Life at Musement: of love, journeys and Amy Winehouse…

Love is a losing game, sang Amy Winehouse back in 2006…

Well, not always…

In early 2019, a few months after I joined Musement, watched a very interesting Ted Talk introducing the concept of ‘distributed work’ during one of my daily commutes.
It was enlightening! As an employee and daily commuter, for years I wondered why everything was dramatically changed and improved by technology while the ‘way we work’ almost remained the same with outdated processes not representative of our modern surroundings.

A set-up, where everyone was free to work from anywhere, at any time, was quite realistic for Musement (clearly with suitable work-related regulations in place): every employee had a laptop, job types didn’t require continuous presence in the office and some of our developers had been working remotely since the very beginning of the company as a start-up.

It was clear that allowing employees the choice to work remotely would bring many positive changes to their quality of life; by granting them a greater work/life balance, reducing their commuting time and the associated stress (which with the Italian public transportation and the heavy traffic to/from Milan is definitely a factor to take into consideration) and, last but not least, with a positive green impact. Similarly, because of the nature of the company and our digital first approach, the impact on general business productivity should have been minimal.
I had a chat: about remote working, with our CTO and Musement Co-Founder, Fabio Zecchini, who also found it intriguing so we started to think of ways to turn this idea into a reality.
I had the very same chat with our new People Operations Manager, she was also enthusiastic about the idea, so we progressed with our planning.

Due to Musement acquisition by TUI, in autumn 2018 and the consequent boost to our activities, our hiring rate had greatly increased turning that idea into an effective need. It was clear that our office space would have been insufficient to host all employees, even with our planned office expansion works almost ready to start.

We continued to plan throughout 2019: People Operations worked on the legal compliance part, checking laws and preparing all the necessary paperwork, while IT worked alongside them preparing all the related procurement requirements; as well as revising and modifying the infrastructure. After taking all the necessary steps, the first implementation of new ‘Smart Working Initiative’ was officially presented to the employees in mid-2019.

Everything was proceeding very well: company business was growing, ‘Smart Working Initiative’ development was proceeding and we were excited about the positive impact of this on employee’s quality of life, when in early 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic hit hard.
Due to the fact that I leave near one of the first identified red zones in Italy, I was one of the first to start working fully remote from home and, as a precaution, I began to work from home on Friday 21st February. Our Milan office then officially closed on Monday 9th March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 forced that change, remote working became a necessary requirement for the survival of all companies.

Love is a losing game, sang Amy Winehouse in 2006… Well, not always…

All of this planning was initially based on my idea, but it was Musement’s dedication and care for their employees that inspired them to support my idea and see it through to fruition and you know what?

Thanks to our continuous planning, which was already at its final stages, everyone started to work from home, on 9th March, like it was almost a normal working day.

Surprisingly since the company went fully remote in March, IT support ticket requests had no significant increase. Of course, some of our IT processes had to be revised: some required small or no changes and only one had to be created from scratch. But, with the invaluable support from our supplier, we continued to handle the back and forth of hires and leavers devices with only minor delays.

Not only did we avoid any supply issues (a side effect of the shortage of laptop computers, caused by the spike of requests by companies unprepared for the impact of such a sudden and radical change to their daily working life), we could also stop some forecasted devices purchases which would now be redundant due to the change in working circumstances, saving the company money.

Irrespective of the impact of Covid-19 on our business sector, which also caused the need to start a strict cost saving initiative, we inevitably boosted some transition processes, which were part of the initial planning. We had already planned to reduce Musement costs, in terms of software licenses, by more than 50%. This was to be carried out without canceling any necessary program, excluding those that were already planned to be decommissioned and, above all, without any impact on our colleague’s daily activities.

Love might be a losing game, but playing the game is never a mistake.

It is always worth investing in and it really could lead you to a safe harbour when a sudden storm disrupts your journey putting your ship into very troubled waters.