RingCentral SVP Amir Hameed has opened up on the collaboration firm’s hybrid work policy which mandates 30 days in the office per quarter for some employees.
RingCentral adopted the strategy earlier this year, which sees employees in certain back-office roles able to choose which 30 days they come to the office over a three-month period.
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The vendor encourages each employee to take accountability for hitting the 30-day mark and also ties the objective to quarterly management-by-objective bonus targets.
Speaking at UC Expo in London this week, Hameed, who heads up solutions sales and engineering, said that the strategy has provided greater flexibility to employees who were missing some elements of remote working they’d enjoyed previously, while still enabling the benefits of in-person collaboration.
“At RingCentral, we get the opportunity to talk to customers globally… many of which have [return to office] mandates, and then others have been more flexible,” he said.
“What we’ve seen ourselves, as we’re learning from our customers, is the mandates don’t necessarily work very well.
“Initially, we had our own where we said they might be in three times a week, but our employees said that wasn’t very flexible, especially coming off of Covid.”
Hameed mentioned the structure is particularly effective for back-office workers who want flexibility with their work location but don’t typically travel for work.
He explained that an individual’s badge is used to track the number of days they’ve worked in the office throughout a quarter. Midway through the quarter, managers are given this data so they can identify any employees who could be “at risk” of falling below the 30-day mandate.
“We’ve put our money where our mouth is,” Hameed added. “For those who are on an MBO or bonus structure, a portion of their bonus is built on those 30 days in the office.”
However, Hameed stressed that the strategy isn’t in place for the sake of it. He said teams organise their office days around being with their colleagues to work on projects.
“We don’t want people to come into the office only to get on a video call,” he said.
“That doesn’t make any sense, so they choose those 30 days when their teams… will have specific reasons to be in the office because person-to-person collaboration is very important. “
