Moodle, a great place to work

April 10, 2019 By Júlia Verdaguer

April 10th is Global Work From Home Day. Holly Barnes, Moodle’s People & Culture Leader, writes about remote work and other initiatives we have to support our global team working with the flexibility that they need.

 

Holly Barnes, People & Culture Leader, Moodle HQ

Moodle – A globally diverse and dispersed team.

We have built Moodle as a flexible and diverse team. We have an office in Perth, Australia (33 team members), an office in Barcelona, Spain (16 team members) and the rest of our team members are dotted all around the world, working remotely from the east coast of Australia, other areas in Spain, the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, USA, Czech Republic, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Greece, Andorra and Ireland (23 team members).

  • 6 time zones
  • 72 people
  • 13 countries… and growing

We knew from day one that we wanted to be a truly global company and we didn’t want location to be a hindrance to this.
Our policy – we hire the right people for the job regardless of where they are located


Work any time, anywhere

Flexibility and communication are key to the success of remote teams. We have a ‘real’ Flexible Work policy and acknowledge that this can mean different things to different people; so it is practised in a variety of ways across Moodle.

We see it as an alternative working arrangement to the traditional 9am – 5pm week in an office. At Moodle this comes in many different shapes and forms.

  • Working from home, permanently
  • Working from home, ad hoc
  • Variation to start and/or finish times (e.g. starting at 7am, finishing at 3pm)
  • Flexi-hours or days (e.g. for remote workers, varying work times across the day/week to accommodate personal commitments, out of hours meetings etc.)
  • Part-time work (variation to total number of hours worked per day or per week)
  • Working in different locations from time to time

At Moodle we support our team working anywhere, any time. We recognise that everyone is different and so our approach is for our team members to work as flexibly as needed.


Communication – fundamental to the success of remote and flexible workforce

We want to foster a strong and empowering culture that keeps everyone connected regardless of where they are or how they work.

So we created a set of guiding principles to help us communicate more effectively and more respectfully, particularly considering our geographical spread and range of cultures that make up the world of Moodle. They were created to align with and support our values and culture.

  1. Assume positive intent
  2. Respect other people’s attention
  3. Contribute to organisational culture
  4. Use the right tool for the job
  5. Make it easy to collaborate
  6. Make meetings a positive experience

“Setting the ground rules has gone a long way in making sure our team members are productive, engaged and happy.” Holly Barnes, Head of People and Culture

Building great remote teams and a connected culture needs to be intentional. You don’t have the benefit of water cooler chat everyday. At Moodle we rely on a few basic things in conjunction with our Communication Principles

  • Thoughtful consideration – e.g. time zones, working hours, appropriateness of our various collaboration tools
  • Preface your context
  • ALWAYS assume positive intent…
  • And the use of LOTS of emojis ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ????


Moodle, a great place to work

Effective remote work requires everyone’s support regardless of where they are located. At Moodle our ways of working, our communication tools, policies and culture has meant we have embedded a successful remote and flexible environment where every single one of our 72 team members contributes to our great achievements and to being a great place to work.

Would you like to start your career with us? Check out our open positions in this link!