Apr
Startup Office Hours?
A fellow startup CEO recently posed the question:
What do you do for office hours at your company? Do you enforce a strict time expectation for people to be in the office? Is it 9 to 5? Is it 10 to 6? What about work from home vs. in the office? How about vacation days? Do you count days off?
What’s best for startups in this regards?
Here’s my take on office hours:
I’ve always had a policy of “I’m not counting your hours nor your days as long as you are productive and don’t abuse it.” That’s fairly easy when you’re very small; gets harder as you grow.
I implemented such a policy even as Chief Product Officer at XING AG, a public German company, in 2009. And while some of my German co-workers thought I was crazy for not being more process oriented, the team loved it and it ended up working really well and boosting morale.
I have the same attitude regarding work-from-home vs. being in the office. It’s all about being where you are needed. Surely it helps to have people in the office as much as possible as it fosters camaraderie. At the same time, not everything needs to be done in the office. As an example, I work from home most days from 6am to 10 or 11 am. I’m on skype with team members from all around the globe during that time and it’s just easier and more productive for me to do that from home vs. running to the office at 5:30 a.m. or in between calls.
Back to another example from my XING days. I had this amazing product manager on our team who worked consistently from 9am to 7pm every day. About 6 months into my tenure there I learned that she had a 2 hour commute to work every day, which was killing her, but she had never spoken up about it because the company had a formal no-work-from-home policy. Needless to say I created a new policy and she was granted work-from-home Wednesdays. Sure, rules exist for a reason, but employee productivity and happiness comes first.
Regarding vacation days. My standard is to give everyone 3 weeks off contractually, but I’m not counting their days when they take them. Use what’s yours but don’t abuse it. Just please try to coordinate your vacations such that you are there when we need you there. Oh, and I’m a HUGE believer in the importance of vacation. Go, recharge! I expect and hope everyone will take 1 week every 3 to 4 months and completely unplug.
What’s your startup office hours policy?
What do you think the ideal “policy” should be?
UPDATE: This article is being discussed here on Hacker News.
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Worth it to read whole post. I really wish larger companies would adopt a similar approach to this. Every one of
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