I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little story. It is a story about suits, clothes and implications and expectations of people.
A few months ago, I was sitting in our lounge with a new employee. He had just started with us and I wanted to hear how he was getting on and whether he felt comfortable after his first few weeks at work. We sat in a fairly full lounge (a few of our employees had informal meetings, others were meeting for a break), drank coffee and talked about his experiences during his first time at Netstream. At some point we started talking about the management because I wanted to know if he had met any of them. When I asked him this, he answered me in a rather puzzled way and said that it was very strange because he had never even seen anyone from the management at Netstream. My reaction to this answer was even more perplexed because two members of the management were sitting in the lounge at the same time. I showed him the two and said: "But there they are. Alexis is sitting back there and Dom is at the other table. I had to smile when he then said that he had somehow only ever paid attention to whether he saw men in suits...
The moral of the story
There are two things I like to tell with this story about Netstream . Firstly, the management is lurking everywhere and watching everything and everyone! No, joking aside. Our management is among us, they don't stand out with fancy suits or swanky individual offices. They have a function in our company like any other team member, but that doesn't make them any more important than other employees. They are still involved in operations and know what's going on. We all treat each other as equals and let each other know if we disagree, without fear of negative consequences. Secondly, we don't have a dress code and probably never will. If someone feels comfortable in a hoodie, we don't force them to wear a shirt every day. But it's the same the other way around. Of course, there are certain limits and we wouldn't jump for joy if one of us received a customer in swimming trunks and flip-flops - but we have a lot of faith that everyone has a good mind and is willing to make use of it 🙂
