SKO or Office?

Working remotely from the start of COVID-19 has been a step change for the majority of the working professionals around the world. Before the pandemic, I was accustomed to a 6am alarm and a freshly laid out suit ready for the day ahead in the office.

3 years into the future and the suits have barely been touched and I now work full time from home by choice. Personally this works great for my own personal circumstances based on where I live and the lifestyle that I have gained as a result of the time saved. Double thumbs up from me!

Since the start of the pandemic I have changed employers to Actian (Owned by HCLTech HCLSoftware ), who are a remote first company (while also having some physical locations available). I was surprised to hear from colleagues who have been working at the company for a number of years that they have been 100% remote (if you choose) for many years before we stopped the commute due to a particular spike protein. At first I thought that this would have meant that culture was as afterthought and cohesion working in cross functional and globally diverse teams would create silos of human interaction and resulting chaos.

Enter Sales Kick Off

This past week I have had my eyes opened to perhaps how this doesn't have to be the case as I attended my first Sales Kick Off (or SKO for the uninitiated) and had 5 full days of culture...and then some!

SKO is designed to be a chance to have all staff come together to train and get the latest company information all at the same time for the year ahead. I found it to be much more than what the name advertises. As well as the expected informative sessions about the product portfolio and its evolution, SKO adds staff appreciation, team building, networking, fine dining, soft skills and leisure all in a new location to this agenda and you have the recipe for a week of work that you circle in your calendar!

Throughout a full on 3 days of programming we were kept busy and engaged while learning about product roadmaps for the coming year and their moon shots for out years, having in person huddles with team members with active projects and discussions, pitch competitions to hone our skills and receive feedback from the executive team and our peers. A fever of activity during the day made your mind race with the opportunities that waited for you when you returned home, so even though it may seem like a holiday to some, the work component of the trip was front and centre.

I left the event feeling charged for the year ahead, focused with my local team on our objectives and the clear support we will have from the talented staff and organisation as a whole. Not to mention the masses of new people from around the company I was able to link their real face to their teams icon (even if some didn't quite look like their Teams photo, luckily there was a headshot booth on site to fix that). The thought of not being connected enough to my colleagues because of the lack of a physical office is a distant memory and now being replaced with the concept of distributed working giving you superior access to the best talent for the job instead of who lives closest to the arbitrary office location.

It leads me to think about the nirvana of a "hybrid" model that most companies are trying to find post-pandemic in order to keep staff engaged, while also making use of existing office space. If you choose not to have a physical location for staff and to hire staff in the general geographic vicinity, could a once yearly over the top engaging event that brings all staff together be a better model to give the best of both worlds with a sugar-hit of culture to drive the point home? Obviously there are other events and drivers of culture woven throughout the corporate calendar, but being able to circle one week in your diary and look forward to it has a very powerful impact.

Even when I think about the traditional office environment I have left behind, I make the point to myself that co-locating with your colleagues from the same city does allow for some casual interaction and collaboration. However in large companies we so often work daily with peers in other time zones and continents that do not come into that same office. Having an event like a SKO allows for ONE location to be the office, albeit for a few days of the year. The opportunities allowed by this unique interaction I think is quite unique when compared to the pre-pandemic context of the working environment.

Ill be looking forward to other opportunities to gather with colleagues in person but for the moment I am content with the week gone and reeling from all of the great new people I have met and experiences shared, ones that we are already reminiscing on during our Teams meetings!

A special thanks to Jennifer Jackson the whole Actian marketing family who were involved in putting together the event as the whole event was seamless and a super human effort.