This article was originally posted on tblx-insider.
How do we walk the talk at tb.lx?
At tb.lx, our approach to work is hybrid: in practice, you have the choice to be able to work remotely or from the office. To make it work for everyone, we adopt a remote-first culture: this means our remote employees are as much a part of the team as those in the office, and the experience should be the same whether you’re in the office everyday or once a month.
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
You might be wondering what it is like to work in a “remote-first” company? Well, let me tell you about it!
1. Giving our People Trust and Flexibility
More than ever, we need to trust our people and give them the flexibility they need. We are living in challenging times, where everyone is being restricted by many external variables. The context is already stressful enough on it’s own and we, as a company, want to alleviate some of the pressure on our people, not worsen it with more internal restrictions. That’s why we need to trust our employees with finding their own best way to balance work and personal needs.
Concretely, how is this trust being put in practice at tb.lx? As long as your work or your team’s work isn’t impacted negatively, we trust you to work where and when is best for you.
If you are homesick, you can work from your home town or home country for a bit. If you are tired of your home office and want a change of scenery, you can rent a place on the beautiful Portuguese countryside or on the coast. If you have young kids who need attention, you can take the afternoons off to tend to their needs in the day and work in the evenings. If you miss the face-to-face interaction, our office in Marquês is open.
The golden rule is: align with your team, communicate to everyone and keep important deadlines in mind. If it’s no problem, go ahead!
2. Promoting (Over-)Communication
To make remote-first successful, we need to put an emphasis on transparent communication. So much can be lost in translation when we can’t physically be together, and that’s why it’s essential to have online communication channels and touch points in place. Here’s what we do at tb.lx:
Individual Touch Points
- Virtual Coffees — We encourage spontaneous 1:1s to reach out to people to check-in and talk about something else than work. The goal is to purposely recreate the “water cooler moments” we used to have when we were all in the office.
Team Touch Points
- Daily Sync — All teams have at least one daily video call sync together.
- Online per Default — If someone in the team is working remotely (i.e., not from the office), the whole team should default to a remote setup for meetings (i.e., everyone joining from their own laptop) to ensure the same experience for all.
- Walking Meetings — To fight virtual call fatigue and enjoy the Portuguese weather, we recently experienced with Walking Meetings in a couple of team meetings and they were a real success. The process: prepare an agenda beforehand, join the call with camera off, write important notes on your phone. Speaking of walking the talk 😉
Company Touch Points
- tb.lx newsletters — weekly updates about what’s happening in the company: project progress, new initiatives, new hires, company culture initiatives.
- All Hands meeting — company meeting for important announcements such as major project updates or strategy decisions.
- Contrarian Office Hours meeting — company meeting where anyone can openly address a possible tension, doubt or suggestion they have. The idea is to then look for solutions together.
Our Stack to collaborate and communicate: Microsoft Teams for videocalls, Mattermost for chat, Confluence for documentation, Jira for project management.
3. Staying connected beyond work
At tb.lx, our office culture in the pre-covid era was very strong. We had our rituals in place: our favorite places to eat out, board game nights, happy hours, company breakfasts, etc. All face-to-face, of course.
These rituals will always be there when people join the office, but we need to find ways to keep everyone connected — no matter where they are working from.
For the past year, we set a structure to come up with online culture initiatives that speak to most people. Every month, tblxers vote on a “Monthly Theme” that they’d like to have for the month. Some months, we choose important and impactful themes (Diversity & Inclusion, Mental Health, Sustainability). Other months, the themes are more on the light and fun side (Music, Generations, Celebrations). Once we have a theme, we come up with initiatives that will fit within that theme.
So what does a Monthly Theme look like concretely? Let me give you two concrete examples from last year:
Example 1: Diversity & Inclusion July
In 2020, a new wave of social justice protests erupted across the globe, and this made us reevaluate where we stand and find additional ways to ensure diversity and inclusion. Here are some of the Diversity & Inclusion initiatives that took place in July:
- Affirmative Actions — We started with a voluntary brainstorming session to explore a topic that meant a lot to our people (two-thirds of the company decided to join!). Together, we tried to answer this question: How can we increase diversity and improve a feeling of inclusion at tb.lx? This conversation resulted in a concrete action plan, with numerous follow-up ideas initiatives that took place throughout the year — such as revising our job descriptions to make them more appealing to women, mentoring young women starting a career in tech, putting in place a targeted engineering traineeship & mentoring program open to people with a non-engineering background.
- Movie Club — We also hosted a Movie Club, where tb.lxers shared insights from movies about diversity, discrimination or social justice that resonated with them (some suggestions for you: “Girl”, “Hidden Figures” and “Boys Don’t Cry”).
Example 2: Celebrations December
The end of the year is usually a period of gathering with family and friends. Usually, we have a large Christmas dinner with everyone at tb.lx too. But last year was of course a different game. To create this feeling of connection despite the distance, we hosted various initiatives throughout the entire month, such as:
- Virtual Secret Santa — Among others, we hosted a virtual Secret Santa gift exchange. The rule was “no buying allowed, DIY only”, so people had to get creative: from backgrounds, to montages, to playlists and videos.
- tb.lx Cook-Off — 3 tb.lx master chefs taught us all the fine art of cooking. On the menu: Salmon Quiche, Apple Tatin Pie and Vegetarian “Beef” Wellington. You guessed it, two of the chefs were French, bien sûr!
Hungry yet?
Want to hear more?
These are three important pillars that helped us sustaining a balanced remote-first culture at tb.lx. If this read sparked your curiosity and you’d like to hear more about remote-first, our People team at tb.lx is working on a Remote-How Handbook to help you navigate this hybrid transition. Stay tuned…
And of course: if you’d like to learn more about tb.lx, take a look at our vacancies!
Cyril Desmedt works as a People & Culture Facilitator at tb.lx in Lisbon, Portugal.
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