One thing that is for sure, is that in such a short amount of time, business operations will never be the same. Vista has a flexible business model where trust has always been at the core. A fluid workplace, with a communal base for everyone in Banbury, but the chance to work in your own home, should you choose to. 

When I started Vista in 2011, I imagined a compact, contemporary office with screens across one wall and the team dialling in to each screen to work together each day. I didn’t have the tech foresight to conceive Zoom, sharing all faces on one screen, but I knew one day someone would devise a system that would make my vision a reality. The idea for the screens was for human interactions, chats, brainstorming and company. Not so that I could check people were logged in and working their hours. Checking up on people is far too labour intensive and self-destructive. But many business ‘leaders’ don’t share this perspective. Flexible hours and clear targets enable people to fulfil work and home commitments as an integrated piece. Where adults can choose and create their own model. I am not a fan of ‘work / life balance’ mantras. Because balance is hard and fulfilment is complex and deeply personal, but it has to start with clear deliverables, trust and flexibility at work. People who fulfil all their obligations, feel fulfilled. It’s an energised virtuous circle of fulfilment.

Flexibility is a tricky path to navigate with clients, because the term somehow implies instability but eight years later and every business was forced very abruptly to embrace it. My inbox is full of advice on how to ‘lead in a crisis’. For me, it is a simple equation: Trust + reasonable targets. Start with trust. Don’t expect people to earn it. That implies hierarchy of commitment. Trust them first and they will be driven by your commitment to, and belief in them.

Anna Whitehouse @MotherPukka is a long-time advocate for flexible working. This is her view on how this crisis could positively impact the future: “A middle ground where people ebb and flow within work and home, with trust at the core of it, tech to facilitate it, and measuring what they’re doing and not where they’re sitting. That’s the utopia and actually, it’s not for the employee, that’s for the employer."

This has always been Vista’s utopia.