Extending company culture beyond office walls: the digital workplace era
I used to not believe in company culture. When I was interested in a company, for its product, its location, or a particular job, I would apply without looking at the culture section on the career website.
To me, “values” were a bunch of empty words, interchangeable, and often the same from one company to another: “innovative”, “collaborative”, “honest”… Lines made up by some branding agency to please some high-level executives, that didn’t come to life in practice.
Instead of trusting what I read online, I would make my decision to join based on the people I met during the interview process. I believed they embodied the company more than any words on the website.
Then came a game-changer
That’s how I still felt when, one day in July 2021, I searched for a position on Welcome to the Jungle using the “full remote” filter. I had recently settled in the French Alps and had no plan of moving back to Paris. Qonto popped up as a company offering remote contracts for certain jobs and seniority levels. I had heard of it as a finance solution when I was a freelancer, but knew little about it.
On the career website, Ambition, Mastery, Integrity, and Teamwork were listed as the four main values. From my past experiences, I associated banking and fintech with other preconceptions: conventional, regulated, and… boring. I was about to pass (been there, done that) when something in the job ad caught my eye.
It was a bullet point about the parenthood policy. Oddly, back then, I didn’t envision having children. But the way it was described made me wonder: “Wow, this is a company really taking care of its employees”. I kept reading, and the deeper I delved, the more I was drawn to the tone of voice, the empathy it displayed, and the transparency about the ways of working. It felt modern, inclusive, and empowering.
Thrilled by the prospect of joining a new world of work, I applied and received a reply from a recruiter, Diane, in the next few hours. She informed me that I could expect a skill test and 5 interviews (HR, N+1, N+2, peers). 6 rounds! It sounded impossible — almost like joining Google. Usually, I would think, “I’m never going to make it.”
This time, instead, I started telling all my relatives that I had found a great, modern company, and was pretty sure things would work out. And they did. I’ve been working at Qonto for a year and a half, and I’ve completely changed my mind about company culture. How I had underestimated it.
Feeling the pulse of a company from afar
I joined Qonto as a full-remote employee, part of a small full-remote copywriting team. My manager was in Angers, and my colleagues in Lyon and Paris. A few months in, Qonto grew to a size where it needed an Employer Branding Manager, and I applied for the job internally.
Of course, the question of working fully remotely arose: as an Employer Branding Manager, don’t you need to be on-site? It’s a common belief that culture lives within the walls, and that you need to be in the office to experience it. This is true, but “not only”, I could tell from my recent experience.
Despite being a remote employee, I felt I already had a good sense of Qonto’s culture. It struck me during my first days working remotely, after an amazing onboarding week in Paris. Back home, alone in front of my screen, without much distant work experience (except during Covid), I thought I would feel isolated. I didn’t.
Every day, I had short and informal meetings with my team to align and set the day’s successes, keeping us motivated. I attended countless online meetings where people were right on time (a pleasant change from my experience at previous companies). These meetings lasted 15 to 30 minutes instead of dragging on for hours (another pleasant change).
I also learned to prioritize asynchronous communications over meetings. I got used to people answering my Slack messages promptly and effectively, without having to wait for an entire afternoon. In the meantime, I had received maybe 20 emails in 3 months, mostly from external sources — an incredibly low amount.
From my remote standpoint, this was Qonto’s culture: fast, efficient, and respectful of colleagues’ time. In fact, I may have felt this more intensely than my colleagues working on-site because I didn’t have other clues about the office culture to observe. This is what I would define as “the digital workplace culture”.
The power of individuals
Our digital workplace culture is rooted in the company culture nurtured within our office space. It extends it beyond physical walls, enabling employees to also experience it remotely. While it doesn’t replace in-person dynamics, it ensures cohesive ways of working across all locations.
In the digital workplace, we rely on many digital tools to interact with each other: for Qonto, Notion, Slack, Google Meet, Gmail. How we operate with them says as much about us as what we share: the same solution, such as Slack, can be used totally differently from one company to another.
For example, when a colleague asks for help, do we respond with “yes sure” or “I’m not available”? Do we answer immediately or wait until the next day? But also: how do we welcome new team members? And how do we support parents? How we take care of each other is a a key aspect of who we are as a collective.
In other words, we are all shaping our company’s culture. A company doesn’t exist as an intangible entity; it is made up of people. In traditional companies, the higher up in the hierarchy, the more influence you have on the culture. In a smaller company like Qonto, every person wields that power.
Considering it, recruitment is key. Our Talent Acquisition team strives to build teams that are both functional and empowering, enabling individuals to reach their full potential. To ensure this, they have defined a set of behaviors to look for in candidates: rather than skills or personality types, they seek mindsets that align with the company’s vision.
The benefit is ultimately creating a fulfilling work environment for everyone. As I’ve experienced in the past (sometimes painfully, and wasting a lot of time), you can never truly be happy in a company if you’re not aligned with its values. At Qonto, every meeting, every new colleague, and every visit to the office is a chance to reinforce my sense of purpose and motivation.
The Qonto Way of working remotely
But culture goes beyond individualities. To foster a truly great company culture, we need to be thoughtful about how we behave together. At Qonto, this is called the Qonto Way. Inspired by Lean Management — not as a cost-saving recipe, but as an organization that promotes continuous learning and mastery — it is our shared practice across all teams, countries, and seniority levels.
The Qonto Way philosophy encompasses key principles such as strong respect for people and their time: it means, for instance, being punctual for video conferences. It emphasizes the need for constant alignment to avoid creating waste; hence the 10-minute morning meetings that most teams at Qonto hold every day.
In my experience as a remote employee, “dailies” are a valuable ritual for aligning on projects, checking up on one another, exchanging small talk (especially since we don’t see each other in the office everyday), and maintaining motivation by setting goals for the day, allowing us to assess our progress and accomplishments.
Another useful aspect of the Qonto Way when working remotely is visual management. We use Kanban boards to monitor our projects and identify any issues in real-time. As a result, my manager (and everyone on my team) knows exactly what I’m working on at any given time. This level of transparency is incredibly useful in a hybrid team.
Now, some might question: doesn’t it pave the way to micromanagement? On the contrary. Kanbans and rituals create the conditions for autonomy, by making all team members clear with their objectives. They facilitate effective discussions on problems, ensuring that we don’t waste time on projects that ultimately end up in a virtual drawer.
In that perspective, physical catchups remain essential. Our travel policy allows office visits once a quarter to align, inspire creativity, kick off big projects and address problems together. Over time, distance creates a sense of disconnect, and if remote work enhances deep work, we are not a remote-first company, and have no intention of becoming one.
Nurturing an inclusive culture
Culture is about how we communicate. Culture is about who we are. Culture is about how we work together. But perhaps the true strength of culture lies in its ability to thrive in our diversity. As we bring our distinct backgrounds, life experiences, cultures, mental workloads, and family responsibilities to work every day, it is only through a strong and inclusive culture that companies can weave us together.
At Qonto, all our employees work remotely at least once a week. This is equally a chance and a challenge: a chance, as it enables us to have employees from over 72 nationalities, residing in five European countries. A challenge, because remote work requires us to find new ways to integrate and align despite the absence of daily physical proximity.
As I see it (from my mountain window) Qonto has successfully navigated this landscape. First, by thinking out a strong value framework. Secondly, by implementing an outstanding hybrid onboarding process, proficiency in using digital media, and rituals for asynchronous work. Lastly, through thoughtful management practices to orient and support employees towards autonomy.
Our hybrid work organization remains testing, both for people onsite and remote. Personally, I yearn for a teleporting tool that would allow me to visit my wonderful office twice a week, have lunch with my team, and enjoy after-work runs together. But in a post-Covid world, we have to cope with reality rather than looking to the past.
Extending company culture beyond office walls is one way to help it. The beauty of the digital workplace lies in allowing remote employees to work alongside brilliant colleagues based hundreds of kilometers away while staying connected with their local community. To find the perfect culture fit, wherever they’re based, breaking down geographical barriers. I couldn’t have imagined it better.
