Less Zoom Means More Room, for Work!
In this article Shaul David of Railsbank is interviewed by Pedro C. of Vesuvio Labs, where they talk about WFH and the routines necessary to make the best, most productive use of available time.
Shaul heads Banking Partnerships at Railsbank, the open banking and compliance platform. Founded in 2016, to enable any business to be a fintech, it was recently funded by Visa and Japanese VC Global Brain. Its mission is simple, “to deliver a seamless product to companies through technology that moves past legacy issues and brings together banks and businesses to transact digitally in a fully compliant way.” Railsbank has just announced to the press that it has been on a hiring spree over the past three months.
Shaul believes it is important to put a good “stop” on the day, so he closes his laptop every evening at 6 pm and takes his children for a short walk in the park, “I make sure I spend time with them and not in front of my computer screen. Work-life balance like this is essential” he told Pedro “it is best centred around a regular routine”. Of course, Shaul explained, “Everyone spends more time on zoom calls which can unfortunately eat away time ideally spent working on tasks, so it’s important to keep online meetings short and to the point”.
But, Shaul emphasised, “as you can’t meet people face to face right now, this single-mindedness mustn’t ignore people, by that I mean the importance of maintaining personal relationships with customers, partners and colleagues and developing their business”. He explained that Railsbank has always given great attention to the partners with whom it works. Pedro most definitely agreed with that as a priority and noted it was one that mirrored of Vesuvio Labs.
Darren asked if Shaul had any ways of working he found effective and that he could share with others and he replied:“Yes, we keep regular and well-known forms of routine, such as having team stand-ups three times a week and on Friday afternoons a virtual beer together.
Company-wide Coffee Google hangouts are good, where there’s no work talk, only banter, much like in pre virus days the around a water cooler talk, very unstructured and largely social”.
“If this current situation continues”, Shaul predicted, “people will be proactive and may set up more virtual groups helping them to maintain different forms of support for wellbeing at work, leisure and family; all sorts of initiatives and enterprises are beginning to emerge.”
Using this prediction from Shaul to steer the conversation towards the future, Pedro asked him to peer into his crystal ball and make a few more forecasts! There Shaul foresaw some of the current restrictions lasting quite a while and influencing a more flexible future. One where people work remotely more frequently but not completely, because, he said, “in my opinion despite the rigors of commuting into London, nothing replaces face to face human contact in all its complexity as means of effective communication. After all, human interaction is the oil in the company’s machine.”
Shaul added, “People who just want to work only at home will probably be fine but I think they will lose out overall compared with those who commute, at least sometimes, and are then able to meet face to face fostering team cohesion. Don’t forget that, after office hours, you can enjoy hanging out in a real, non-virtual, pub.”
Railsbank’s platform runs on a SaaS basis, which is by nature digital and readily accessible electronically. This means, said Shaul, “even before the lockdown our team was capable of 100% remote working, we are already geographically diversified and in a strong position to take advantage of economic recovery whether it comes first in Asia Pacific, Europe or the US”. This also means, comments Shaul, “there is likely minimal impact on the company’s’ working practices or any adverse cultural change. For customers our narrative remains the same; it’s smooth and transactions keep happening every day”.
In conclusion, Shaul noted, truly global banking has never really been properly executed. The complexities of legacy technology, managing global compliance and traditional administration has created a cumbersome and costly experience for customers.
Now, Railsbank’s API focused platform uniquely provides a complete financial services utility enabling customers to prototype, launch and scale any digital financial products rapidly and safely anywhere in the world. “As Head of Banking” quotes Shaul, “this suits me very well!”.
Railsbank enables every business to become a fintech.
By solving the pain points of infrastructure, regulation, operation and integration, Railsbank helps founders, CEO’s, product managers and marketers to prototype, launch and scale any financial product.
Vesuvio Labs is a Venture builder based in London helping entrepreneurs by accelerating the process of turning ideas into a scalable business.
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We would like to thank adviser Graham Ripley for his important contribution to this article.
