This company establishes a «free choice» teleworking policy

Seeing the new sanitary rules inflow, Libeo, a software company, chose flexibility and simplicity for its new post-pandemic teleworking policy.

At this time, the company, offering its services in Quebec City and in Montreal, operates on a 100% teleworking basis, and will continue to do so as long as the sanitary situation is worrying and as long as the government asks companies to limit onsite presence as much as possible.

Yet, the company already started thinking of its working organisation in a post-pandemic context.

In that spirit, it announced its new « free choice » teleworking policy, with which employees will chose, not only where they want to work, but also what time suit them best.

« With the upheaval of the company’s daily life, implementing new rules would have been inadequate, Joé Bussière, Libeo President, explains in a Linkedin post following the announcement. We saw an opportunity to improve and strengthen our corporate culture, guided by Libeo values and mainspring : innovate to simplify. »

As a result, Libeo’s management team decided that their employees would continue teleworking until a return to the office would be feasible – will assuring that their environment remains « proficient, comfortable and secure. »

Employees will also profit from a flexible schedule, allowing them to work the hours that suit them.

A « hybrid » culture, delineated by managers’s « expectations »

Yet, this new policy doesn’t give employees carte blanche, they will still need to go to the office.

Libeo relies on employees’ responsibilisation and on the fact that they will remain responsive to their colleagues’ and managers’ « expectations »

In a post-pandemic world, Libeo’s President envisages a number of situations where in-person meetings would be preferable to virtual ones, whether to meet a client, to attend a team meeting or a social activity.

« We want to create a hybrid culture, not a 100% virtual one, Joé Bussière, contacted by telephone, explains. Of course, we will be expecting employees to attend certain meetings and activities. I trust them to discern when it will be appropriate for them to be there in person. »

Joé Bussière highlights that the intended hybrid model reflects what employees have expressed in a long internal poll conducted this summer.

A majority of employees had then manifested the will to keep coming to the office two to three days per week, when the pandemic would be over.

Toward work delocalisation

At this time, Libeo still prefers to recruit Montreal and Quebec talents. Yet, the firm already experiments a certain kind of work delocalisation when carrying out its mandates.

« When launching a project, we create teams according to expertise and resources available, independently from the Montreal or Quebec locations, Joé Bussière adds. We already functioned this way before the pandemic, and this approach is mushrooming now, more than ever. »

Here is a great hybrid culture example!