Pooch & Mutt is now officially a Remote-First company… but what does that mean?

First of all, Remote-First is not the same as Working from Home. Working from Home was a government-enforced idea to get people to stay at home, working from a desk in their bedroom or kitchen and avoid going out and seeing other people. This was supposed to be a temporary measure. This is not what we mean by Remote-First, although it did show how Remote-First could be possible.

Yes, Remote-first will involve some working at a desk in your bedroom or your kitchen, but this is for the times when you want to get your head down, get on with your work, and not be disturbed. Equally, this is for when you need to do video calls, which are far better suited to a quiet private space than they are to an open plan office. 

However, Remote-First working should not feel like you are isolated and trapped at home, staring at a screen from 9 to 5 every weekday.. 

Remote-First working should be about freedom:

You should feel free to pick your own working hours and what you do with your day. 

At Pooch & Mutt we value output, not input. We value the work that you do, not your time sitting in front of a screen. We have very clear targets, which the management team reviews in great detail on a weekly basis. If we’re hitting or beating the targets we know we’re doing well. That is what we measure, not working hours. We do expect the team to be available during the day for planned meetings, but if you want to go on a 2hr hike, or go shopping, or meet up with a friend during daylight hours and get your work done at night, that’s good with us. And if you want to do more work during the day some days, more at night other days and more early in the morning on other days that’s fine too. Just as long as you communicate with your team. 

You should feel free to pick where you work.

Whether you like working at your own house, at a friend’s house, at a cafe, on a mountain, on a beach… or a combination of these or other places. That’s up to you, as long as you can get your work done. That’s good for us. Feel free to get creative with this. You could go to Thailand for 4 weeks, work Monday to Wednesday and take Thursday and Friday as holiday - You’d have 4 weeks away and just use 8 days holiday. On the days working, we’d expect you to turn up to any virtual meetings/ video calls in a professional way at the correct time and work as you would if you were in the UK, outside of that it’s about what you get done, not where and when you do it.  

(Note: We have to advise that you stick to the govt working regulations)

You should feel free to pick who you work with.

We know that there was a social element to being in the office and that we no longer have an office to offer this. It can be nice to be around other people, but we don’t think that it’s worth wasting around 10hrs a week commuting to do this. If you know other people working remotely feel free to work with them. For those of you who live close to each other, set up regular meet-ups, socially or professionally, to get together and chat. We’ve even allocated some budget to buy dinner and/or drinks when you do. Use technology to work with others, video calls don’t all need to be about work, allocate some days to have them running in the background, so you can just chat with your colleagues during the day. We’re going to focus more on bringing people together. This will mean more days where we all get together for work, or just for fun, so everyone gets to know each other well. It also means that we are going to look at getting people who don’t normally work together to work on short-term projects together, and we want to get people to travel together to do things like visit our manufacturing facilities to get a better understanding of how products are made, or trips to dog shows like Crufts to see what’s going on in the market.

We know we haven’t got Remote-First working 100% right, but we think the days of the office are numbered. We don’t want to force people to make unnecessary journeys. We don’t want to force people to work in a certain place when they can do the work just as well elsewhere.

Our vision is “A healthy company, with healthy people, keeping pets healthy”

We will always look to evolve and adapt what that means. When it comes to healthy people, the pandemic has enlightened us to a new way of working that we think is better for everyone’s health and happiness (not to mention the health and happiness of the dogs who get to hang out with their ‘pet parents’ more during the day). We want Pooch & Mutt to be a place where people can flourish at work and also flourish in the rest of their lives. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your knowledge, skills and career… but we don’t want you to make work your life. There’s far far more to life than just work. No one ever lay on their death bed and wished that they did more work, but work is a great way to test yourself, get the best out of yourself and to grow as a person. At Pooch & Mutt we want to help you do that, give you the freedom to do that, and most importantly give you the freedom to get the most out of life.