Freedom as a perk is perhaps the one which we are most proud of. We do not use a lot of time keeping tabs on one another. Freedom, with responsibility, is the Skalar way.
If there is one thing that the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us, it is that the upkeep of a good working culture is constant work, and that it changes fast. We are lucky to live in a country where there is general consensus in the private sectors that culture is a key aspect to success. The big companies in Norway spend millions of kroner on “Kulturbyggende tiltak” that could be translated to “togetherness”. They hire big artists to sing at kickoffs and send their employees to Spain for a weekend of drinking and sunburns. We are a small company, we do things a little differently. In Skalar, we do not believe that sitting through a concert with a vaguely known artist which your niece likes is the way to make you feel like going to work every day. Culture is not supposed to be a distraction from work, it is the reason you go to work.
What gets people up in the morning? That is a question with as many answers as there are people. Some just don’t like to get up, and would prefer to begin at twelve and work into the night. That’s why the working gods created flexi-time. We have to assume that people are different, and with different people comes different needs. Someone is at work seven, others ten. We have a core time when we work together, talk and keep each other up to date on projects, life and everything. Being a quick and agile company makes us able to adapt to personal needs and ideas; we all affect how we work and play.We use this way of working with our co-creators to also help ourselves build an inclusive and worthwhile working culture.
We are all wired a bit differently and that also means that we prefer to work in different ways. Let your freak flag fly — the freedom to be yourself at work is underestimated, perhaps something we do not speak that much about. But we can see that it is beginning to be more common, with flat structures, even democratically structured companies. To sum it up, if you want a flower to grow — give it what it needs and it will bloom through the roof. A thought which we bring to every project and long term strategic partnership at Skalar. If we can’t let something grow properly it is cruel to try.
By making the space in which we work suitable for creative and critical thinking we always assure that our employees are happy and motivated. Therefore we believe that having a nice office and place to work is important. Time has shown that working from home has some short-term perks, but one year into the pandemic, we can say that the value of having colleagues around to talk to and to create with has been missed. The energy of the office is missing. When we create startups and long term strategic partnerships, we thrive on that energy in the office. The ability to ask people working on other projects for help in the hallway is something that we really miss.
All work and no play makes for a less valuable milieu — so we work together to create interesting work related challenges and fun things for us to do together. This has been a challenge during the pandemic, but we have managed to have game nights, social events and such online, and we look forward to the day where we can again spend time together for real.
Originally published at https://www.skalar.no on July 14, 2021.
