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By default, we work in the office

• The company places a very high degree of trust into all members of the firm. There’s zero element of “we want people at the office so we can make sure they’re working”.
• Seeing each other face-to-face makes several valuable things easier and more likely to happen, such as:
  • Trust, friendships, mutual understanding, etc. will deepen
  • Valuable info gets exchanged in unplanned ways
  • Creativity and “riffing off each other’s ideas” is elevated
  • Learning from each other can be faster

When does working from home make sense?

• Sometimes for some people working from home is more efficient - this might be because of any factors such as the nature of the work, the scheduling of events that day, and their situation at home.
• Our work doesn’t fit neatly into office hours. Sometimes we take evening or early-morning calls with people in other timezones, we meet up with work contacts in evenings, we might travel and do things on weekends (like going to visit our portfolio companies), and sometimes we work longer hours to get things done. And getting exercise and taking a breather often makes sense to do during daylight hours.
• Let’s try not to spread germs to each other unnecessarily. If you’re sick yet still feel like working - it’s probably best to do that from home.

Protecting confidential information when we WFH

We obviously must protect confidential information regardless of where we work. Therefore, depending on someone’s physical setup at home, that might make it impractical to do certain things at home. For example, don’t take a video call discussing confidential information if your teenage kids will overhear it. Similarly, we don’t discuss confidential information in a public spot like a cafe. A typical Starbucks around Singapore has people “working from home” doing video calls where they shout their company’s confidential information into the public domain - that would be a breach of trust.

Read more: External communications, reputation, and data confidentiality guide

Working from overseas (WFO)

Each person can apply for up to five days per calendar year working from an overseas location. The purpose is to facilitate longer periods of personal travel, for example to spend more time with overseas family. The company still expects a high level of productivity and teamwork during such times. Therefore requests for WFO need a written plan for ensuring reasonable productivity, and the company needs to explicitly approve the plan.

A request to work from overseas should include:

• Exact date-span
• Expected working hours and timezone implications
• A plan for ensuring reasonable productivity, teamwork and data confidentiality. That should include details on the expected working location(s). “I’ll work from cafes or a kitchen table” are probably not reasonable. More practical would likely be a co-working space or a private room at a home.

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