At TravelPerk, our mission is to connect people in real life. If you dissect that, it becomes clear that the main component parts of who we are as a business are centered around people and connections. This represents the core of who we are now, and who we have always been.
Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, our work model was focused on being on-site 100% of the time. Of course, we offered some flexibility for new parents or people wanting to visit their families abroad for a couple of days. Still, the way we worked was from the office. This was one of the key driving factors behind how we grew from 3 guys in a Barcelona kitchen to a unicorn business. Why? Because we prioritized team cohesion, speed of learning, and collaboration, all of which were easier to achieve by working together in the same physical space.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot about our world — not least, how we work. And like most businesses around the world, we went fully remote for the health and safety of our community both within TravelPerk and beyond. Since then, we maintained a “no policy” approach, where people were able to work wherever they were most comfortable given the circumstances.
A few weeks ago, though, we announced our new way of working. We decided to afford all our employees 2 days a week of remote work, and 3 days a week of in-real-life collaboration. In other words, COVID-19 was a time of exception, and not the way our company and our culture normally would operate. In that sense, we went from 0% to 40% flexibility while still maintaining our core belief that the moments that matter happen in person.
This formula has worked for us in the past, bringing us to $100 million in revenue and 1200 employees. It’s a crucial ingredient to how we’ll get to a billion and beyond. This is our path and our recipe for success. It might not work for everyone, but it’s what works for us. Companies have been facing these decisions recently, and it’s important that each one chooses the right path for them based on the future they want to achieve, and then draw a path toward reaching it. Not choosing a path is not an option.
At the heart of our choice to go down the path of in-real-life interaction lies our firm belief that the team should be looked after. COVID-19 brought on a number of unique situations — people needed to move cities or countries, care for themselves or their loved ones, or restructure their daily routines to accommodate new additions to their families. That’s something we not only understand but embrace wholeheartedly.
Our approach is far more trust-based than other companies in tech, including big names. It’s more nuanced and empowering than a simple “take it or leave it” statement. We realize that the world has changed, and decided to keep 40% flexibility to ensure the best of both world, allowing us to plan and build world-class team and to keep attracting the best talent in the industry, people who now expect flexibility but also appreciate the importance of in-real-life regular interactions.
This choice, of course, had a ripple effect on people’s lives. The short-term impact of our announcement was felt by several team members, and we even received around 100 requests for exceptions (~8% of employees). Not wanting this to be a blanket bums-on-seats policy, we decided to implement an elaborate process to study each person’s individual situation case by case. So far, we ended up approving ~75% of requests.
In the long run, I believe that investing in a great physical space for teams is worth being bold about. That’s why we spent so long contemplating the right office for our people — we wanted to give them a space that could accommodate all working styles while encouraging in-person interaction.
That’s what it means to have a company culture that revolves around “in-real-life”. It’s about giving them the tools to work in the way they’re most productive while creating the conditions for face-to-face collaboration (whether that’s in a brainstorming session or over a coffee on the terrace). I know that this is not for everyone, but it is for us.
TravelPerk has always been, and will continue to be driven by our mission — to connect people in real life.
