Zopa trials ‘blended’ work week for employees
Zopa employees will be able to work remotely for up to 90 days in 2021, as part of the company’s ‘test and learn’ approach to post-pandemic life.
The Zopa Group – which owns Zopa’s peer-to-peer lending platform and Zopa Bank – will evaluate the model against a mix of parameters including business success, employee satisfaction and organisational resilience.
The company said that it hopes this approach will allow it to create a model which enables the company’s ambitious growth goals whilst also creating an employee experience which is compelling and future focused.
Prior to reopening its office, 80 per cent of Zopa’s 450-strong workforce expressed an interest in a blended approach between home and office working.
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“Zopa as a business has been able to achieve a huge amount in the last year while our teams were working from home,” said Zopa’s chief customer officer, Clare Gambardella.
“However, we are aware that the pandemic environment isn’t representative of a sustainable ongoing model for us or our people. By testing and learning with our employees throughout 2021, we can understand how a distributed working model functions in the longer term and what the differing preferences are for the people throughout our business.
“Our goal is to find a model which enables both Zopa’s continued growth and our ability to attract and retain the best talent.”
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Before the pandemic, Zopa offered flexible working arrangements to all staff. The company credited this flexible approach with its smooth transition to remote working during the Covid lockdowns.
It reopened its London office for optional use in March, and it has seen an 18 per cent increase month-on-month of staff coming into the office since then.
Zopa will begin testing the new blended working model on 1 June, and it will continue to review and adapt its approach based on a mixture of quantitative data and qualitative feedback from the business, employees and stakeholders.
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