Distributed Working — 2020 Policy Update

As a design studio, we have confronted continued change during 2020 due to the unravelling of COVID-19. On a Thursday in late February we gathered the studio and told them we would start working from home immediately, and this could last several weeks. Little did we know six months later, very little has changed, and we have acquiesced to our new situation. And that’s ok!

In the past six months I’ve shared writing on ensuring empathic support for each other, our ability to adapt to new situations, and the drawbacks to remote working we have encountered.

As we come to the end of July, we have now looked to solidify our office policy for the rest of 2020 aiming to take into account the best situation for clients, employees, and their health, both mental and physical. Much of this was informed by work led by my colleague. She collected insights and survey responses from the studio to explore the best employee experience.

Below is the policy as it has been shared with the Amsterdam Studio. I would encourage all studios to present something similar to give certainty in uncertain times, and help those in teams and organisations adjust to a year of endless shifting.

Dear Amsterdam

During the last month, we have discussed how to approach the rest of 2020 in regards to our working style and environment. We have come to a conclusion based on a series of factors, including the biggest one — uncertainty.

Before we discuss the updated policy, we wanted to go over a couple other factors that played heavily into this decision, and how we want to ensure we think of our work looking forward.

For our studio, we are here to provide individuals with the best careers possible with the tools at our disposal, while delivering the best client work possible — of course, always looking at how to improve and adapt with each program to strengthen that delivery. For individuals, and our client work, we have always seen creativity as a collaborative and immersive experience, and we hope everyone here sees that the same way. The words above will play heavily into how we continue to adapt and deliver our work looking forward.

Coming to the policy update for the remainder of the year, there are three simple points.

1. We will continue to support a mixed working model, where individuals can work from home or the studio as they need and choose.
2. Anyone may use the studio on any day, but we do ask you sign-in during studio time for tracking.
3. We will support those who wish to temporarily work from another location outside of Amsterdam. However, for anything over roughly 2 weeks of being gone from the country or Amsterdam area, please discuss this with studio leadership.

With this policy, we want to mention a few additional areas for individuals to think about. While we have done an amazing job in distributed working, we do sometimes feel we took many of the same office behaviours home and applied them, as opposed to adapting our overall working approach.

Therefore, there are three (3) areas we would ask everyone to reflect on.

1. On the internal survey, areas of social time, connection, and isolation still stood out as something people miss. We recommend any and all of us can coordinate lunches, coffee meetings, or in-person activities. Don’t wait for leadership.
2. As mentioned at the start, creativity can often come from immersive situations. For example, the longer rambling brainstorms and conversations in the studio. We encourage everyone to still take advantage of the studio even more than we have been.
3. Lastly, as we are home more, we get less cross-pollination of discussion than in the studio. This naturally will expose us to less thoughts, critiques, and discourse. This lack of exposure can, and most likely will, limit growth unless individuals think how to adapt.
   Being home more means your career is more in your hands and will need a more proactive approach. Take this seriously and think what you can do to gain that knowledge and discourse that is lost from remote working.
   In no way should working from home limit us, but we believe if we do not actively see what we miss, and make adjustments as individuals to tackle that, we are limiting ourselves.

Thank you,

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