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 sat in our lounge with a new employee. He had just started with us and I wanted to hear how he was doing and if he was comfortable with us after his first few weeks on the job. We sat in a fairly packed lounge (a few of our employees had informal meetings, others met for a break), drank coffee and talked about his experiences from his first time at Netstream. At some point we got to talking about management because I wanted to know if he had met any of them yet, too. He was kind of taken aback by the question 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 of the management were sitting in the lounge at the same time. I pointed the two out to him while saying, "But there they are. There is Alexis sitting in the back and Dom at the other table." I had to smile when he then said that he had somehow always only paid attention to whether he sees men in suits ...

The moral of the story

There are two things I like to tell with this story about Netstream. First, management is lurking everywhere, watching everything and everyone! No, kidding. Our executive team is among us, they don't stand out with fancy suits or swanky individual offices. They have a function in our company just like any other team member, but that doesn't make them more important than other employees. They are still involved operationally and know what's going on. We all meet as equals and share when we disagree, without fear of negative consequences. Second, 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 someone of us received a customer wearing a bathing suit and flip-flops - but we trust very strongly that everyone has a well-functioning mind and is willing to make use of it 🙂