Tech firm goes `digital first', funky office second
Firm allowing employees to work from home despite expensive reno
After the lockdown, the shrinkdown.
A Montreal tech company is considering vacating up to half its office space as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — and ditching a popular skateboard ramp — after polling employees and finding out most of them would rather continue to work remotely.
Gsoft, a 14-year-old software maker with headquarters at the landmark Nordelec building in Pointe- St-charles, has gone “digital first” after consulting with staffers, said founder and chief executive Simon De Baene. Assigned desks are now a thing of the past, and Gsoft's 275 employees can decide if — and when — they want to work from the office.
“Going digital first means we're allowing our employees to choose what's best for them,” the 35-yearold CEO said. “We're keeping the office, but it will be rethought and reduced. The company will work using digital technologies as the primary way of working. For us the change is permanent. There's no going back.”
Months after completing a multi-million dollar renovation that boosted the size of the groundfloor space to 100,000 square feet, Gsoft now plans to cut its real-estate footprint by up to 50 per cent despite the investment already made, De Baene said.
While key features — many of which were custom-designed — such as a café and a newly built auditorium will remain, Gsoft plans to remove the skateboard ramp that had become an employee favourite, a spokesperson said. Other changes are still being discussed, she said.
“We have a funky office,” De Baene said. “We're very proud of what we built. It's just that now the world has changed. For us it didn't make any sense to keep doing what we used to do just because we invested so much in it.”
Founded in 2006, Gsoft makes software for the workplace.
It counts more than 17,000 clients in more than 100 countries ranging from U.s.-based electric carmaker Tesla to Quebec financial co-operative Mouvement Desjardins.
Gsoft's decision is indicative of a wider trend that will see many companies rethink how they view office space, said Jean-nicolas Reyt, an assistant professor at Mcgill University's Desautels faculty of management who has spent time analyzing the impact of teleworking.
Though only about 13 per cent of Canadian employees worked from home two days a week or more as recently as February, it's already clear individuals will come out of the health crisis with more flexibility and more input into where they work, said Reyt.
U.S. insurer Nationwide said in May it would permanently adopt a hybrid model that would see more employees working from home.
A few weeks later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said up to half of company employees could be working remotely over the next decade.
In Canada, e-commerce software maker Shopify said last month it would move to a smaller Ottawa space after announcing a shift to “digital by default” work.
“Teleworking is here to stay,” Reyt said. “Many employees aren't looking to work remotely all the time. What they want is to stay home a few days a week, especially if they have children. The last few months have shown companies that this kind of arrangement doesn't hurt productivity — quite the contrary.”
As a CEO, De Baene says he has no concern about remote employees being less productive because they're away from the office.
Though he enjoyed being around colleagues “with multiple things happening at once,” De Baene says his own productivity has improved thanks to teleworking, especially now that he has moved to the Eastern Townships.
“It's so quiet,” he said. “It's a different day-to-day experience. I've managed to focus more than ever before in my life. I'm less distracted. There is some good stuff out of that.”
Teleworking does pose some threats, such as possibly endangering a company's culture. De Baene says he and his management team are aware of the difficulty and have already started to think about ways to preserve engagement and team spirit.
“It's a good challenge,” he said. “This is where we need to be creative. Some day, the pandemic will be over, and we already know that we will do a massive get-together. That will be part of the employee experience. This will be the right time to talk strategy, to talk about deeper subjects that are more difficult to discuss remotely.”