At Goodlord, working from home has shown some clear benefits, such as boosting employee mental health and wellbeing, meeting efficiency, and overall employee productivity. This was the result of a deliberate effort to keep Goodlordian morale high and company culture alive and kicking throughout lockdown. Now, we're looking to the future and, for us, the future is a hybrid workspace.
First, we had to take into account Goodlordian opinions, to make sure we were choosing the right approach for all. To understand how Goodlordians work best, we surveyed the whole team, to ask:
These surveys gave us a good understanding of what everyone preferred and also what our office space should be used for. We discovered that some activities are better done at home, such as external meetings, company huddles, 1:1 internal meetings, and concentration levels and work / life balance were better maintained when working remotely.
On the other hand, building work relationships across different teams, meeting new people, and socialising were, of course, more easily achieved while in the office. We needed to find the right balance - and that's when we decided to introduce a hybrid model.
One of the first decisions we made was to make all meetings remote-first, via Google Hangouts, to ensure the same level of communication for all team members, regardless of their location - especially as some roles are permanently based from home. This means that our meeting rooms in the office aren't seeing much use!
We were also aware that, when we started hybrid working, not everyone would be fully vaccinated and some may not feel comfortable diving straight back into an office environment - but our survey showed the social importance of the office. We decided to trial hybrid work for two months, to give us time to assess how it was going. We asked people to come into the office 1-2 days a week, booking a desk in advance to give visibility on the number of spaces booked on a given day.
This hot-desking system is working well. We make sure that teams are always sat together, but their location in the office changes each month to encourage more interaction with new people. Everyone coming into the office does a Covid test a day, to help bring peace of mind to everyone there that they're as safe as possible.
Even our summer party got the hybrid makeover. Over the course of each Friday in August, different groups of Goodlordians can attend a social event to meet their co-workers in person - even for roles that are remote based.
The trial is currently in full swing, and we've had two of the four Goodlord Summer Time parties. The next steps are to roll out a hybrid onboarding process and keep on top of creating new initiatives and regular activities to continue to bring people together throughout their time with us.
Want to join the Goodlord team? Check out our current vacancies.