UK 
United States
Barely a week goes by without another organisation announcing a return-to-office mandate.
The reasoning is usually the same. More time in-office together will strengthen culture, improve collaboration and ultimately make people more productive.
Building connected, high-performing teams has become harder as organisations have become more distributed. But I think we've become too focused on where people work instead of how they work together.
Allowing people to do their best work
At Paddle, we've deliberately taken a different path. While many other technology companies are mandating their teams back to the office, we've spent the past several years building a digital-first organisation.
The timing of this debate feels particularly relevant. Research from FI Property Group found that 36% of London workers say their employer has increased office attendance requirements. Yet the same research found that 68% of under-30s expect more from the workplace than they did before the pandemic. To me, those findings point to something important. Offices still matter, but employees increasingly expect them to offer something they can't get anywhere else.
The future of work therefore isn't about choosing between remote working and office mandates.
It's about designing organisations that allow people to do their best work, wherever they choose to be.
The digital-first operating model
One of the biggest misconceptions I encounter around being digital-first is that it’s just another way of saying people are allowed to work remotely.
It’s not. Remote-first describes a workplace policy. Digital-first describes an operating model.
If a team is spread across London, Lisbon, and Toronto, collaboration shouldn't feel like a compromise. If someone joins a meeting from home while everyone else is sitting around a boardroom table, they shouldn't have a worse experience. Workflows, technology, communication, and decision-making all need to be intentionally designed so location becomes largely irrelevant.
Remote-first describes a workplace policy. Digital-first describes an operating model. If a team is spread across London, Lisbon, and Toronto, collaboration shouldn't feel like a compromise
At Paddle, we've invested in a network of global hubs to build the best digital-first teams.
Today, our teams are concentrated around hubs across the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, North America, and the Philippines, giving our ‘Paddlers’ the flexibility to choose where they work while still benefiting from a local community and in-person collaboration.
We’ve also introduced flexible policies such as ‘Navigate,’ which allow our team to work abroad for up to 45 days each year, further reinforcing our philosophy. We’re not sending out a message to just ‘Work wherever you like.’ Instead, we’re telling them, ‘We trust you to choose where you'll do your best work, while remaining accountable for the outcomes you deliver.’
