The post covid era has, in many cases, seen leaders over-correct and try to force people back into the office full-time, which I suspect is due to a combination of top down pressure due to economic headwind, and not having adequate systems, processes and operating principles in place to enable them (both their teams, and the leaders themselves!) to operate in an effective manner.

• The result in many companies now is that for office based staff you have chaotic and unproductive flexibility running rampant:
• People spend way too long coordinating and voting on which days to go to the office without actually knowing who’s decision it is.
• Some random person wakes up with energy as they haven’t been to the office in a month and shows up proactively to then only find no one else is there that day and that they should have stayed home.
• Introverts happily stay at home all week because there’s no forcing function to do otherwise, but then also start to feel a little lonely.
• Management, who are stuck in a state of terrified indecisiveness, see all of this noise spinning around and around, whilst also spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on office space, get frustrated, and then send out a knee jerk policy change as a reaction - pissing everyone off because it’s out of the blue and not well thought through.

My goal is to avoid all of the above.

The best way I can describe Sitemate’s approach wasn’t actually described by me, it was described by Lara a few months after she joined, as “highly structured flexibility”. This is exactly the intent of our working arrangements.

I believe that a team can comprise of people working in an office, some people hybrid, and some people fully remote, and that the team can be extremely successful in doing so.

That's why we offer three distinct role types: office-based, hybrid, and remote. This diversity allows our roles to align to the work arrangement that suits them best.

We are generally moving towards a pattern where go to market team members have a preference towards office based, with hybrid considered in some special cases, and virtually never remote.

Whereas engineering has to date, been much more aligned around timezone overlap.

It is likely that our offices in Australia; currently in Sydney and Melbourne, but I suspect will expand to Brisbane in future, will need to become ‘sister’ offices, to expand the talent pool for go to market, product, design, engineering and operational team members as we grow from 100 to 500 people.

For our office based roles, I believe that establishment of fixed office days across our global offices is the only solution. This deliberate decision aims to eliminate the endless back-and-forth discussions about which days to come into the office. By having fixed office days, a cohesive and predictable work environment is created, reducing the noise and uncertainty associated with varying schedules.

Our hybrid role type has been a useful mechanism to allow us to bring on great people, who are ‘arms length’ away from a city where we have an office - for example, an hour or two outside of Sydney, or a few hours outside of London.

By creating a role type for this, it allows us to agree on a different set of expectations, due to the greater travel distance involved, whilst not disrupting the day to day of the office based team members.

Of course anyone new, or candidates in the interview process, are always hesitant when Monday and Friday are set as the fixed office days.

However, during initial research, we found that this was due to underlying concern with this was actually due the handful of times each year that you go away for a weekend, or have something on over a weekend - and by making decisions due to this, you risk optimising the entire company’s working schedule and cadence around outlier events.

The solution here has been low battery days and weekender days - a light weight process to have an annual allowance of flexi days around the Monday and Friday schedule, to ensure that individual’s have got some breathing room when they do have something on, whilst also allowing the rest of the team to maintain a strong weekly rhythm by starting the week and ending the week together.

Everything set out in our policies is the default approach, however, I believe that your well-being should always be top priority. That's why we make exceptions for medical conditions when it comes to our work arrangements. We understand that life can throw unexpected challenges our way, whether it's a health issue or a family situation.

In such cases, there are no issues temporarily deviating from the norm, it just needs to be planned and documented with your manager and the Ops team. If a permanent role type change is required, then that it is also an option to discuss - although this is equivalent to a promotion or remuneration change in terms of impact, so does need to be submitted for approval by a manager.

In summary, my belief around, and hence Sitemate’s approach to, work arrangements is rooted in the belief that flexibility, predictability, structure and fairness are the foundation for a thriving work place in this post covid environment.

I believe our working arrangements are enabling us to setup a foundational operating cadence that will support our lofty ambitions as a company, whilst also enhancing your working lives, not complicating them.