Going Remote: Our journey to a remote working company

Photo: WeWork Culver City. A location I use often.

Our business has embraced remote working for some time. Remote working, if this sounds unfamiliar is “when employees carry out their duties away from the office or workplace”. In 2003 when Gav and I first decided to start the business that became Aiir, it was very much a side project and like many young entrepreneurs we started by working out of our bedrooms and communicating online.

It wasn’t until 2010 we decided that this really needed us both full time and we needed to start hiring people. So at that point we needed an office and somewhere to call home. Sheffield became home to our first office and first set of employees.

I joined our company full time around 6 months later in early 2011. Fast forward five years & three office moves and our current home is The Workstation in Sheffield. But, all that is about to change.

We’ve taken the decision to move everyone to remote working and I’d like to share with you why this is an important decision for the company.

I’ve always worked remotely. Doing so for me means I have the freedom to work wherever and whenever. As I travel lots for business it made sense for our company. At the time, I also lived in Bristol and a move to London made more business sense than being in Sheffield.

By 2014, we’d established ourselves as market leaders in the UK and looked at ways to grow our business overseas. North America was a major target so we started putting our growth plan into action and as a result, it became clear that I was about to move to the USA.

WeWork City Hall — My co-working space in New York

As part of that move I rented desk space in a co-working office called WeWork. I wanted to make new friends and working at home wasn’t going to cut it for me. It’s one of the best things I ever did! I’ve met so many people and created amazing life long friendships and contacts.

Members of our team from the UK have visited me here and we’ve also jointly used WeWork spaces in London and California. The vibe is amazing and that is shared by everyone who has visited me in one of their spaces.

Last year. we sat down to start a recruitment process to grow our team. There were a few people that we thought “we should possibly speak with them”. Andy Buckingham, our SVP, Product Innovation being one of them and Christie Richards, one of our amazing front end developer and designers. Both of whom are perfect for our business, but getting them both to move to Sheffield to work in the existing office just wasn’t an option. Both UK based, Andy lives in and loves Bristol in the south-west and similarly Christie further north in Nottingham. Work life balance is a really important factor and, no matter how good the job, moving the distance for a role is always a challenge to overcome.

We decided that allowing them to work remotely was the best thing for them and our business. I was personally concerned about lack of communication and staff morale having people work remotely and not in the same room. But then I remembered: hey, I work remotely and our business was created by working remotely!

It has not dampened our momentum, morale or culture at all. It’s actually enhanced it. We communicate more and the energy inside our company is truly amazing and inspires me daily.

Photo courtesy of Beehive Lofts.

In late 2016, Gav decided to make the move to Manchester, UK and also take up remote working. He’s now in another amazing co-working space called Beehive Lofts.

By this point, over 70% of our workforce were now working remotely and it’s working well for us. So we’ve taken the decision to move everyone to remote working from March 2017.

This allows us to open up the pool of talent for future hires to absolutely anyone in the entire world! It also gives our current employees the flexibility to work from wherever they want to be.

We’re about to hire a developer who will be our first as a fully remote working company, which brings new challenges for us as we adapt to our new company structure.

In a future post, I’d like to share how people within our company work remotely, the tools we use and how we arrange get-togethers throughout the year. This blog is one part of that story. We have several posts coming up over the coming weeks and so, like a mid-season TV show finale, we’re going to keep you in suspense for a few weeks before we publish the second part.