The Inside Scoop at EduMe

For this week’s Inside Scoop, we caught up with EduMe’s Head of Employee Experience, Marnie Hitchcock.

Tell us what EduMe does in one sentence

EduMe is a mobile training platform for the desk-less workforce. We try to make sure everyone has the knowledge they need wherever they are and whenever they need it. 

Summarise your working environment at EduMe?

We have a culture that’s based on trust and transparency, and this is reflected in our work and culture. We focus on results more than we focus on where or when people work and so, by having a hybrid of office and home working, we’re able to ensure people are working in a way that works best for them.

What kind of flexibility is on offer to EduMe employees?

We have a hybrid working environment, so it really depends on the individual, their preference and their role. We don’t dictate specific days each person needs to be in, it depends on what works for them.

We also offer benefits such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave, to ensure that people have that freedom to enjoy their family life and their work life.

We do “work from anywhere” for a month every year, to make sure people have the freedom to go somewhere else if they’d like to; a lot of our employees have their families overseas.

We also provide a working from home budget, so if people do wish to work from home, they have the right resources to do so. It’s easy to say to people that they can work from home if they like, but not everyone has something in place that allows them to do that comfortably. So, we like to make sure they have access to the right tools.

Have you always been that flexible at EduMe?

Did the pandemic influence your level of flexibility?

We’ve definitely become more flexible over the last 18 months. I think, Covid basically showed us how things could work and I think that’s one of the things to come out of this. We used to be fully office-based, with a couple of days working from home, but it wasn’t a big focus. Then Covid happened and we all ended up having to working remotely, and that really highlighted A) the fact that people had very different home environments, so going forward we really needed to make sure that we could help level the playing field by giving people what they needed, and B) We could achieve a lot by working remotely.

I think there’s still a place for the office that we’re still going to have, because there’s certain things that we do that benefit from that in-person collaboration and many of our people have missed the social element, but I think that we’ve learnt that offering people the choice to work from home when they need to and being more open with that sort of thing has had really good results. 

Could you ever return to an office-based 9-5 every day?

I think I could if I had to but I really wouldn’t want to!

Recently, we’ve gone in for a couple of days and it has been really nice to see people but even then, I haven’t really been going in nine to five. Even when we bring the office back, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the hours you would normally do.

We’ve learnt that you can still keep the best of both worlds; I can still go into the office and see people, but I also really like being able to have a life. My Mum lives nearby, so I can see her for lunch sometimes whereas I couldn’t do that if I was in the office. Little things like that, where you can blend your work and life in really positive ways.

What is your favourite thing about working at EduMe?

It’s got to be the people! It’s such a great group of people and that’s such a big part of what we hire for.

It’s multiple things; the fact that they’re all brilliant and also the fact that we have this level of trust to deliver and help each other out. There’s just a great amount of respect between everyone and it’s just such a lovely group of people to work with.

What do you tend to look for in new hires?

A big part of what we hire for is humility. Yes, we’re building this product, we’re doing this amazing thing, the company is growing and it’s really exciting, but one of our core values is being humble and knowing that there’s always more we can do and always more we can learn. 

What is your ideal future of work scenario?

How would you like to be working in 5 years time?

Cool question! Right now, I would probably say that it’d be some sort of hybrid working environment. That said, pre-Covid, I’m not sure I would have said that I wanted to work from home as much as I actually do. Sometimes you really don’t know until you’ve tried something!