The benefits to a flexible & remote work environment

While the rest of the world is working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s not rocket science that there are beneficial key health and wellbeing points towards having a home office setup and working from home. It was found that:

• 77% of remote employees say they’re more productive when working from home (Source)
• Employers surveyed said by allowing remote work increased employee retention rates by 95% (Source)
• 97% of remote employees say they would recommend remote work (Source)

On top of that, a Stanford study partnered with China’s largest travel agency and NASDAQ-listed, Ctrip, designed a study to measure the productivity of remote workers versus office workers. Ctrip’s headquarters is based in Shanghai, with 16,000 employees at the time of the study in 2013. Being in Shanghai, meant expensive office space, much let alone living costs that many employees could not afford in the city itself, meaning long commute times, leading to a gradual decrease in performance. Ctrip’s CEO and co-founder, James Liang, wanted to provide the option of working remotely but had to prove it would not negatively impact each employee’s productivity.

The study measured 500 call center employees who volunteered to work from home, were randomly assigned in two study groups of either working from home, or in the office for 9 months. What was found was that employees working from home had a productivity boost of 13%. Those working from home also reported higher work satisfaction, with the attrition rate decreasing by 50%.

Due to the success of the study, Ctrip ended up rolling out an option for employees to work from home and allowed the experimental employees in the study to re-select whether they wanted to work between home or from the office. It was found that over half of those employees switched back to working in an office option as they felt isolated working from home.

Why has Storyblok been fully remote since 2017?

When our founders Dominik and Alex set out in creating Storyblok, they decided to go with a fully remote setup. They believed that that was the only way you could balance work and life together. Working from home not only cuts down on the daily commute, by train, plane, or car, back and forth to your office but puts you in the position to move closer, and spend more time with family and friends. In our co-founder’s position, Storyblok was created for just that - in eliminating not only the redundant commute back and forth, but to accommodate to the already-existing communication Alex and Dominik had established in written form, video calls, Slack, and so on before Alex moved to Brazil and together, continued such a work-from-home lifestyle that made Storyblok what it is today. Inspired by a video uploaded by The Family (a French accelerator program) on talent recruitment, brought forward the idea to Dominik and Alex: “Why weigh the location of your employees so highly in your decision-making process?”

The idea is simple - hiring remote allows the flexibility for anyone, anywhere around the world, to apply and show the best of their talents. Storyblok decided to go fully remote to hire the best talents, give our employees the flexibility of where and when they want to work, giving the reins of finding out the best work and life balance that best suits you, results over hours, and a greater diversity of individuals and talent.

How are we liking our work from home life?

We asked our Storyblok-ers to describe their home office setup and their work from home life in two words and/or in three emojis, from getting to spend more time with family, the amount of support when moving in a pandemic, surrounded with kids, pets, and plants, or getting more time to hone in on our coffee-brewing and cooking skills:

Working from home with Storyblok

Being fully remote and outside an office environment without the essential pieces of equipment means needing the appropriate equipment to get started regardless of your location. Since Storyblok is a fully remote company without a central office, we give two options for our employees to choose from to ‘make their own workplace’ between working from home, or through a co-working membership.

For example, a work-from-home situation could be for someone with the necessary area to set up their space, versus someone who might prefer an office environment and might have a young and noisy family or without a separate space to work. If you’re in between choosing where to work, we can also arrange a trial membership for 5 to 10 visits to find the best option that best for each person.

This means giving help in purchasing essential accessories and tech-ware that you need to have when setting up your home office space to make it yours, as well as investing a certain fund into each employee’s personal development. Besides the standard necessary equipment such as a laptop, monitor, mouse, and keyboard, we also give our employees the choice to choose from a select catalog which further equipment they may need, and on top for our home-based employees any furniture they need, that can help them feel more comfortable and productive while working remotely.

Either way, we want to have each other’s backs, and make sure to give the best setup to each employee, whichever they choose. It’s probably safe to say that none of us thought the rest of the world would join us working from home early last year in 2020. Yet, working from home is not the new norm for us at Storyblok - it has always been our norm and always will be.

If you’re interested to learn more about how we make sure our employees get to know each other despite being based in over 10 countries worldwide, check out this article on all things Donut, Coffee & Chess. In the meantime, if you liked what you read so far and are interested to join our Storyblok team, check out our open opportunities.