Finding ourselves for the first time with a fully remote collaboration for an extended period of time, the whole team demonstrated high resilience & adaptability. We've all learned a lot since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including that we can make remote collaboration work. Answers to the remote surveys showed that remote work could have a positive impact on general well-being, individual productivity, ability to focus and life balance. It also showed a great desire for flexibility. On the other hand, many of you expressed a desire to come back to office for social interactions with your colleagues.
Going forward, Monito will be keeping the digital-first communication we successfully adopted during the pandemic to be able to offer you the same experience whether you work from the office every day, a couple of days a week, or fully remotely. This will give existing employees in Switzerland the flexibility expectations shared via the employee survey, and open up the potential to hire more talents fully remotely. Reaping the benefits of remote work in terms of flexibility, convenience, and access to great new colleagues, while ensuring optimal communication, high engagement, and intense collaboration will require some effort, investments, and structure. Here's the framework we're confident will help us make it work:
Work from (almost) anywhere
Employees can choose between three options:
đĸ Office
You work at our Lausanne office most of the time (3+ days per week) with your own dedicated desk and everything to make your workspace truly yours (incl. family and pet pictures).
đ˛ Flex
You regularly come to the office up to 2 days per week, and work from home the rest of the time. At the office, you'll work from one of our "hot desks".
đ Remote
You work fully remotely from Switzerland or abroad in one of the approved time zones.
Remote Policy
đ Time zone proximity over physical proximity
To ensure good synchronous communication, Monito employees need to be located in time zones between UTC-4 (US East Coast & South America) and UTC+3 (from Eastern Europe to Middle East and East Africa). Team-wide meetings & synchronous communication happen between 2pm and 5pm Swiss Time.
đ Team Building and Offsites
To get to know your colleagues & participate in condensed creative and brainstorming sessions, we aim to meet in person twice a year in February and September for company-wide off sites in Switzerland. Travel & accommodation are paid by Monito for the duration of the offsite.
đ Working abroad
Our digital-first set-up means that you can of course work abroad within the selected time zones, limited by administrative constraints (in particular insurance and tax). If you plan to work abroad more than 8 weeks per year (or more than 4 consecutive weeks) or if you're not based in Switzerland, talk to the admin team first.
đĻ Home office set-up and monthly allowance
Remote & Flex employees get a home office set-up budget and a monthly allowance. More details will be shared soon.
đĨ High-quality video calls
To make the sentence "Can you hear me now?" a relic of the past, we expect Flex and Remote employees to have access to a high-speed internet connection (e.g. fiber at 100 Mbps) covered by the home office allowance and to follow these best practices for better call quality:
- Must:
- Audio đ: high-end audio headset (e.g. Bose QC35, Airpods Pro)
- Video đĨ: external webcam if you use a 2nd monitor.
- Encouraged: a USB microphone (e.g. Razer Mini) and webcam (e.g. Logitech C920) which are now part of the list of hardware available upon request for Monito employees.
We'll continue to equip the office with the latest video conference tech.
Digital-first communication
In order to make our work from (almost) anywhere policy work, we need to follow a digital-first communication policy company-wide. Here's what it means:
- Digital communication is the common denominator: nothing prevents you from discussing work at the office of course, but we switch to digital channels as soon as a Flex or Remote colleague is involved.
- Company-wide meetings like Weekly Meetings will always have a digital feed.
One person=One tileon video conferences to offer the same experience to everyone (with the exception of meeting rooms equipped with a special set-up).- Decisions and learnings made during meetings are documented and made available in writing to all the relevant team members.
- Remote communication stack:
- Sync: Tandem, Google Meet, Miro, etc.
- Async: Loom, Slack, ClickUp, Notion, etc.
Hiring Remotely
This new policy will enable us to hire more employees remotely. From now on, most (if not all) new positions will be open to Remote candidates within the approved time zones.
Salaries will be adapted to the local market with an adjustment of a third of the relative difference in the cost of living index with Switzerland (according to Numbeo, including rent). If this adjustment doesn't compensate for the cost of hiring you abroad, we'll also deduct half of the excess EOR cost.
âšī¸ We plan to continue hiring employees in Lausanne as well and our Relocation Policy remains in effect.
Moving abroad
If you have plans to move abroad (whether you're already a Remote employee or not), discuss them with the head of your department first to understand the administrative implications (e.g. contract adaptation, salary adjustments, etc.).
Our remote work culture
Here's a glimpse at our remote work culture for candidates:
Remote work culture