For us, like millions of businesses around the world, the past 15 months presented a number of real challenges. One such challenge was planning for our eventual return to work: it was never going to be as simple as everyone walking back into the office on a given date. The enforced remote working period has arguably changed the way we work forever, and our new approach needed to respect and reflect this.
“To devise the best possible plan for the future, we conducted an employee survey to gauge everybody’s thoughts on potential working arrangements. As a full-service agency, we cover a lot of specialisms including Web Design, SEO, PPC, Branding & more. Some people immediately fell into the rhythm of remote working and some didn’t find it so easy, so it’s crucial that we find a balance between working from home and office-based work to enable everyone to be happy, comfortable and productive.”
Hybrid Working
With that in mind, we have just announced our plan to commit to hybrid working. As you can probably tell from the name, hybrid working is a blend of remote and office-based work, with a focus on doing ‘the right work in the right place’. This is a fluid system and concept - there’s no one way to implement a hybrid working arrangement, and so we’ll be testing, tweaking and improving this based on employee feedback. To give you an overview of the system, it’ll look a bit like this:
- Each of our teams will be in the office on different days: each team will decide upon their preferred day and it will need to be agreed upon between the managers to ensure space, desk and equipment requirements are met
- The office will be re-configured to create separate sections. Our initial ideas are:
- Team working spaces
- Bookable desks
- Designated work stations
- Conferencing equipment
- Social spaces
- If there are any other specific days that an employee needs to be in the office - maybe there’s a training day, or maybe a client meeting is booked in - then those involved will be able to come into the office
- For the other four days of the working week, staff can choose to work from home or the office, with consideration given to doing ‘the right work in the right place’ as per the point above
- We’re also taking Flexible Working Requests from colleagues who want to work entirely remotely
Over the past 15 months, we’ve worked very hard to maintain the connection, community and culture that makes Adtrak what it is, and this new set-up will give us more opportunities to connect, collaborate and just see each other face-to-face again, which is a huge boost.
