At Bb London we love mothers. We love to make them feel good. We know that having children is utterly amazing. But we also know it’s not glamorous and, at times, definitely not easy. Understanding that, we were determined, right from the start to make sure that our way of working as a team made our employees feel as positive as we’d like our customers to feel.We also wanted to employ the best people, right from the start.
The Fabulous & Flexible Set-Up
So, the entire Bb London business is set up to allow the teams to work in what we’ve jokingly called ‘a Sexi-Flexi’ way. (Yes, a silly name but one of those ones that stuck. Kind of like the business name...)
Everybody we employ has their own individual set-up agreed to work around what their other priorities in life are. We do like to employ people who are passionate about their jobs, but in order to get human, nice, normal people we offer them a set-up which fits around their families and other commitments.
How do we do that?
We use marvellous, clever technology and t’internet to make sure that anyone who works for us can work from anywhere. It’s amazing, the technology we’ve discovered and we can get properly nerdy about it. Because it gives us flexibility and freedom. We’ve worked on the business from places as diverse as Tallinn, LA, Bournemouth ,Geneva, Paris... and Butlins.
There are some brilliant tools available which means the Bb London team don’t have to be in the office 24/7. Do contact us if you’d like to know more about what we use and how we make it work.
We love the ‘Work/Life Weave.' Oh, and we trust our team...
This liberating technology means we can recruit from anywhere, instead of just looking in London. Which means you get the very best people giving you brilliant customer service & helping deliver the most beautiful clothing and gifts. They’re also well-rounded, happy people who balance the other parts of their lives so that they come to work, motivated and not feeling like they are locked into non-stop compromise. It also means we’re able to offer more flexible service to you (you’ll find we often answer emails in the evening, when you’re often online anyhow).
Some jobs we offer are job-share, some are ‘floating hours’ where team members can work as and when it suits them. We’ve helped our team manage - amongst other things - new babies, school runs, college courses, moving to another country to be with their girlfriend (our web guy - not all our team are women).
We also offer the flexibility for everyone to manage important events and not-so-important but essential things to do. So school plays and hair appointments... we are flexible.
We believe that smart people can manage the ‘work/life weave’. Balance is good but balance sounds very black and white. For us, work, families, life, all have to be weaved together. It does require some careful choreography (apologies for the mixed metaphors). But as long as the work gets done, we trust our team to manage their time.
It's a very different way of working and it's not without its challenges at times but we think it's completely worth it. We can't help thinking it's a shame it's not more readily available (see
our blog rant here).
The bottom line? A flexible approach makes business sense. Working 'Sexi-Flexi' makes life more interesting and it gives us a team who we are proud of: diligent, intelligent and dedicated.
We've also been lucky enough to have been recognised for this different way of working with a Business Efficiency award from the Guardian.
Sophie Devonshire, Bb London Founder.
+44 (0)20 7100 1110
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