Sturgeon Ventures share their top tips for agile working

Sturgeon Ventures have championed agile working and remote working since their inception in 1998.

Over the past couple of weeks, we haven’t been holding our team meetings on a Wednesday, but as these team meetings are important, we now use Microsoft Teams and/or Zoom to ensure we are all in touch and can engage with each other.

Some new practices we have set up are:

• To open the meeting with a “roll call” of each person with their opening mood with just one word – whether it’s happy, stressed, tired or inspired.
• To end the meeting with their exit word – hoping that after discussion and advice from colleagues we finish happy and inspired, for example.
• Run a chart at the end of each week/month with mood boards.  This is very interesting for all the team as they are sometimes energised by just sharing their word, that someone is listening.
• Targets to monthly meetings – funniest T mug
• Most creative hat…

Some of our creative hats!

We are all used to agile working and for most of the time, working as a remote team, but there is a very positive note to keeping in touch via conference call technology.

Woodreed, a specialist advertising agency,  have written a recent article on how not to work from home.

“…this may sound counter-intuitive but one of the best things for your employees is to not work from home…well at least not all the time. There’s a common misconception when WFH. It goes something like this…

If my boss cannot see that I am working they’ll think I’m bunking off!

The article discusses the importance of trust between bosses and employees.  One of Sturgeon’s key values is to trust its colleagues as it believes these values motivate and engender a positive work life balance.  It is about creating an environment of collaboration, authentic relationships, to be yourself, and share your perspective, whilst thinking out of the box. We value thinking, learning and being different so all are empowered.

As well as being a signatory for the HMRC Women in Finance initiative, Sturgeon has recently written/commented on several articles on agile working – please see below to read more

FCA Statement on the Corona virus and home working

Agile working for successful teams

Sturgeon Ventures Calls For More Agile Working To Tackle Gender Pay Gaps