Management in the age of remote work
Last June, Source held its annual offsite event.
This year we were in the Canaries, on the island of Fuerteventura, to tighten our connections and develop staff loyalty. On the agenda: surfing, catamaran rides, a keynote by the CEO… In short, the perfect combo of tech company seminar clichés.
But behind this conformism of coolness, was just a temporary relocation of our organization. Since 2019, Source is a remote first company, making it complicated to gather all our team members in the same place.
Our offsite is a lot less cool than it seems, we worked every day and everyone was free to plan whatever activities they wanted in their free time, a bit like in real life actually.
We were not there for fun or team building, but to do the only thing that brings us together: work.
Trying to make well-being at work and team cohesion an ultimate goal is the surest way to miss out. Having fun at work is only a consequence, not a condition.
Well-being at work
The famous quote from Confucius “Choose a job you like and you will never have to work in your life” doesn’t make sense. When we work, we don’t have fun. We phosphorize, we sweat.
Whether you’re an intellectual or a high-level athlete, working means making an effort.
A company is not there to make people happy, they are fine without us.
A company exists for 3 purposes:
- Pay its teams well. It is our responsibility to constantly generate business while selecting the clients for whom our teams will be able to exploit their full potential.
- Provide a framework and work tools. For a company like ours, a customer onboarding process, an analysis method, a design framework, know-how… are work tools.
- Latitude and independence, which comes from the trust we give to all our team members.
As Julia de Funès (author, philosopher and lecturer) says, happiness (in the company) was the trendy question before the Covid-19 period. And it’s a stupid answer to a badly asked question.
The right question, if you want to ask it, would be: what is the place of work in my life?
Live from your work and enjoy your passions
New aspirations have emerged, especially among the younger generations. Work is no longer sacred, a career is no longer a priority, what matters is freedom, which is gained through financial independence and professional autonomy.
And remote working goes hand in hand with this paradigm shift, because it has forced us to trust our collaborators even more. They have become more responsible, but also smarter and more flexible in the way they organize their work.
To challenge remote working, the possibility for our team to work from the location of their choice, in France or abroad, would be to go against a trend that is beneficial for everyone and in particular for the company. As proof, Source’s performance was boosted by +30% during the first year of the pandemic.
At the moment, I live most of the time in the Canary Islands, where I am lucky enough to surf almost every day, without letting my colleagues down or hurting the performance of my company. I would never have dared to allow myself to do that before, but since this possibility is available to any of my collaborators, now I allow myself to do it… And I am living my childhood dream.
