Life at SumUp in the time of Corona
How we’re responding to an unpredictable new reality.
Like countless other companies, SumUp currently faces the challenge of quickly adjusting to an unpredictable new reality. With many countries implementing strict quarantine measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, the business landscape is shifting at a pace unprecedented in recent memory. As such, our top priority is to maintain the status quo, so that we can serve the ever-changing needs of our merchants, and develop new initiatives to make their lives easier in these trying times.
In practical terms, this means minimising disruption as we close down our global offices and adjust to working remotely for the foreseeable future. While this is certainly testing our organisational resilience, the response thus far has been heartwarming. After a ‘trial’ quarantine in Berlin late last week, we implemented a company-wide work-from-home policy beginning 16th March. First thing that morning, Radu Muntean from our Office Management team set up a new Slack channel, #apart-but-together, to help us all keep spirits high. The channel was quickly flooded with practical advice, uplifting anecdotes and, best of all, pet pics.
Mariusz Sołtysiak from our Shoplo Engineering team really rose to the occasion by sharing learnings from the 13 years he’s spent working remotely. His slideshow includes a host of easy-to-implement tips — allocate a specific space in your home for work; stick as closely to your regular office hours as possible; keep your camera on during virtual meetings; and never start your working day in pyjamas! It can be easy to forget to take breaks while working remotely; you may even feel guilty doing so. Mariusz asserts that it’s vital to take regular breathers to maintain productivity, but explains that you should maintain trust with your team by keeping them informed of your schedule.
On the topic of productivity, our group chat revealed that we have several proponents of the Pomodoro Technique among us. This time-management method involves splitting your workday into 25-minute blocks, punctuated by short breaks. For anyone interested in giving this a try, Software Engineer Leandro Bighetti created a simple webpage to help you stick to the routine.
While we undoubtedly have many challenges ahead, we’re extremely fortunate that remote work is viable for the majority of SumUppers. This isn’t the case for many of our merchants — shop, cafe and bar owners who rely on healthy footfall. As such, a major topic of conversation right now is how to continue supporting local businesses during lockdown. Ashleigh Grady, Content Editor for our Sales & Partnerships team, began crowd-sourcing a list of small companies in Berlin to rally around. Many of these are adapting their business models on the fly by offering expanded delivery options, contactless payment or discounted gift vouchers to redeem when this all finally blows over.
Among the many SumUppers who had to react extremely quickly as the situation escalated last week was Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who looks after the onboarding of new joiners in Berlin. “We had 16 people joining our Berlin team on 16th March. In normal circumstances, they would start by cramming into a meeting room for 3 hours of presentations. Towards the middle of last week, it became obvious that this couldn’t go ahead, so we had 2 days to prepare an online-only onboarding experience.
“The first step for me was to adapt my presentations. Unfortunately, this involved making them less interactive. Normally we start with a round of introductions and icebreakers, but this wouldn’t work over a video call. Overall though, the session went incredibly smoothly. Our big challenge now is to prepare for our in-depth, 3-day onboarding at the beginning of April. As the mid-month session lasts just a few hours, I wasn’t too worried about people getting bored. But it’s another thing to hold people’s interest for 3 days while they’re staring at a laptop screen, rather than in a room socialising with each other. So right now, my colleagues are working out how to present everything clearly and keep the whole experience enjoyable.
“Another major issue right now is that many of our new starters are from other countries. We have another 30 people due to start on 1st April, and around 10 of these are relocating to Berlin to join SumUp. We have to deal with this on a case-by-case basis. On the one hand, some are super excited to join and not at all worried; on the other, we have people who are scared and don’t want to travel. So we’re encouraging everyone to do what makes them feel most comfortable, and making it clear that we’ll support them whatever they decide.”
As Tsvetan’s story illustrates, a silver lining to the chaos of the past week is that we’re discovering just how agile and adaptive our teams can be. Priyanka Nair from our People team firmly believes that we should treat this moment as an opportunity to make SumUp stronger and more resilient than ever before. A great place to start, she suggests, is by honing our communication skills. “We’ll be much more reliant on Slack in the coming weeks, which is fine by me as I’m a huge fan of written communication. It gives you breathing space to structure your thoughts and put your point across more clearly. I often find written threads far more effective than face-to-face meetings when it comes to generating ideas and finding solutions.
“I also think that this is a chance for teams to become more productive and efficient. I personally find commuting to the office quite stressful. Removing this from the equation allows me to start my working day earlier, and have more time in the evening for hobbies and relaxation. I also find it much easier to focus and multitask when I’m working from home. In the office, I often find myself getting pulled into spontaneous meetings, or distracted by whatever’s going on around me.”
“Having said that, it’s important to maintain regular contact with your colleagues while you’re working remotely, and it’s easier than ever before to do this. Aside from the obvious channels like Slack and Zoom, there are great tools like Miro to help you conduct whiteboarding sessions and team retrospectives online. I honestly feel that great teams, like the ones we have at SumUp, will always find fresh ways to collaborate.”
A big thanks to every SumUpper mentioned in this article for their inspiring initiatives. For more of Priyanka’s thoughts on our current work-from-home experiment, check out her latest blog.
