Decoding the Source Code of an Organization: Models of Work at Ciklopea

In March 2020, many things were put to test and the companies struggled to keep their operations running under the dramatically changed circumstances. We still had the internet and all the required technology to decentralize our daily operations with people working from their homes in accordance with the pandemic prevention guidelines, but that fact alone could not guarantee that the required level of cohesion would be maintained in the “new normality” settings.

In other words, it was the time to check the value of the intangible assets of every organization such as its identity and its culture. In cases when the corporate culture is developed continuously, when the identity is clearly cut and when the company values are understood and shared by all the employees, the actual work can be executed in any environment and the record shows that we at Ciklopea have been doing fine in this regard, since we have actually observed productivity boosts during the lockdowns.

Work from home/remote work

This concept is nothing new for us. Since the very beginning, our employees have had the option to work from home, and some of our employees have worked almost exclusively remotely due to their locations being in different countries for years without any issues.

Of course, it was somewhat awkward to have the entire team on Zoom, the connectivity issues would come up occasionally, but generally this model worked and continues to work for us.

Hybrid model

One of the novelties introduced during the pandemic was the hybrid model. All our employees were given a choice to work either from home indefinitely or to work at the offices partially or fully.

This model is useful when:

• the employees want to work from home, but need to have the access to the office resources and supplies occasionally;
• the employees are unable to work from home for any reason.

This model, however, required some physical modification of our offices as we had to create smaller and safer workspaces in accordance with the pandemic prevention guidelines.

As it used to be: the good old office work

While work from home or hybrid model may sound like a good idea and not really an issue to many people, there is a largely overlooked group of  employees who, for various reasons, may find it more challenging (or even impossible) to work from outside the traditional office settings.

It is true that the line between the working hours and the spare time can easily get blurred when people work from their homes, so some of us were eager to come back to the old ways.

In addition to redesigning the office layout, we also hired a graffiti artist to decorate the walls with CATs (capitalization is not accidental) to refresh the workspace and make it funkier for our employees and you can see some of this cool artwork below:

I can proudly say that we have passed the resilience test with flying colours.

The reason for this is not a secret – we have simply been developing our culture since day one, focusing on the aspects that last, such as investment in people and communication. When clear and honest communication is a norm among the employees and when the quality standards and objectives are clearly defined, you simply don‘t need a brick and mortar office – the source code of your organization can be compiled and run in any environment.