**Embedding technology: adaptability, the war on talent and the environment**
BY GEMMA SOLEY ONFIDO.COM
Gemma has been an Office Manager at Onfido for the past three years, seeing the company more than double in size. After two office fit-outs and an office move, Gemma is now focusing her attention on supporting the team working remotely.
Onfido is recognised as a global leader in AI for identity verification and authentication and is backed by TPG Growth, Idinvest Partners, Crane Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, M12 – Microsoft’s venture fund, and others. Onfido has raised $200m in funding, and with approximately 400 team members across seven countries, is enabling digital access for some of the largest companies around the world.
As an Office Manager, hearing the words “everyone must work from home for at least six months” is pretty scary. So much of my role focuses on improving the experience in our physical office environments for the Onfido team and our customers – how can we make these four walls provide a productive and engaging workplace? We had also just spent the best part of a year planning and building our UK office expansion which was now going to be vacant.
When the national lockdown and physical restrictions came into force due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my challenge was to keep our offices safe, making sure the Onfido employees felt guided and supported whilst working from home. As a company, we created a dedicated team to help facilitate a seamless transition. Members included the Chief Financial Officer, Chief of Staff, representatives from Internal Communications and Human Resources teams, as well as the Office Management team.
We sent out a global survey to uncover people’s experiences and opinions of working environments, both at the office and at home. It became clear that whilst most employees transitioned well to remote working, many missed collaborating in a physical space such as our whiteboard room, lightbulb moments at the coffee machine, sharing a beer with friends at our weekly "All-Hands" meeting.
In response to the survey feedback, we gave all employees an allowance to spend on office equipment and supplies they may need to get set up safely and comfortably at home. We shared tips on creating work zones, getting into a routine, and packing workstations away, to help everyone transition smoothly to remote working environments and to encourage a healthy work and personal life balance.
We had record quarters in Q2 and Q3 of 2020 and people responded in the survey saying they enjoyed spending time with others in their home rather than being squashed on a tube. Would we ever see 300 bums on the 300 chairs in our London office again? Probably not. Could we use some of that desk space, maybe even reducing our square footage, to create studios and workshop rooms? Most likely. The on-site is the new off-site.
Working as a 100% remote team means we don’t have one person dialling in and feeling like they’re sat outside the room. Our capacity for digital interaction with clients has allowed increased productivity and income in many areas. Start-ups and scale-ups tend to be more agile than long established businesses, so suddenly working remotely is not much of an impacting shift. Our weekly global "All-Hands" meeting has become more engaging than ever. Anyone can ask a question that can be answered live, we cheer each other on, welcome new joiners globally, celebrate company news and milestones – everyone has a voice in the web-conference chat.
We’re working on a remote-first working playbook that can be used and developed as we scale. Next time we open an office anywhere in the world, we’ll know exactly what our requirements are, and what we need to do to meet them.
We’re now working from home into 2021, and my next challenge is planning a smooth transition back to the office when the time is right. We want it to be easy for the team to use an office space, but in a way that keeps the team safe – tricky to plan when restrictions vary around the world and are changing every month. Finding the right technology will be key.
In the meantime, I’m going to figure out how we’ll get to share that "All-Hands" beer again!