REBORRN’s Hybrid Operating System (OS) v1.2
This March, we “celebrated” 2 years in and out of lockdowns. Two years that changed (and will keep changing) the workplace and the way we work forever. Last year, moving out of lockdown, we failed to adjust our rituals to the new reality (which resulted in a sharp drop in team member happiness and eNPS, which is another long read), but this year having learned our lesson, we were more intentional on building a set of Rituals and policies that consist what we call REBORRN’s Hybrid OS.
I’m writing this article in the hope of helping others that are now thinking about their office-first, remote-first, hybrid or whatever policies.
Before anything, here’s the key context that influenced our thinking:
- REBORRN operates in the services industry, which means that people (and their time) are our product. That means that salary-wise, we can’t always fight back against an offer from a well-funded SaaS company, although we do pay better salaries than most startups. Hence, we need to build an EVP (Employee Value Proposition) that goes beyond the monetary benefits (as most companies, I guess).
- REBORRN is HQ-ed in Athens and not the Valley, NYC or London. In the war for talent, an office-first approach to work would simply mean limiting our talent pool to a 30’ commuting radius from our Athens office. So remote-first was always a no-brainer.
- Most of our clients are multinationals, as such distributed teams; we collaborate with them virtually and travel when necessary.
- REBORRN has been successfully implementing Unlimited Remote & Unlimited Vacation policies before (it was cool) Covid-19 was a thing.
So here’s our current approach to work:
Company Policies stack
We hire people anywhere in the world.
We hire people anywhere in the world as long as it works timezone-wise. There is an exception when it comes to internships. We strongly prefer to hire people that can access the office.
We work from anywhere.
If you work at REBORRN, you can work from literally anywhere. We have people who spend weeks or months skiing the Alps, living in other cities for a while, or spending a big part of their summer working from the Greek islands.
We cherish flexible working hours.
We generally want people to be available from 10 am until 6 pm to ensure easy collaboration, but everyone is free to adjust this schedule if it does not impact collaboration.
If you are based in Athens, drop by the office twice per week…
…But for a reason. All of our teams have weekly physical meetings, and we encourage everyone to hold their weekly “One to One” meetings physically. Most people that are based in Athens enjoy this policy. Having said that, everyone is free to spend as much time as they want outside Athens, as the “work from anywhere” policy applies to everyone.
Sustainable commuting for HQ-Based Staff.
We are working with a service called Kineo to make commuting to the office safer, healthier, more sustainable and fun. Anyone based in Athens can have a free electric scooter or e-bike.
Health insurance with Global Coverage.
Working from anywhere should be safe, so we got everyone’s back with a powerful group health insurance with global coverage.
Company-wide rituals
Company offsite meetings twice per year.
We usually set up an offsite to kick off the year and one during the summer to review H1 progress. This year’s offsite was in Istanbul, and the last one before COVID was in Vienna.
Physical all-hands meetings every month.
This is our chance to meet physically, mingle between teams, and give everyone an outline of our Business Performance and strategic updates. We accompany these meetings that happen at the end of a working day with gatherings that sometimes end up at parties.
Virtual All hands monthly deep dives
That works complimentary to the physical AHM. Once every month and two weeks after our physical AHM, we choose one topic to deep dive into, which is most often related to this quarter’s Objectives & Key Results.
Skip a level One to One meetings Quarterly
Every three months or so, we kick off a repeating process of setting up skip a level meetings (basically Managing Partners, having a meeting with everyone else in the company) to get to meet new joiners but also catch up with people that don’t get the chance to interact with that often in a remote-first work environment.
Team Rituals:
While every team has its own unique rituals, there are some routines that we make sure everyone follows.
Weekly Physical team meetings
Every week, each team picks a day to meet for weekly review and planning. The meeting is hybrid, as it is mandatory physical for HQ-based staff and remote for everyone else.
Weekly 30' One to One meetings
Every week managers need to run O3 meetings with each team member. These meetings are encouraged to be physical where this is possible.
Daily 15' Stand-ups for every team
Every team has a daily stand-up to discuss shortly what happened yesterday, the day’s plan, and any impediments.
Monthly team Retrospectives
Every team runs a retrospective meeting at the end of each month. This is probably a team’s most important ritual and a muscle teams build over time.
End of Project Retrospectives
We also run Retros at the end of our most important projects since most project teams are cross-functional.
Technology Stack
Technology is really important to facilitate
- Slack for internal communication.
- Google Apps for email, file management and documents.
- Asana for Project Management
- Notion for Documentation
- Zoom for Video Calls
- Miro is our virtual whiteboard
There are many more things that comprise our Operating System. I just wanted to focus on those that focus on the future of work challenges.
So that’s it for now. I’m pretty sure that the above OS will look much different in a year, as learnings will start to l kick in. We’ll make sure to follow up with our next iterations.
PS. Let me know what you do at your company and what works well in the comments. 👇
