The current global pandemic has forced all of us to adapt and change the way we work. For Wordbee, this means that our team has been working from home since March 15 and we have now decided to continue this remote work model indefinitely, even after the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. 

A message from Wordbee CEO, José Vega

Over the last few months, we have seen the team get closer and grow stronger virtually, we exchange more ideas and we listen to each other in a different way. We had to learn how to organize ourselves better, but, in the end, it made us more efficient. The Wordbee software is all about being collaborative and now we are experiencing what it means for our team to be fully collaborative as well. 

Ever since the company was founded in 2008, we have been used to working with colleagues remotely from places like Bali, Nepal, Egypt, Vietnam, China, Spain, Greece … the list goes on. Additionally, Wordbee users are spread across more than 180 countries. With colleagues and customers all around the globe, it is only natural for Wordbee to take this remote approach even further and open up the WFH (Work From Home) model for our in-house employees, even more than before the pandemic. 

This will especially benefit our team members in the Luxembourg headquarters who often get stuck in traffic jams at rush hour when commuting from both within Luxembourg as well as from its neighboring countries Germany, Belgium and France. Being able to work from home will reduce stress, lead to significant commute time savings of up to 4 hours per day, and hence improve overall performance and motivation – which we have already witnessed. 

Besides being able to better support our team and protect their health, the ecological benefits are of major importance to Wordbee as well. Reducing fuel usage and greenhouse gas emission leads to an overall smaller carbon footprint. We see working from home as a great contribution to protecting Mother Earth. 

While we are excited to see the long-term impact this new way of working has on the company, we also enjoy the physical proximity with our colleagues. For meetings, coffee chats, or simply for a change of scenery, our team will always have the freedom to come to the offices whenever they like. 

As mentioned at the beginning, this pandemic has forced us to change but even more so it has provided us with an opportunity for change. Going forward, we believe humans and nature have to be made the center of attention again. Our planet cannot be an afterthought, and humans are not just “resources” and we must not treat them as such, like Ferraras, Battilana, Méda et al state in this article: “To those who believe that employees cannot be trusted to do their jobs without supervision, that workers require surveillance and external discipline, these men and women are proving the contrary. They are demonstrating, day and night, that workers are not one type of stakeholder among many: they hold the keys to their employers’ success.” 

As companies learn to appropriately value and trust their employees, we will see a shift towards more and more businesses with a remote work model, just like Twitter announced a few weeks ago. From a technology perspective, this means cloud applications like Wordbee are inevitable for more freedom, flexibility and scalability. We truly believe that the challenges we have all been facing the last few months will set us up for success in the future. 

Like my friend Hector Milla put it: “We are in the year 0 AC (After COVID-19) which initiates vast projects to find methods that will lastingly transform the way we work and the economy in general.”

José Vega, CEO