Brazil isn’t exactly the first place that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘lonely.’
And yet, when Roberto Azevedo instituted a new work-from-home policy for the employees at one of his company’s offices in Brazil, that’s exactly how they felt after the novelty had worn off: lonely and out of the loop.
Sure, they had regular online meetings and conference calls, but they missed that in-person interaction, that natural camaraderie that goes along with working in a physical office.
Or at least, they did – until they discovered Sococo.
We caught up with Roberto recently to ask him about the difference that he says Sococo’s virtual office has made in the work environment of his company, Prime Systems.
As the manager of a geographically distributed team, with around 80 employees spread out over three offices in Brazil – in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Porto Alegre – Roberto was accustomed to doing a lot of driving between offices. His goal was to facilitate a seamless inter-office work flow by being there in person.
Ultimately, he made a decision to close the Porto Alegre location and allow those employees to work from home as a way to eliminate that drain on resources. The hope was that those employees would still be able to communicate and collaborate effectively from home using various online tools, remaining just as productive as they had been in their physical office.
However, that ideal situation proved elusive. Using Google Hangouts for calls and meetings was simply not conducive to the kind of natural, spontaneous communication that was necessary to help these employees feel that they were still a part of the company community. Their lack of connectedness was snowballing into a very real morale problem – until one of those employees suggested that they try Sococo.
Instantly, Roberto said, morale was improved. “Our remote workers found Sococo very, very easy to use – it felt natural. They asked their colleagues to try it, so other departments started using it as well, and they all enjoyed it so much that they spontaneously began having all their meetings in Sococo.”
The main difference Roberto saw in Sococo? “Everyone could see where everyone was, and what they were doing. We work in different cities, on different teams, with different technology, and in different areas – but Sococo allows all of our employees to feel that they belong to one place. They could pop into each other’s offices to say hi to each other, just like in the physical office. It provides a more natural, spontaneous way to communicate. Sococo brought our teams together again.”
Now, Roberto said, he faced a new, and completely unexpected, problem – his remote workers were so happy with the new set-up that employees from his two physical offices started to voice that they wanted to be able to work from home, too! In response to this, Roberto implemented a policy allowing for more flexibility among those workers, as well – whereas his remote team members meet in person once a week, now his on-site team members are allowed to work from home once a week. This would not have been possible – or even desirable – before Sococo.
