"Work where you thrive", says Telenor spin-off Whereby

"Decoupling location from work can fundamentally change the way we build our societies!"

Ingrid Ødegaard’s statement is firm, and comes naturally when she talks. Not like a futurist’s vision, but rather based on hands-on experience from the way the tech startup Whereby has worked since long before Covid-19.

“We give people the ability to take the job with them, a possibility that has enabled big life changes for some. When people move back to their small home towns, it also affects those communities and helps them maintain a sustainable base of taxpayers,” she says.  

Whereby, the video collaboration company from Norway, has seen a 10 times increase on their services the last few months. Co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer Ødegaard reveals that it wasn’t a global pandemic or the fact that a video conferencing tool is the core of their business that made them become a “work from anywhere” team. 

“No, we have been on a journey. In 2013, we were co-located, but we were forced to think differently when one of our colleagues wanted to move closer to his family, and we really wanted to keep him in our company. So he moved, and we adjusted.”

What does it take?

Whereby’s vision is “to give people freedom and flexibility to live and work where they thrive”. They are now 40 people in 17 locations across 6 time zones, delivering a simple solution for video meetings with paying customers in 150+ countries. They also have a passion to make meetings more fun, for example by letting participants react to the speaker with emojis. 

“In the beginning it was a lot about making those few working remotely feel included, and one of the things we did was to put up a big monitor and have a video room open all day,” she laughs.  

Ingrid has a warning, too, for those not prepared for a certain imbalance that can happen when companies go partly remote.   

“Be aware of the asymmetry, which can arise if only a few work remotely and you don’t invest properly in tools and culture. Then you might get it wrong.” Instead her advice is to build a culture in which you always assume that someone will be remote. 

Stressing out the door every morning is a blast from the past for Ingrid Oline Skeide Ødegaard, having set up her remote-working company Whereby to be super flexible in the way they cooperate. Photo: Stian Sande

Ødegaard explains how they have tried to replicate some parts of office life, like small-talk in meetings, shared coffee breaks and chat-rooms. Team chat programs are crucial, according to Ødegaard. 

“We have open group discussions in our team chat, visible for anyone, so that everyone can see and participate in the discussions – as you would if someone sparked a conversation at the office. It is crucial to have team chat as a secondary channel to video meetings,” she says.

Born in, and later demerged from, telecom company Telenor – who just announced a pivot to a “flexible work-strategy” for 20,000 employees – Ødegaard gladly shares her advice. 

“What did you experience that others can learn from?”

“Trust is maybe the biggest challenge for leaders, while discipline and the ability to be self-driven is key to employees. Management style needs to be very trust-based and focussed on coaching; you have to set goals and expectations around clear deliverables and outcomes,” she says. 

She makes it sound so easy… But for leaders from a traditional hierarchical organization, it can be hard to admit that instead of knowing everything as a leader, you rather need to facilitate a team of experts, so that they have the necessary tools and are able to deliver, while you coach them on.

“We have adopted humility as an essential skill for our leaders. Things are changing so fast, you have to ask, read up, admit that you don’t understand everything. I ask stupid questions all the time.”