 one priority as the business was growing very fast.
So, what our team actually does and kind of our mission of our People Operations team is to build and grow a world-class team. What we do is we try to really build the team in the way that we do the hiring so – looking for talent and attract them to come to Slido, onboarding them, and then making sure that actually, we have the right people doing the right job. Once we have the talent already inside the company, then actually making sure that people grow and develop as people and as professionals and such.
Cool. It’s really great because I think that this is actually a big challenge for everyone. I would love to hear more about that. Can you tell me what is your current team size, the People team at Slido?
Right, so there are currently 6 of us.
So 6 of you, and when you joined 3 years ago you were only 30 in the whole company. So, you were kind of responsible for growing the company for over 110 employees more, right?
Yeah, exactly. An exciting journey that I’m grateful for having the opportunity to be a part of.
Yeah, awesome, very impressive. Your team is distributed across many countries. Could you tell me where do you have your offices?
Yeah, so currently, our headquarters is actually in Bratislava where we have half of the people, and then we have people distributed all around the world, basically from San Francisco all the way to Sydney. Now, the reason why is because we really want to be close to our customers. We really want to be there where they are so that we can actually listen to their needs, and based on that actually create a product and the service, and the whole experience for them.
Also, one more important thing is that it’s also because of the talent, that obviously, great talent is not only based in Bratislava so if we want to hire amazing people we need to actually be flexible in the way of the place where they can actually work from. One is to be close to where our customers are but then again be also where the team is, and where the talent is.
So, in some locations, we actually have our officers, as I mentioned, we have the biggest office obviously in Bratislava. Then we have like bigger offices in London where we have 15 people. Then we have 7 people in New York, 3 people in San Francisco. We have also a small team in Bali, actually, like 5 people, but then, we have individuals. We have a colleague in the Philippines, in Manila. We have another person in Stockholm, so we have some people who are just individuals based in different cities.
This is very interesting. How does the time difference affect how you guys work with so many people distributed around the world?
Yeah, that is a good question. So, obviously, it’s one of the challenges, because having people around the world makes it much more difficult, makes it much more challenging. The first thing is to really keep that in mind because actually, there isn’t a time where everybody could meet everyone.
Obviously, there is, but somebody would kind of get up at 2 AM or something like that because of the time. The time difference between San Francisco, Bratislava, and Sydney is so big that, obviously, there isn’t the time. So, what we actually do, the first thing is a mission to have the awareness, to have this in mind when you are scheduling meetings. We are using Zoom as one of the tools that we might get into a later but to actually do recordings, not to have like the meetings at the same time all the time, but actually, switch times.
So, when it comes to Europe have it sometimes in the morning. The other month actually having some more company events in the afternoon, so in the morning it is more suitable for the APAC team to join in, and in the afternoon it’s more suitable for America’s team to join in, so just to keep this thing in mind.
Also, when you are writing somebody on Slack, just to make sure that you don’t expect an answer right away because from that person it can be just middle of the night, so really, keeping this in mind is kind of like the first step of providing a great experience also for the remote people.
Well, Slido is a company that helps others communicate. You already mentioned Zoom recordings, Slack, can you share a little bit more on how you communicate to your employees and what other tools do you use or maybe you have some specific practices around how you collaborate and communicate?
Yeah. So, like both Slack and Zoom are a huge help, and we’ve figured some of the things that we really used and how we use for instance. Slack is having a separate channel which is called “Remote” where people from various regions interact and share both the struggles but also the nice things about their remote work, so they don’t have like a fear of missing out. Obviously, as mentioned, we have most people over here in Bratislava, so that people outside of the headquarters are having the fear of being missed out, but they are actually being included.
Well, first of all, what we do is we have permanent Zoom rooms running in the headquarters so that actually works for our customer care team which is supporting our customers on a 24-hour basis throughout the workweek. They have a permanent Zoom link which is running here the whole time and they can actually join in, so that even if you are based in the US or actually, as mentioned, in Bali – you just join in the same Zoom call, then you have the kind of experiences as being part as actually sitting in one room because, obviously, being remote you will never have 100% the same experiences as actually being in the same room, but we really want to make it as close as possible.
Absolutely, and from what you described so far I gathered that you do have some remote employees, individuals. I want to ask if you have any specific remote work policy and how do you help your employees who are not located in one of your offices with telecommuting, like for example, do you help them with getting co-working access or any specific support for that kind of people?
Yeah, that’s a good question. We try to have the least policies as possible because at a certain point this is usually what happens to companies as they get big, they introduce more and more policies. We try to do better by introducing good judgment at the work. Because what is the kind of the foundation of this whole approach is that we try to have a lot of trust within the team, so that we do not need to have these kinds of processes and policies in place but rather actually trust each other which is like an amazing thing to work for.
But you were asking about when it comes to telecommuting and all that kind of stuff. We don’t have any policies but what we do is really, we want to offer the kind of the same level of experience to people based in offices to also those working remotely. We try and we always offer this to them, that if they want to actually work from a co-working space, we will cover the cost for that because some people actually prefer working from home. So in that case, it’s perfectly okay, but we always kind of offer this option so people can have a co-working space, and yeah, we cover the cost for that.
Okay, I’m seeing that your company is kind of a hybrid – a lot of people are still working in the office but there are still other people who are telecommuting fully. How does that relate to the people working on-site? Do you also have generous work from home possibilities for them?
Yeah, so that’s a very good question again and once again, we don’t have any policies around that, but we try to build a culture of both, freedom and responsibility, so when it comes to a home office, we love to spend time with each other in the office, but if it works for you that you just want to spend the majority of your time at home, that is perfectly okay.
Some people work almost 100% of their time from home. For some people, it’s more like when they have this kind of project where they need to focus. They don’t want to be disturbed. They just work from home or if they need to do something, then they just take a home office. We don’t have kind of strict working hours. I mean it’s not that you need to be in the office like from 9am to 5pm or from 10am to 2pm, and the others are flexible.
This is very flexible and I mean, as mentioned, we try to build this on trust. We try to build this on common sense and it’s always about discussing it with your team, but it’s not like discussing for the sake of getting approval but more of coordinating inside the team.
And yes, there are some roles that need to have a schedule because they need to have this kind of shifts, being available to our customers or some of the roles actually require you to be at some point in the office because of cooperating with others. Although, as mentioned, we try to make sure that the experience is kind of seamless if you also work from home. Yeah, we still have a long way to go, I would say, there are still a lot of things which we can improve, but as mentioned, we try to make this work.
Yeah. I really like this approach of good judgment, trust, and empowering people to choose the way they like to work. Does it come with any challenges on your side with managing