The Bookster Podcast: Can we work remotely?

Transcript

Hello, I'm Simon, and welcome back to the Bookster podcast from inside the SaaS holiday rental software company Bookster based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Follow along as Bookster, discuss their journey and their inner workings.

Thank you for joining us, and we hope that you find these conversations insightful and ultimately helpful.

And today I'm joined as always by CEO

Minute 1

and Co-founder of Bookster, Mr.

Robin Morris.

Robin, welcome back to the podcast.

Hello Simon.

And we are lucky enough today to be joined again by support lead, Adam Aaron.

Adam, welcome back.

Hi there, Simon.

Hi, Robin.

Hello.

How are you both this morning? Yeah, Good, thanks.

Not bad, Not bad.

Soft.

Uh, well, in that case, My holidays are over.

I've been away on holiday and it's, they're over now.

That's right.

Just got long.

The long hot Scott somewhere to deal with.

Well, yes, I have managed to cut.

The grass is in between showers this morning, So I think Between Showers, The only thing you got, how many, the only thing you got in there that's a hundred percent correct is at Scott.

Yeah.

How, How many showers do you have, Simon? I like three or four a day.

It's got to be at leave.

Uh, good job is not smell of vision on this.

Minute 2

It's just audio.

Um, right.

Moving on.

Okay.

Welcome back, everyone who's, who's tuned, tuned in again, uh, to this podcast.

Thank you for, for putting us on.

Um, today the plan is we're gonna talk a little bit about remote working and how bookstore do that, uh, the pros and cons, the ups and downs, and how it all works.

So perhaps the first question should be, how long have you been remote working? Has it been a covid thing or have you done that before? Covid? How is, how is it working Since that nine this morning? Uh, I, I'm in my home.

I'm actually not remote working today, but, uh, as I'm on my own, it's probably I'm remote working.

It's most remote working.

Yeah.

Uh, so we, I suppose like many, uh, technology companies,

Minute 3

uh, we had the, we've had the ability to work remotely for a long time.

So we started Tribal Logic Limited, which was, is our company named in 2007.

And certainly even at that point we used something called IRC, uh, to do chats amongst the team, and we could do that remotely and work remotely and do all our work remotely.

And we did for, uh, you know, time to time.

Um, so we would, uh, you know, we would either work from home or sometimes work, uh, from, from other locations.

So, uh, so yeah, so we've, we have had the ability to work remotely at least since 2005, 2006.

And we did it from time to time.

However, uh, COVID did quite dramatically change what we do on a daily basis.

Minute 4

And it went from pretty much everyone came into the office every day before Covid, you know, with the, on the odd occasion they would work remotely or if they happened to be traveling or something.

But since Covid, it's been a complete reverse really.

And now most people work remotely most of the time, uh, and then they come into the office every so often.

Right.

And so how often would people come into the office then? What's, do you have a, a set day, a week that everyone comes and gets together or No? Uh, so, uh, I'm in most days.

Um, but it, it varies amongst team members.

We do have a six weekly, uh, epic planning, which we, so, so our cadence of work is we've got a weekly sort of sprints that we do.

Uh, and then, so we plan for those once a week and,

Minute 5

and then we have, um, uh, six weekly planning.

So we're planning essentially for six weeks.

And on those six weekly planning, we do try to get into the office for that.

So everyone usually comes in for that.

Um, but on other days it's, it's quite sporadic.

People come in on some specific days.

Uh, you know, other people are in most days, um, some people in are never in except for the six weekly planning, so, right.

Yeah, it's quite flexible.

Yeah, Flexible.

Yeah.

And Adam, how do you find it, the flexibility in terms of your work life balance? How does that all Work? I think on, on the positive, it's flexible is probably the best word for it.

On, on the positive.

It's, um, extremely flexible, um, on the negative it, the work life balance, I suppose.

It's quite hard to stop.

Um, so, so you are, you know, you're thinking about work

Minute 6

because you don't have that sort of change between work and home.

Uh mm-Hmm.

You tend to, to think about work when you shouldn't be and think about home when you shouldn't be.

Uh, so I, I suppose on the whole though, I, I, I prefer having that flexibility, so I take the flexibility over the negatives for sure.

Sure.

And how does it work then, in terms of, I mean, in an office environment, if you get stuck on something, I guess you turn around and ask your colleague, get the desk beside you, um, does it slow down anything? Not having that work environment? It can do, but e equally it can slow down if you're in the office constantly interrupting people.

Um, I do find it harder focusing in the office a lot of the time.

Um, so depending on the task at hand, uh, also if you're on calls, uh, you have to remember to book a meeting room, whereas, uh, if you're working from home, it's, it's generally much easier to, to just find a quiet spot.

Minute 7

Um, but in, in terms of, I suppose sometimes there's a time delay.

You know, we, we use something called Slack, what Robin mentioned, IRC earlier, which Slack is sort of like, uh, similar to, uh, it allows us to communicate pretty much in, in real time.

Um, no matter where we are, uh, you can do video conferencing through that or through through Google Meet, et cetera.

So it's not, it's not too bad in terms of that.

There's definitely a positive in terms of being in the same room as someone and having a conversation with them versus doing a video call.

There's definitely conversations we're only able to have in the office, um, mainly about the people who aren't there that day.

Um, you know, there, there's a, there's a certain amount of bouncing ideas back and forth that you just don't get working remotely.

Uh, whereas, whereas you would get, um, if you're,

Minute 8

if you're working right next to someone that sometimes aren't even related to work but can benefit work, uh, I can't think of an example just now, but I, I, I would say overall I prefer it.

Um, but I definitely need to be in the office some sometimes.

Right.

Yeah.

I think where, where Slack works, so, um, it, it works really well, uh, if people respect it for what it is to, to some extent.

Um, it's quite difficult to, so say in the past pre Slack, you might email someone and you just email a particular person and then they'll get ran to reading that email.

Obviously with Slack, what you can do is you can message everybody in the company.

And I, I think that's the tricky thing is that in the office you can kind of gauge through a human

Minute 9

interaction when someone is mm-Hmm.

It's a good time to talk to someone.

And you typically don't stand at the end of the office and shout to everybody and go, hello, yeah, I've got this idea.

Has anyone thought about you need to talk to one person.

And I think that's the tricky thing about something like Slack is that it's quite difficult to realize that what you, when you put a message on there, you are actually telling everybody, you're asking everybody to read it.

Uh mm.

Now it's not such a big inter interruption as a shouting in the office, but it's having a similar effect.

It's a bit like emailing everyone in the company.

And so, you know, that's, it's, it's trying to encourage inside Slack more like filtered conversations inside teams or inside individuals trying working out the, um, the what's, what's appropriate or not.

Minute 10

That's the difficult bit.

Um, even, uh, so yeah.

And then also the thing is when people are in the office, if they're not in very often, um, the temptation is that you then try to get all that chatting and, and like face-to-face conversations in, in the few hours that you're there.

And so mm-hmm.

You then get this impression that, oh, when you're in the office, there's not all this talking, but it's kind of in a way a function of, well, because people aren't in the office that much now, they wanna have all this conversation face-to-face conversation while they're there.

Mm-Hmm.

Uh, and it does then make the office more of a kind of distracted environment, I suppose.

Um, but you know, time is one thing that that was, they helped with all this sort of stuff.

You, we just get better at over time, but yeah,

Minute 11

Sure.

But I mean, is there, I guess, uh, for both of you, um, if you're working at home and you're, you know, on Slack and you're sending emails, is there a sort of danger that you start sending emails seven, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night, just 'cause you're not having that work time focus? And so sort of you're, as you suggested, Adam, perhaps your, your home life and work life sort of melts into each other.

Um, not so much at eight o'clock.

Uh, I mean, maybe sort of, you know, between 5, 5, 5 and dinner, um, you know, there's that tendency to eat.

It's, it's that transition time that, that you don't get.

So it's not, once you've actually stopped work, it's generally not a problem.

It's just, it's just a, there's no natural transition, so you have to force Forcer.

Um, you know, you have to either, either quit your,

Minute 12

your work apps or, you know, just, just be a bit more disciplined about it, I suppose.

Um, I would say, you know, I'm not sitting up at night, you know, worrying about, about whether I've responded to someone, um, whether they're sitting up at night worrying about whether I'm going to respond to them, I don't know.

But, um, no, I, I wouldn't say that's an issue.

Good.

So you seem to got the balance right.

And you're telling me earlier that you guys work on, uh, summer hours.

What's, can you explain that a little bit as well? Uh, Robin, you wanna Yeah.

Okay.

Um, so something, uh, sort of copied from the 37 Signals guys, um, uh, is essentially the three months of the year we work, uh, four days a week, uh, in five, uh, especially actually, especially

Minute 13

'cause everyone is kind of generally based in Scotland where the, the nights are longer and you don't get, you know, the weather is much pushed during the winter.

It is very nice to be able to take advantage of the summer a bit more, um, you know, take advantage of the good weather.

Uh, and so therefore, uh, it, it's something that we, we offer basically ability, well basically that our entire team works four days a week, uh, June, July, August.

So yeah, we've been doing that for quite a long time.

Maybe it's seven or eight years now.

Um, and yeah, it generally works.

I, I don't think we have much of a drop in productivity.

People like it, it's also, you know, if we're hiring new people is something that is, uh, attractive, uh, to you hires as well.

So yeah, it seems to work.

Um, So just to clarify then, you, do you, uh,

Minute 14

overlap these four days? You don't just, I mean, do you just close on a Friday or does, do someone do Monday to Thursday and someone does Tuesday to Saturday? Or how does it work? Yeah, we, we sort of break it up if people have different days that they take off Mondays or Fridays or Wednesday, right.

Thursdays.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's always somebody there Monday to Friday, so Yes.

Yeah, we've always got covered through the week, uh, for answering support questions and things, but yes.

Very good.

Um, so that's something that sounds like Yeah, if you can't pay them, give them four days a week.

Brilliant.

Um, a nice incentive To, to be clear, the the pay is the same, so it's, it's not um, not a reduction in pay.

Yeah.

We don't reduce the pay, but, uh, but you're right that, you know, we can't necessarily afford, um, which is like banks or something like that.

So it is a, it is a way, another way of differentiating your self.

Minute 15

Mm-Hmm.

Um, yeah.

So there is that, no, That sense You, you mentioned productivity, not, not going down.

If anything I would say productivity actually goes up, um, because you are sort of conscious that you're, you're week is shorter, you are actually more productive and use the time more wisely.

Um, not to say that I'm wasting time robbing on when I'm on five days a week, but, uh, it's, you definitely, you know, you, you do tend to, to cram more in and actually get more done, if anything.

So I'd say the, the productivity if anything is affected in a positive way.

Right.

And have you had any feedback from, uh, I mean I'm just intrigued 'cause I come from, uh, you know, an environment where it's, it's seven days a week almost that we're open, uh, in tourist industry.

So how does, do you have any feedback from a client?

Minute 16

I mean, if they can't get hold of you Adam, 'cause you're only working four days a week, does that impact them at all? I mean, gen generally, um, I encourage clients to not email me directly anyway and that's nothing to do with summer hours.

It's, it's more to do with, you know, if if they're emailing me directly, it's not going into our support queue and our support queue isn't just, you know, looked at by me, it's looked at by the whole team.

So in general, if they're emailing to the support queue, someone will get it because 'cause of the overlap, um, if they are emailing me directly, I should probably be a bit more disciplined about having my out of office reply on.

Um, but I should probably do that anyway, The, um, right.

But so, but the overlap obviously picks up any, uh, In theory emails could potentially fall through the crack.

We've not had, um, any, any negative feedback from clients that I, I recall anyway.

Minute 17

Good.

No, it obviously works for you guys.

We've been doing it for seven years.

Yeah, I think it generally works.

Um, clients don't really, I don't think they've really particularly noticed, to be honest.

I think also the time, the time of year, Robin has probably, you know, they're busier running their businesses rather than, than like support generally isn't massively busy compared to other times of the year.

Like there's not a huge increase in summer is actually, if anything, I'd say slightly less support, um, you know, from, from our point of view for, you know, supporting clients.

It's, it's not, I've not had any, any feedback besides, oh that's, that's really lucky.

I wish I had that, uh, you know, I've not had any negative feedback from clients then.

And I mean just is there a reason it's only summer hours if the model works? Is there an argument to just do four

Minute 18

days a week all year long? Yeah, I mean that there is an argument.

I think, um, uh, the motivation to do it was to, as Adam says it, you know, our support burden does go down a little bit over the summer, but also it was to take advantage of the summer.

So, um, yeah, I don't know, we haven't thought about making it all year round.

Um, it might be slightly more difficult to cover the peak sort of supporty stuff if we went down four days a week.

But yeah, I just haven't thought about it really like that.

But yeah, maybe you're right.

Uh, uh yeah, go.

I mean the other, sorry on No, no on you go.

I was just gonna say, going back to, uh, remote working, uh, I think the, the biggest, uh,

Minute 19

difficulty, uh, I find in is it's more around creative stuff.

So when you're trying to, you know, whether this is, um, creating interfaces or trying to, um, come up with ideas of how to improve things.

So if you're trying to improve support staff say so, um, information flows or user journey flows or how your people are interacting with us, doing the creative stuff is more difficult remotely, um, then in person.

So when you need to, when you're trying to bounce ideas off quickly, uh, it's actually quite difficult to do that.

And sitting down in a, um, video call is not as easy.

It's, for some reason it's ta more tiring than doing it face-to-face.

Um, and obviously there's a more formality to it.

You have to and you have to say, oh,

Minute 20

let's just quickly do this one's, do this on a whiteboard.

Um, so I think I, I would say of all the things of being more remote, uh, I would say our, probably our creativity is the thing that is the most difficult thing to replace and suffers the most from being more remote.

It's kind of once your job is defined, uh, and you just want to get your head down and do something, so you're just coding something or you're responding to support tickets, uh, or you know, you're running through, you know, phoning people up or trying to go check to clients or something when you've got quite a defined job, being remote is really helpful, but when it's like, oh, let's think about how we improve this process or improve the software or just more ethereal creative tasks, that's where it actually is really difficult.

I think it has.

Minute 21

Yeah, I, I agree with that.

I mean, you and I, uh, meet for coffee sometimes and um, often that's what we use that time for is using it for those creative conversations.

And, and I think there is definitely something to be said for, for meeting in person.

I don't think it should be, you know, ever, ever fully remote.

Um, I mean the idea of of meeting every six weeks for, for the epic planning, I think can mitigate that somewhat, but to have those spontaneous conversations that just you wouldn't have otherwise.

I do think working remotely does affect that in, in a, in a negative way.

I still think overall though, it's nice to have the flexibility, um, you know, to the, to have those opportunities as long as you create, um, space to have those opportunities still, I think it's, it's

Minute 22

doable and I think we do strike that balance.

All right.

Um, does it negatively affect, uh, those spontaneous conversations? Yeah.

As a whole, I suppose? Yeah, I think that's just what you said there about creating the space to have them is the tricky, is actually the most difficult thing.

Um, because you, uh, it's kind of easy to some extent having like the six weekly planning or we're all there, that's fine.

But, uh, um, it is trying to create the space on maybe a regular basis where, uh, you know, you can sort of just have a bit of that time where it's, you know, there's no pressure to have a conversation, but if it happens, it happens, something might come out of it.

That's the thing.

So yeah.

No, I, I completely agree.

I don't think I was, you know, never, uh,

Minute 23

I don't think we were gonna ever go back to being oh yeah.

Five days in the office or four, four days or three days or whatever.

Like, that's not going to happen.

I would say if we were going to change anything, I, I was gonna say yeah, if you, if you force it the other way around, it's just as bad like a Yeah, Yeah, definitely.

I think what we might do is say, right, well actually you have to be in like a certain amount of time and I dunno what I would be, you know, one day a week or one day every two weeks or something, I don't know.

But it might be that that is, and, and I know other companies do that and they say, you know, I can understand why they're doing that, even though a lot of the time it's like, oh, it's pointless.

Why are we going in stupid? But it's like, well, it's actually, it's not that.

It's because you're going in for no reason.

That's the reason.

Mm-hmm.

Anyway,

Minute 24

Yeah, I mean, I guess the, the question that comes from all this remote working is, and you probably have answered it to be fair, but it's why continue with the expense of an office, I guess, you know, and why not just hire a meeting room every Wednesday morning and all get together for a couple of hours in the meeting room somewhere? What, what is the thinking behind keeping an office going when you know you are all remote and, and don't often come into work? Adam, do you wanna answer that or you, I'm, I'm not the one paying for the office, Robin, that's, yeah, I don't pay for it either.

The, 48300:24:09.905 --> 00:24:11.245Um, just don't tell anyone.

Um, but yeah, no, it's just a, I mean, an observation, I guess that's all.

Yeah.

So, um, uh, for some, uh, people, um, it's, well, for me, for example, I don't have an office at home and uh, there's actually nowhere really I could put an office at

Minute 25

home, so therefore I end up, I would end up sitting at the kitchen table.

Uh, so for me personally, I actually need somewhere to work.

You're right, I could potentially hire a meeting or something and it'd be more like, like, um, what's the name of that company? Like we, is it WeWork? Yeah, yeah.

You could do something like that where you've got, uh, desk space and you just kind of do it on, on that sort of basis.

It's more ad hoc.

Um, but it does, one thing it does is it, uh, well maybe two things.

Um, it's, if you, if somebody is looking, they're in my situation and they're looking for a job that they don't want to be in their house because there may be got flatmates or don't have enough space and they want to go somewhere by having an office, you're making your more appealing to those people.

Minute 26

So for hiring, it's uh, um, good for that.

And then the second thing is that when, if you are hiring someone, especially maybe if they're more junior, um, it is really difficult to establish any sort of culture remotely.

Uh mm-Hmm.

It just is like it.

And I think if you, if you start working for a company and it's totally remote, uh, it's very difficult to communicate that culture to someone remotely.

It's a lot easier if they at least start in an office with a couple of people that are in the company already.

First of all, they can help 'em out a lot with what they're doing, but you can also communicate what's expected of them, how, how you communicate with each other, how you know, how you behave, how you behave with clients, et cetera.

What all the sort of cu little cultural things are.

Minute 27

Now, it's easy once you've been at the company for a long time, it's kind of easy to be remote and just take it, take all that stuff for granted.

Um, but establishing that with new junior hired, I think it's be much better if you've got somewhere that you can sort of get them in, get a few people in for a few months and, and do that.

So It's easier, I guess it's easier for them to get you all coffee as well if you're in the same building rather than grow the houses.

Um, but also an office like your, I mean, I'm looking at your screen there, Robin.

You've got the, you know, the castle in the background.

So I guess that, uh, is not a bad view for an office either.

Right.

Uh, look, I think looking at time, uh, we've sort of run over the 25 minutes, so I think at that point we'll wrap it up.

That's all, unless have anything else you want to say, we've got another shower to have.

Exactly.

Uh, um, look, thank you both for your time.

Uh, another interesting conversation there.

Um, thank you for, uh, listening as well.

Minute 28

Uh, quick reminder that we have our, um, sister podcast, which is smashing your holiday rental goals, um, that is out there in the world as well.

So you can have a look for that and re review it.

It's, it's an interesting listen as well.

So please do take the time to find that one.

Um, if you have any questions for us or them, uh, you can email to podcast@BooksterHQ.com and we'll answer any questions that we get through the emails on another program.

Um, but again, look, thank you both for your time, Adam, uh, thank you very much for your time this morning.

Thank you.

Nice to speak to you again, uh, Robin, uh, let you get back to your, your view and your your office work.

So thank you again, and, uh, we'll do this all again very soon.

Until then, uh, goodbye and thank you for listening.

Bye-Bye.