Early 2019, one of our team made the decision to move back home to be nearer his family.
Home for him was Burnley. Our studio is in Hertfordshire.
He still very much wanted to work for us, and likewise, we still very much wanted him to stay as part of the team.
It was our first experience of having a remote team member and I remember thinking how complicated this all felt.
- How would we recreate team culture remotely?
- How would we communicate?
- What would our team meetings look like?
- How would clients feel?
The reality was actually far simpler than the thought of it. We created new processes and used systems that made all these things easy – it worked well.
Fast forward to 2020 and I think we all know what happened there! The pandemic hit and suddenly we’re all working remotely without choice.
The investment we’d made in 2019 set us up well, and opened our eyes to the possibility of hiring amazing people who don’t happen to live anywhere near Hertfordshire.
So, 2021 is upon us and we now have two fully remote team members who live in the Philippines, James and Wenalyn both of whom are blooming awesome.
James joined the team recently as a PHP Developer, supporting our existing clients and building exciting new websites and systems.
Wenalyn has been working with us since July 2020 as our Virtual Assistant and all-around superstar team support.
It’s really exciting to see the team grow in this way and for us all to have the opportunity of learning from the different cultures that now make up Rubber Cheese.
Author:
Kelly Molson Managing Director
Host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast, for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she regularly delivers workshops and presentations on the sector at various national conferences and universities including The Visitor Attractions Conference, ASVA and Anglia Ruskin University.