Three ways to overcome remote work challenges

Albane Bruyas knows one size does not fit all. Bruyas, the COO of Scaleway, a French infrastructure cloud provider, stopped to chat with Andela at Web Summit 2021 about hybrid work, scaling, and how the company conquered COVID challenges.  

Let your people form their own hybrid working models

Scaleway has a fully remote policy, but they know it’s not the right fit for everyone. One of their values is supporting junior members of the team, so they maintain offices in Paris and Lille. The working model is now hybrid—it’s up to individuals whether they want to be in the office and how often.

Scaleway tested several tools to maintain team productivity while in lockdown but ultimately decided that the answer was quality over quantity. Albane tells us that the trick was to have the right products and smart guidelines about how to use them: “Sometimes there are too many ways of collaborating that doesn’t accommodate everyone, so make sure you have the good rules and the good tools.”

Embrace global talent to make scaling easier

The introduction of remote processes enhanced Scaleway’s scaling opportunities. The ability to recruit staff from anywhere but still provide equal benefits has made hiring at scale much easier for the cloud provider. “There’s only a certain amount of talent in France, and when you oblige everyone to be in the office, you limit the capacity you have to recruit,” Albane says. “When you decide you have an absolute remote policy for everyone and you can make sure you offer equal pay and good training for everyone, you can recruit the talent you want everywhere and give them a good work-life balance. We really want to triple our teams in two years, so we need people to come with us.”

Let challenges build better managers

Scaleway discovered that COVID forced managers to embrace new ways of managing teams. Albane says that going fully remote “forces the managers to be much better managers, and excel in their leadership as they rally all these teams that are remote.” With the right tools for collaboration, management focused on ensuring their teams had clarity and knew where to place their attention.

The health and happiness of the team were also massive priorities during COVID. Albane and her colleagues worked hard to keep the company vision front of mind and ensure everyone on the team knew what they had to do and were happy with their tasks while working from home.

A visit to Web Summit is a must!

Albane reports that Web Summit is a fantastic opportunity for businesses to talk about their projects, meet customers, and recruit potential new talent. The sheer number of attendees and participants makes visibility simple, with access to people from around the world all in one place. She loves that there’s an abundance of expertise and that “people are happy to exchange information and share” their excellent knowledge.