The lockdown has been a challenging time for Swarm as it will have been for most companies. Prior to lockdown we had been exploring the opportunities for staff to work remotely more often and had been planning to trial some versions of how that might work. Obviously circumstances took over and we were full on remote over a couple of days. All the “we need to think carefully about this and not rush it” went right out of the window and it the discussions were about “how we get office chairs and monitor arms to people safely?”.
We work remotely from many of our clients so there was little impact in that respect. The big change for Swarm is to working remotely from each other. The quick conversations across the office, the “can you have a quick look at this please” not to mention the social interactions were moved online which is not the same as face to face. We have found our way to thrive in this strange world.
Many people have discussed these issues before me so I will focus on what we are taking forward in to the new way of working post lockdown.
It turns out that developers don’t like working remotely as much as they imagined. They like being able to work from home far more than having to work from home.
The lockdown also highlighted the differences in people’s needs. As we have discussions about how we work following lockdown we asked our team what they would like their working lives to be like. Inevitably, we got more versions of that than there are staff. So, compromises are inevitable.
We are also coming to the end of the lease on our wonderful Dean Village office with no option to renew (it’s been sold and will be turned into luxury flats). This gives an added dimension to the discussions. Do we need an office at all? Should we get something in a shared space like CodeBase or WeWork? If we want an office how big does it need to be? There is physical distancing but also growth and occupancy to consider. If we are semi-remote, how often and where do we meet? We still have a big office in central Glasgow, does that become our base for the East coast staff too?
We are not at the end of this journey and I doubt we ever truly will be. It looks like we will maintain an office in Edinburgh where staff can work when it suits them and be remote the rest of the time. We also want somewhere to invite clients to meet our team although expectations are bound to be changing with how/where/when these meetings happen. We will continue to review and experiment with variations and try and be flexible to offer a better range of working life options to our current and future staff.
After The Lockdown
