It's so important to give everyone the option to do whatever they need to do for themselves. We've been encouraging people to step back from their laptop and have work-life balance.

Tell us about your role and your company.

I'm the Office Manager at Wattpad, a global entertainment company and leading social storytelling platform. I've been at Wattpad for seven years now. I like to consider myself the Office Mother–the go-to for absolutely anything from facilities to IT. When the pandemic hit and we transitioned to remote work, I continued to facilitate onboarding and helped people set up home-offices while also keeping our offices running. 

Where is your team located?

Before Covid, we had about 150 people in-office in the Toronto area and had just opened a Halifax office as well. With so many people at home consuming and creating content during the pandemic, our company took off and we grew a lot. We now have employees globally. 

What's your hybrid schedule?

From the very start of Covid, Wattpad has been very supportive of employees doing whatever is best for them–if they want to stay at home or go in, we support them. We have adapted the hybrid model where we say to employees that we have an office that's open or if you want to stay at home that works for us, too. It was a change for us because pre-pandemic we were very much in-office. 

How easy are you finding it to encourage your team back to the office? What strategies are you using to encourage your team back?

It's been very organic so far. We're making sure employees feel safe and supported in-office so we're maintaining distance and also providing the proper PPE. We also use Officely so employees can book into a desk or space and we provide snacks.

We did try to encourage our employee clubs to come meet up in-office but we found that people want to come in when they feel it's right. We also have a group of employees that were hired during the pandemic that are encouraged to come in with their teams and meet some of their coworkers in-person but we don't require or push folks to come in. 

Officely boosts office attendance by showing who’s going in and what’s happening in the office, right in Slack.

What’s the most important element of your hybrid team culture?

Flexibility. It's so important to give everyone the option to do whatever they need to do for themselves. We've been encouraging people to step back from their laptop and have work-life balance.

How do you make sure your hybrid team feels supported?

We focus on flexibility to help our employees feel supported. To go along with supporting hybrid work, we offer well-being programs like Thursday yoga and Friday Summer hours to help employees achieve work-life balance. 

What’s been the hardest part of leading a hybrid team?

We have physical office needs that have become tricky during hybrid work. An example of this is making sure new hires get a fob key before they go in or making sure someone is there to show them around for the first time. When we all went into the office every day, it was easier to coordinate those routines. Our work around for this is using Officely and Office Chat to be able to communicate with the folks on-site. 

Kristina's Hybrid Heroes:

Officely is the easiest way to transform your hybrid office.

"Not once have we had to explain how it works to the new starters! 

It's super intuitive and everyone loves it.” - Smitha, Thirva Health