Jimdo is a German software company, based in Hamburg with an additional office in Tokyo. The company has 250 multinational employees, many of whom relocated to Hamburg after being hired, to work from their bustling offices in the city. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing everyone in the company to work from home, Jimdo’s management decided to transition to a remote company, granting all employees the freedom to work wherever they wanted, anywhere in the world, while keeping the Hamburg office as a co-working space. This new working model has led to new challenges, such as how to maintain Jimdo’s unique culture of teamwork and collaboration while not working physically in the same space.
The challenge: maintaining company culture
Jimdo prided itself on its company culture; an open-minded community, sharing languages, interests, and projects, and building the best teams for each project. Switching to remote threatened to endanger Jimdo’s culture. HR had to ask themselves, how would the company continue to keep their culture alive while working remotely? How would the different teams get to know each other and maintain close connections, now that they were living in different locations around the world and working in different time zones?
The solution: Bob’s directory and club view
Using Bob’s directory, Jimdo’s employees worldwide can seamlessly access information about their fellow colleagues; their roles, the departments they work in, who they report to, and view a visual representation in the org chart.
Bob’s club view provides additional information about Jimdo’s employees; connecting people to different clubs such as their hobbies and superpowers, building social activities online according to their interests, and helping to facilitate additional connections and collaborations for both work and play.
The challenge: keeping on top of people data and documents
Previously, Jimdo’s People Team used spreadsheets to keep track of salaries, bonuses, performance management, and absences but didn’t have one centralized tool to keep employee data organized.
The solution: Bob’s centralized documentation management
Jimdo now stores all employee documentation in Bob. Having a centralized place that is accessible to all stakeholders has dramatically decreased the manual workload of the People team. Payroll and other HR tasks can be displayed in easy-to-read graphic formats and team leads can now directly adjust salaries and employee information.
Highlights
- With Bob, Jimdo can view their HR documentation in one, centralized place.
- Tasks such as payroll have been simplified with team leads adjusting salaries directly in the system.
- Student workers can track their hours directly in Bob rather than on spreadsheets.
- Bob’s home page provides a welcome screen for Jimdo’s workers, sharing up-to-date company-wide information and keeping everyone part of the Jimdo community.
- The People team can communicate directly with the Jimdo team through Bob, wherever they are located.
- Bob provides a sense of community among Jimdo employees, enabling them to get to know each other both professionally and socially.
