Workplace solutions between office and remote

A few weeks ago, Tradedoubler CEO Matthias Stadelmeyer was a guest at #Piktochat, a series of chats with leaders and entrepreneurs organized by Piktochart, to discuss workplace solutions in the pandemic context.

The other guest in the talk was David Abrams, Co-founder and CEO of Demio, a young and remote native company from the US, with a different and equally interesting story to share.

Being a fully digital company helped us quickly adapt to lockdown

As a company founded over 21 years ago we now have employees working together in 15 offices around Europe. Since Matthias took on Tradedoubler’s CEO’s role in 2014, the set up of the company became even more international. He is based in Munich, the company’s CFO is based in Stockholm, and the CTO is in the South of France, all this requiring more flexibility in the working environment.

In the past years, Tradedoubler has actively worked on becoming a fully digital company with cloud-based information sharing.  However, no one could fully anticipate or prepare for a lockdown situation, as it happened in March 2020.

“We basically packed our stuff and went home” – Matthias Stadelmeyer

With the start of the pandemic, all our Tradedoubler employees were allowed to work from home to ensure complete safety. The fact that Tradedoubler already was a fully digital company helped us to adapt to changes quickly.

We made sure to keep our employees updated on the current situation and also ran a survey to check how their work preferences may have shifted during this time.

Surprisingly, the changes in the work environment had no impact on the business and everything kept going as usual: 48% of our employees answered that their level of productivity and effectiveness during work from home is as normal, while 47% declared that their level is even higher than normal. Overall, the Tradedoubler employees perceived working from home as a good experience and they felt well supported during this time.

With location becoming irrelevant, we gained better cross-team collaboration

There is no doubt that conversations change when you are only working from home and there is nothing that replaces the direct personal connection.

At Tradedoubler, we did our best to keep the conversations and the fun going. Some markets had socially distanced “get-togethers” in the park, whilst others implemented daily group calls to keep in touch.

Moreover, it seems that the distance that was previously separating our teams from different countries became irrelevant. Everyone was equally reachable at the other end of a video call, no matter their location.

“It became natural to jump on a video call and have a personal conversation with our cameras on, instead of writing an email.” – Matthias Stadelmeyer.

Our outlook into the future

The basis of Tradedoubler is its entrepreneurial culture: we are always looking for people with the right mindset to achieve big things. This common mindset allows an efficient and trust-based working scheme with no need for control.

Our focus is on maintaining a strong communication and ensuring that our employees feel empowered and safe during these unpredictable times.

Since June, we implemented a smart working policy, taking into consideration everyone’s schedule and allowing for enhanced flexibility and work-life balance. This is already the new normal at Tradedoubler.

Interested in finding out more?
Watch on Youtube the Piktochat with Tradedoubler and Demio, where we share our experience in adapting work to the pandemic situation, managing employee engagement, and operating our business in the current landscape.