Our notion of the "office" will likely never be the same

There has been a lot of discussion recently about how "return to the office" should be handled. Some companies are "back", some are mandating 2-3 days a week in the office, others have re-configured to be primarily remote, perhaps in perpetuity.

At Nuula, we have been thinking deeply about this, particularly in the context of what the best answer should be for our company and for all of our stakeholders.

As a technology and data science company based in Toronto, we are in a war for talent. And as a venture backed business, with a ton of world beating ambition, we're also driven to run farther and faster than our peers. All of this is built on hiring the best and the brightest, and finding the most opportune way for them to leverage their skills and each other.

As a CEO, I believe in building cohesive, dynamic, ambitious teams that are comfortable challenging pre-conceived notions. But that means, as a leader, I must also challenge my own pre-conceptions.

Historically, I have always enjoyed face-face interaction. And those who know me, know that I have always led by "walking around" ... even when my teams were spread across the world (yes, I have the air miles to prove it). But something fundamental has shifted over the past few years, and it is worth understanding.

A combination of COVID, technology and time has challenged the pre-conceived notion that effective collaboration requires that we work together face-face, primarily in open plan offices, and that we do so most of the time. In fact, for many people, the relief of not having to commute an hour or more each day, and not sit in sometimes chaotic and noisy open plan environments, has changed their expectations of both productivity and work-life balance (or as a Type A myself, what I like to think of as work-life integration). Once we worked through the kinks, many of us actually saw increases in both productivity and employee satisfaction as we adopted to hybrid work.

As leaders we ignore this cultural shift at our peril ... and at the peril of our businesses.

At Nuula, we work hard to remain in touch with the sentiment, needs and wants of our Team members, polling them regularly on a number of issues on which we want their feedback. We recently updated our "return to office" sentiment index, and the results were fascinating.

Our most recent poll (see above) has indicated a fundamental shift in sentiment away from the office as our default mode of operation. Our team does not seem to be pining for the "good old days" of in office interaction, nor do they want us to impose some sort of arbitrary 1-2 day per week rotating office use. They want to live and work more on their terms.

60% of them are happy coming in for intentional "collaboration" or having the office as a place to work when they want to or need to ... but a surprising 40% are now seeking a more fundamental shift to a primary WFH mode ... in particular if that affords them the ability to live where they want.

We engage in this communication with our teammates, because we are striving to ensue that Nuula is the place where the best and the brightest want to come to work. We hold ourselves accountable quantitatively by tracking a satisfaction/sentiment index and an eNPS score, but we also seek qualitative feedback on a regular basis to try and understand what we can do better.

We are going to be taking this feedback seriously, and working even harder to lean into providing the flexibility sought by our teammates, re-imagining our concept of what it means to work at Nuula, how we work together better regardless of where we are, and the fundamental meaning of what our office is, and how we use it.

If you are a world leader in your profession, we want this to be the company you will aspire to work for, and a place you will wish to remain over the long term.

I'll try to update you on our progress ...