“Some of our employees are even more productive in the home office”
As part of a contemporary approach to customers, newsletter marketing has become indispensable for many companies these days. Over 200,000 customers are already using rapidmail’s intuitive modular system to create their own newsletter in just a few clicks. The German newsletter software provider is now active in 28 countries worldwide and relies on automation and flexibility in cooperation. In an interview, Sven Kummer, managing director and founder of rapidmail, explains how this works in the implementation and what role Slack plays.
Sven, the past few years have drastically changed the world of work. Will you continue to rely on hybrid work in the future?
In the beginning we were very inflexible: all employees were on site in our office in Freiburg. However, in order to attract IT talent as a growing company, we started hiring elsewhere early on. As a result, we have switched a large part of our meetings and communication to digital variants. As a result, we have noticed that some of our employees are even more productive in the home office, and today they can completely determine their presence in the office themselves. Nevertheless, it is important for us to bring everyone together regularly. On Thursdays we cook together in the office and the entire team comes together for a week twice a year at a team offsite.
In addition to local flexibility, do your employees also have the opportunity to schedule their everyday work flexibly?
It depends on the department, but where possible, our employees can organize their working hours freely. For us it is only important that the teams coordinate with each other in order to still enable efficient cooperation. If that works, the specific working hours don’t matter to us. Likewise, it is also important that the communication mwith external partners works smoothly and independently of time. For example, we use Slack Connect with our external data protection officer.
rapidmail works with external partners via the Slack Connect extension. (Image: Slack)
What role does automation play in your day-to-day work to become even more productive?
We now use various automations with Slack for internal and external collaboration. Starting with alerting our infrastructure monitoring about the absence or birthdays of our employees – even time recording can be controlled via Slack. Our employees’ calendars are also linked to Slack, so it automatically shows if someone is in a meeting or available.
Let’s talk about the digital office: What role does it play at rapidmail compared to the physical office space?
We attach great importance to a good digital infrastructure, because in addition to the basic functions, usability must also be convincing. Especially in a company like rapidmail, where hierarchy is not a priority, a platform like Slack can help enormously. Employees can exchange information directly and do not always have to plan complicated meetings for everything. The physical office space is still important to us, for example for quiet meeting opportunities or a relaxed get-together.
Many employees complain about the so-called “meeting fatigue”, are exhausted from too many meetings and feel slowed down in their productivity. How do you deal with the topic at rapidmail?
A lot of coordination is necessary, especially when planning new features or larger projects. Sometimes meetings cannot be avoided. However, we were able to move a large part of the coordination to Slack through dedicated channels. Any decision, any relevant information should be posted here. For this it is important that findings from conversations that took place in the hallway in the office are also recorded in the respective channels. This is not always easy, but it can greatly reduce the need for coordination – and thus the number of meetings required.
Sven Kummer, managing director and founder at rapidmail. (Photo: Carina Adam Photography)
Transparency and open communication are essential drivers for employee satisfaction. What options and formats do you use at rapidmail to keep your workforce informed and motivated?
We have a monthly company meeting in which, among other things, we talk about company goals that have been achieved and not achieved. In addition, each area can provide insights into its current projects. Announcements about upcoming dates, such as team events or information about what’s going on in the office, are announced in a specially created Slack channel. In our “Bars and Pies” channel, all teams also regularly share project results and statistics to create transparency for other teams and to show which projects went particularly well. The open, cross-team communication often gives rise to good ideas for new projects that constantly improve our product.
Sven, thank you very much for the interview!
The company founded in 2008 rapidmail from Freiburg im Breisgau is one of the leading German providers of e-mail marketing. With its newsletter marketing tool, rapidmail enables SMEs of all sizes to conduct successful email marketing. The company has around 40 employees at the Freiburg and Berlin locations and is managed by the two managing directors Sven Kummer and Steffen Müllers.
Slack is the digital office – the central place where project teams, systems, partners and customers can work together smoothly. Slack breaks down communication silos inside and outside the organization by bringing people and tools together around shared goals, projects and processes in channels and via Slack Connect. Slack breaks down physical walls and gives employees the flexibility to work best where, when and how they want with features like huddles or audio and video messaging. Slack also makes it possible to automate recurring tasks using apps and workflows. In the digital age, Slack makes work easier, more enjoyable, and more productive.
