Our Hybrid Approach to Work

When the COVID crisis hit in late February last year, GetYourGuide underwent the most significant transformation in the history of our existence. As a travel business, we were naturally in the center of the storm of this biggest crisis in modern tourism. In a matter of days, we needed to take care of thousands of affected customers, enable mass cancellations for future bookings, build a plan to reduce our cost base, and last but not least ensure that our team was safe in what was a very turbulent and dynamic situation.

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A period of turbulence and change

I am incredibly proud of how well we have managed to deal with this unprecedented crisis. Not only did we manage to keep the vast majority of our team, we actually improved almost all parts of our business and are now a much better company coming out of the crisis than going in. One of the biggest drivers of these improvements has been the incredible productivity that resulted from our remote work setup. Since we migrated to working remotely in March 2020, this new way of working has delivered far beyond my expectations.

The success of the Future of Work is ultimately not in the hands of the CEO, the management team or the Employee Representation Group, but in the hands of our highly talented and capable team.

As the vaccination programs progressed throughout the first half of this year, we naturally needed to confront what the future of work for our company would look like given these learnings. We started by assembling a focus group led by our Chief People Officer Tanja Reusch and our Head of Workplace Stephanie Brisson. They were tasked with building the best solution based on employee and company requirements. I was part of the group and personally started to spend a considerable amount of time on the topic by talking to many of our people, thought leaders on the topic, and peers in the European tech ecosystem.

Finding the right solution

It quickly became clear that the future of work is a very complex challenge to solve. The needs vary across different roles, levels, and individuals. While some teams need disproportionate amounts of focus time and greatly benefit from being remote, others require a lot of collaboration and personal interaction. To add to the complexity, we each have personal situations and differences that make us more productive in different setups.

We believe that frequent, in-person interactions are an important part of our culture. They are an essential part of building strong connections and trusted relationships.

After evaluating several options, surveying the entire employee base, and hosting sessions with our Employee Representation Group, a solution slowly started to become more tangible. We found that 80% of people wanted to have access to an office to have more of an atmosphere of community. We also learned that while there were benefits to remote work, there were some challenges to mental wellness — such as not having a separation between work and home. I was reminded that a commute between work and home enables some people to disconnect and switch gears, particularly for parents or people sharing an apartment with others.

In a nutshell, it became increasingly clear that a standardized “9-5, Monday to Friday” in-office setup will not work. At the same time, the GetYourGuide culture is built around cross-functional collaboration. Moving to a purely remote setup would be an irreversible change to how we have successfully built the level of trust and collaboration among our employees that allowed us to thrive in a mega crisis.

The Future of Work at GetYourGuide

Today, we are sharing our new hybrid working model with the world, which is purely based on principles, instead of rules and guidelines.

‍GetYourGuide’s approach to the Future of Work is centred around trust, flexibility, and an understanding that in-person interactions are an integral part of our culture.

Our beliefs are:

• We believe that frequent, in-person interactions are an important part of our culture. They are an essential part of building strong connections and trusted relationships.
• We believe that people collaborate best in person, while individual focus work can happen remotely in a variety of settings.
• We believe that different teams have different needs that might evolve over time.

The principles that we derive from these beliefs are very simple and straightforward:

• We trust people to use their flexibility in the best interest of GetYourGuide and their team.
• We set up our offices so they can be used by everyone, every day. They foster productivity in a fun, open, and vibrant way.
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We chose principles instead of rules in order to empower our team members to make sound choices for themselves and the company. We fundamentally trust in the judgment of our people. The success of the Future of Work is ultimately not in the hands of the CEO, the management team or the Employee Representation Group, but in the hands of our highly talented and capable team. I am looking forward to going on a learning journey with all of you over the years to come.

- Johannes Reck, CEO and Co-Founder of GetYourGuide