual Company Standups?

Pre-COVID, our monthly company standup meetings have been a mix of some people “in the room?where it happened” while others dialed in and inevitably missed out on some of the experiences of? the physical meeting. With everyone attending virtual meetings there is a much greater sense of? equality of experience amongst standup attendees. There is no doubt our virtual company standup?meetings are here to stay.?

7. Quarterly kickoff meetings?

We have the goal to get together as a worldwide team during the quarterly kickoff meeting? throughout the year. This kick-off meeting is a valuable tool to create a good understanding around? our plans and strategy and to make our collective stronger. Hence everyone must attend this quarterly meeting. During these kickoff meetings we will kick-off the new quarter with new and/or?adjusted plans, organize multiple cross functional sessions and make sure that it’s not only about? the content but also about fun and working closely together.??

8. Management / Team leads?

Team leads and the management team will have an important role to play in both adapting to this?hybrid way of working and leading their team in finding the right work-balance. This is new territory?for all of us, so by doing we will become better and grow!

9. Employees outside of the Netherlands?

This policy is mainly specified for our colleagues working at the Amsterdam office,?who are able to come to the office building at the Pedro de Medinalaan. Most parts of this policy? also apply for our colleagues working in other countries since they also will be attending the quarterly? meetings, have also the opportunity to work wherever they want, use the team budget for external? meetings and come into the office in their specific country.

10. Pilot?

Unfortunately, there's no way of looking into the future. So therefor we've decide to test this hybrid policy as a real?opportunity for our company, and thus started a 6-month pilot as of the 1st of October. A pilot is a? great way to see and experience whether a policy like this can work for Speakap. To keep our? finger on the pulse, we will have multiple "calibration conversations" over time with different?Speakappers and send out various surveys along the way to determine whether we met our mutual expectations of this policy.?

Hopefully this article will help you in designing and implementing the "new way of working policy' that fits your company and employees!