At Breakroom, we want to help our team do the best work of their lives.
To do that, we support flexible and hybrid work.
How we think about this is based on a set of principles for the kind of team we want to build:
Trusted and respected
Super productive
Inclusive
Breakroom’s flexible and hybrid working principles
1. A team based on trust and respect
We treat each other with trust and respect in all aspects of our working lives.
2. A super productive team
Everyone on the team should have enough choice about when they do what work to be most productive individually.
But we also want to create the right environment for lots of opportunities for collaboration and effective coordination across the team.
3. An inclusive team
We want to provide flexibility for everyone in the team, so that work can fit around their lives, whatever their individual needs may be.
Flexible working at Breakroom
We have core hours from 9.30am to 3pm where the default is to assume people will be working at these times.
Team members don’t need to check with anyone else to work flexibly around these times. We just ask people to let everyone know when they’re available and around on Slack and/or in their calendars.
We default to organising meetings during core hours.
We expect ad hoc flexibility outside of this too. It’s fine to start late, finish early or take some time out in the middle of the day every once in a while.
In-person and remote working at Breakroom
We expect how we manage in-person and remote working will change as we grow.
At the moment, we have one set up for the whole team.
We default to working in the office for two days a week on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Beyond that, people use the office as much or as little as they like.
Our goal is to make it easy for lots of in-person coordination and collaboration, as we are changing, fast.
We believe proper collaborative, creative discussion in a new and growing team is only possible face-to-face.
Loads of meaning is lost on Zoom and it’s hard to build mutual understanding when you’re not in the same physical space.
We work Tuesday and Wednesday in person because:
Coordinating the week together is most productive
It’s better to do goal setting at the beginning of the week when starting new things and people are fresh. A lot of that is better in person
Any fewer days puts too much pressure on the time in those days and makes it harder to do ad hoc chats, which are incredibly important. Scheduling everything doesn’t leave space for the unexpected!
Flexible working at Breakroom is exactly the same whether people are working in the office or remotely on a particular day.
And we also expect ad hoc flexibility in where our team members work. It’s ok to take the occasional WFH day too.
This is the new normal
We started Breakroom right before the pandemic hit.
But we've always worked this way, even before we had to.
Structuring a working environment so people have as much choice as possible about how they're most productive is just common sense.
If you join the Breakroom team, you can expect a lot of how we work and what we do to be based on similar principles.
We do not believe that this is complicated or innovative: it should be normal.
We're hiring!
If this sounds like how you like to work too, check out our current roles.
We're hiring across engineering, design, product management and content writing.
Published on 16 November 2021