One Year Journey of Going Fully Remote
On March 13th, 2020, when we started working remotely, little did I imagine that I am embarking on a journey that will pave the way for the future of work. 2020, the year unfortunate for many, was certainly unanticipated for all of us. None of us had thought that a century-old pandemic would knock on our doors again to make us realize and learn a lot.
So, as I sit back today, I am going through a flashback of the whole year gone by. It was a difficult year, indeed. At least, to start with. But our CEO, Robert Keane said just one thing, “We will get through this together”. And I think, the working style of Cimpress made it a bit (or maybe a lot) easier for us to adapt to the situation. Border less, or as we say remote working, was an inherent part of our Cimpress’ work culture. However, never had we thought of working completely remote. In my opinion, it was more about Cimpress being a technology and design organization, leadership’s progressive outlook and early adoption of cloud-based tools and technologies that helped us sail through this period.
This is what the journey was like!
It all started with a lot of ambiguity, and anxiety. India announced its first lockdown on March 23rd, 2020. However, anticipating a risky situation rolling towards us, we announced remote work 10 days before. I feel we were fortunate to have that time to try remote work for our entire workforce. While we were not new to working remotely, absolutely no face to face working style was something new to us. The uncertainty of how long we will have to continue working like this hovered over us for quite some time.
What I feel really made a difference for us in the HR organization is that, within no time, the way we all pivoted ourselves. We literally re-looked at everything we were doing and strategized on how we can adapt to this new normal because deep inside our hearts, we knew this virus is here to stay. And I think we did fabulously well. We remotely on-boarded ~600 colleagues during the last 12 months. Our single-minded focus was to ensure that we provide every candidate an experience that depicts our culture while they transition from being a candidate to becoming an employee. Technology played its role, but it was a bunch of driven and smart individuals who made it their mission to go that extra mile to provide everything a person needs for a new start in these uncertain times. Kudos to everyone on the team! Here’s a glimpse of what our new colleagues had to say about their experience:
We adopted new ways of engagement, communication, and collaboration. Through repetitive touch points and quick pulse surveys, we realized that our productivity across the board is better than before. But all of us were longing for personal interaction, that human touch of the regular office days. Pandemic and working remotely was a difficult phase for many and we did not want our people to go through that alone. We made efforts to fuel life to fading “water-cooler” or “Coffee-machine” conversations. Hence, we decided to build communities based on varied interests namely food, photography, travel, writing, painting, etc. We created opportunities for our colleagues to come together just to laugh, celebrate, have fun. I was pleasantly surprised to see an amazing response to everything that we did, else you know the story of HR and its fun at work events.
We did not know about our super talented people (for instance amazing writers, health passionate, singers etc.) until we formed these communities. We started “CODEC”, a developer’s community, to help fellow engineers across the country (you can know about them here https://lnkd.in/ef_ZZZ7). Interestingly, the HR team just helped these like-minded people to get together. These communities are pretty much thriving on their own now.
We introduced new benefits ranging from online doctor consultation to help in setting up home offices. I take pride in saying that we have adapted to this new normal so well that today, for us, an interaction on Zoom is nothing less than a personal interaction. We do not feel the gap. In fact, we over communicate. We “write first”, use Trello boards, box notes, confluence pages to seamlessly collaborate across teams. Our collaboration tools have saved us a trouble of weekly review meetings. Instead, we invest time in brainstorming on strategic areas and OKRs.
Our long-term focus is now how we can build a great remote friendly working framework. We want to reshape our physical office strategy for collaboration opportunities that not only becomes a towering strength for Cimpress but also contributes to shaping the modern culture of working in India.
Last 12 months have given us great confidence that remote working is doing well for our folks. All we need to do is change our mindsets, unlearn a lot, and adapt to the “async” way of working.
For me professionally, this pandemic was transformational. It has completely changed my outlook on HR strategy and services. The experience was all good-bad-ugly, but I had tremendous learning. It has surely made me a better human being, a phase in my career that I will cherish. I feel this is an opportunity for every HR professional to re-imagine the “progressive” work culture. We are doing it; I am sure you will, too!
Facilitator who gets adults to talk, helps resolve conflict , build collaboration and get authentic conversations going, writes , cycles , rafts and plays chess
4 年Great job ! Difficult to build and sustain culture while working remote ... at least today ... a 100 years later , who knows , it may be the norm ??
Ameya Sane thank you for this articulate piece on your experience over the last twelve months. It has indeed been an unimaginable journey for most of us - so much of transformation in beliefs of what could work and what could not, what could be achieved online and what would be impossible. I think we have all realized and learnt that a life online has its own merits which we were perhaps not willing to accept until we were left with no choice. And yes you do have an amazing organization that you work with!
Gender, People and Policy | Chief Minister’s Office | YIF’22 | Diversity and Inclusion Specialist | Ex- Bajaj Finserv and Cimpress
4 年Very well observed and penned Ameya