Successful Remote Working

As the pandemic (in a temporal sense at least) fades into the background, there is a growing trend for retrenchment around ‘back to the office’. Aker continues to be firmly of the view that productivity is not a linear consequence of being in an office. And we remain committed to remote working.

We have teams on-site because of the classified nature of our work, but outside those constraints we intentionally foster remote working practices. There is no perfect model of course, but we strongly feel that trusting employees to work remotely, whilst providing a strong, collaborative, and supportive culture, has considerable benefits for both employer and employee. These include individual flexibility, a saving on commute time, a smaller carbon footprint, and reduced micromanagement.

We attempt to maintain and improve this balance between remote working and the demands of classified environments through thoughtful planning on how to make sure employees are engaged, noting not everything works for each individual. We utilise a range of monthly companywide video calls, virtual social events, and collaborative working practises. These latter include standard measures - using online collaboration tools and having regular team stand-ups and manager 1:1s - to more specific practices like asking people to stay connected by expecting videos to be on during meetings (and embracing people's lives - we love seeing family and pets in the background!).

We also have an open-door policy with leadership and have regular Ask Me Anything sessions for leaders with multiple opportunities for engagement throughout the company. And we invest in getting everyone together physically from time to time, to hear personally from both our leaders and our customers, and provide the opportunity for the whole team to get together face to face.

We don’t get everything right, but engagement scores, client deliveries, and company productivity in Aker remain extremely strong in a fully remote environment. We consider this due in large part to these efforts to be firmly intentional about creating a strong, collaborative and supportive culture, and enabling employees the flexibility to effectively integrate their work and life.

‍