We have outlined our learnings from Otonomee’s journey to becoming a geographically friendly business (remember were not using remote!). We’ve had to ask difficult questions, transition and disrupt our internal business. We are still working through it, but have seen results.
Here are our TOP 6 gains from working in a geo friendly manner;
Diversity – 37% of our leadership team are female. These 3 experienced colleagues would not have joined us if we did not offer geographically friendly working. All are busy mothers, one has moved location to help elderly parents, her role moved too, no life-changing choice needed. We now have an abundance of experience, smarts and perspective.
Equality – we feared a hybrid model would lead to conflicting ways of working and unfair advantages for some over others. Committing to one way of working has simplified things and means all of our teammates will have the same experience.
Wider talent pool- we continue to hire people outside of our traditional ‘centre’ and will soon grow our team on the European mainland. We now have access to technical skills and languages that were simply not available to us under the centralised, office based model;
Flexibility and scalability – in our business, scaling operations into another country took minimum 6 months and significant capex. We have just established an entity in a Portugal in 4 weeks, for 2k and are ready to hire.
Lower cost and risk – as we grow, we will not need offices or costly leases. We will have lower fixed costs and therefore can commit to growth without needing large capital injections or the overhead of managing facilities.
Digital Transformation – we have been forced to disrupt internal processes, to think digital first. This is hard but valuable, as more effective processes are better supported and scaled by tech.
Start with WHY.
If you are considering adopting this way of working you need to ask if this will advance your purpose as a business and support your company goals.
Asking “what are we hoping to achieve?” is the starting point.