March of 2020 brought a sharp and immediate shift to remote work. As restrictions slowly loosen after more than a year in the virtual workplace, the process of phasing back into a physical office has benefitted from more time to identify the best plan of action. In a recent Gartner survey of more than 200 HR leaders, 69% of respondents expected a return to the office in the second half of 2021.
Successful reopening has shown itself to be a careful and conscientious balance of employee expectations and legacy company culture. Peter Rex, founder & CEO of rex, saw that his team was eager to return to an in-person experience and responded accordingly.
“We are fully committed to working locally on-campus,” he said. This decision fit within not just employee feedback, but also a pre-pandemic company culture that valued a social atmosphere.
With so many changes to prepare for — including reacclimating to a commute, making sustainable childcare plans and easing back into social spaces — employees are looking for reopening leadership they can trust.
AffiniPay, a local fintech company, takes this responsibility seriously. Vice President of People Resources Erin Brooks shared that AffiniPay’s objective, from initial lockdown to reopening, “has always been to ensure that our team felt cared for, were enabled to do their jobs well, and knew that AffiniPay was on top of the situation.” To that end, her team developed a dedicated task force to guide pandemic policy and build a reopening plan that respected employee’s expectations.
These plans are actively unfolding, and we have yet to see how the reprise of physical office spaces will resolve. It will undoubtedly be different for every company, but one commonality is the value that leadership places on employee feedback when designing a successful return to the office.
With multiple office openings in the pipeline, the rex team has been busy preparing for a return to an in-person workplace. Founder and CEO Peter Rex shared how he and his team have developed a plan that fits within existing company culture and ongoing growth plans.
Tell us about your current plans for returning to the office.
We are fully committed to working locally on-campus. We believe success in tech is all about people working together, building company culture and a sense of community in person.
We’ve found that our employees appreciate a social setting. When in the trenches with a team, working on a difficult problem, we all gain a unique respect and loyalty for one another. Interesting ideas are often born in the petri dish of bouncing from person to person before turning into something real.
We put a lot of time and thought into defining, building and maintaining our culture. That includes weekly company lunches, monthly socials for our teammates and their families, and pop-up events and happy hours.
What were the most important steps you took to develop this plan?
We made our decision to return to campus based on the information we had available at the time and the desire of our teammates to be in-person again. We trusted our employees to make their own informed decisions about what was best for them and their families.
We treat each teammate with respect and honor their personal decisions. If you have childcare needs that have been complicated by school closures, we offer remote work. And if you feel sick, go home, rest and recover. Nearly every teammate has decided to work in-office and thankfully, we’ve suffered no ill health consequences. Being together again has been great for our people, culture and business.
We believe success in tech is all about people working together, building company culture and a sense of community in person. ’’
There are still a lot of unknowns around when it will be safe to return to the office at full capacity. How are you adapting to and preparing for these unknowns? How are you communicating shifts in planning to your team?
Our employees love working together and look forward to it. We have zero unknowns related to whether we will be together or not. However, we do have unknowns related to where we will be — we have numerous office buildings we are buying, and the construction schedule is hard to pin down!
We are going all-in on Austin. We’re aggressively launching new businesses and hiring for engineering, product, marketing and more. To keep pace with our growth, we are renovating one of our new offices in downtown Austin and we will have more coming online in the Austin area by the end of 2021. We’ll be covered, but with the amount of new talent we’re bringing on right now we’re bursting at the seams.
Office closures brought new sentiments around workplace safety, and new demands on leadership to stay informed and flexible to changes. AffiniPay rose to this challenge by developing a dedicated Covid-19 task force. As restrictions loosen, this task force has evolved into a back-to-office team to ensure employees remain an intrinsic part of their reopening plans.
Tell us about your current plans for returning to the office.
AffiniPay believes “work that is fun gets done,” and this includes how we worked in our physical office space pre-pandemic. After much preparation, as of June 7th, we reopened our office on a voluntary basis. One of our core values is to make things “surprisingly great,” and that’s how we approached our reopening. We planned celebrations, including food trucks during lunch and an outdoor yoga class. All rooms and technology were set up to support collaboration and make the hybrid-remote experience seamless. We have worked hard to provide clear expectations in line with CDC and local guidelines.
Everyone works differently, so our current plan is flexible and not mandatory; rather, we are allowing our executive team to determine what works best for their departments, whether fully remote or hybrid. We have learned that our team is adaptable and can thrive when challenged, and we are applying that knowledge to how we structure our return to a physical office space. We recognize that all team members must feel comfortable and safe returning to the office before we can ask them to do so. Flexibility is key to our current plan!
We do not want to be committed to a plan that will become irrelevant or unworkable should things shift again.’’
What were the most important steps you took to develop this plan?
Over time, our COVID-19 Task Force became our Back to Office team — their focus has changed as circumstances have dictated. The goal has always been to ensure that our team felt cared for, were enabled to do their jobs well, and knew that AffiniPay was on top of the situation. We ensured that a voluntary office reopening would be safe and enjoyable, and we continuously evolved our plans based on feedback.
We worked hard to safely maintain connection with seasonal home deliveries of surprise company swag and drive-thru events, including a barbeque, ice cream social and a pumpkin patch last fall. For one meeting, we rented a drive-in theatre so our team could enjoy it in a fun, safe environment. We gave stipends to create home offices, and we are making sure to create dual setups for hybrid employees upon their request. We have stayed well-versed in the developing laws and guidance from the CDC so we could ensure a safe environment for team members choosing to return to the office. Most importantly, we continue to be flexible and recognize that this isn't just a case of where to work — we need to reach an important balance between safety, childcare and mental health.
There are still a lot of unknowns around when it will be safe to return to the office at full capacity. How are you adapting to and preparing for these unknowns? How are you communicating shifts in planning to your team?
Transparency is key. We have been open with our team that any current policy and plans could change based on shifting circumstances. We do not want to be committed to a plan that will become irrelevant or unworkable should things shift again. The constantly changing landscape has prepared us to be adaptable to changes that might arise going forward, and we have learned that our team is flexible, nimble and can rise to any challenge.
Due to vaccine availability, as well as the loosening up of CDC guidelines and our flexible policy about being in the office, we are not currently concerned about capacity restrictions in our office. We feel that we have worked hard to provide a safe and fun environment for our returning team members, and we plan to spend the rest of the summer figuring out what works for us before finalizing any permanent policy. When it comes to that permanent policy, what we do know is that it will include lots of flexibility, work-life considerations and maximizing our culture.
