Why Hostinger’s Workation Philosophy Creates an Awesome Working Culture and Happy Customers

‘Workation’ (noun), EN – A blend of ‘work’ and ‘vacation’.

‘Workation’ is a strange concept, isn’t it? We go on holiday, and we take our laptops and tablets by kidding ourselves that we will actually get “some work done” when we’re away. But we don’t. These devices stay either unopened on our hotel room’s tables, or we use them to catch up on the latest episode of our favorite series. The same can be said for our smartphones – we use them to take a picture of *that* sunset, *those* selfies, and the latest local never-tried-before food. But do we use them to take a look at those emails we said we’d catch up on? No. We don’t.

However, after your return to work, you’re confronted with a mountain of emails, some missed deadlines, and the cloak of “the fear” stalking you.

But as Hostinger has repeatedly proven since 2016, a ‘workation’ doesn’t have to be this way.

Some Background to the Workation

In 2016, Hostinger began experimenting with the idea of the workation and how to do it properly. Based on its company ethos of placing the customer at the heart of everything it does, it adopted the workation concept based on the idea of happy Hostinger employees creating happy Hostinger customers.

When explaining the motivation to make its employees as happy as possible, Hostinger’s Head of Product, Giedrius Zakaitis said:

At our company we believe that a happy and relaxed person is much more productive. There are many research studies which confirm that improving work and personal life balance means fewer sick days and decreased stress at work. Naturally, it results in much higher happiness level at work.

In short, the process Giedrius outlined is cyclical: a happy employee = happy professional life; happy professional life = happier personal life; happier personal life = a more relaxed and efficient employee.

Hostinger also believes that by bringing employees from different teams together to a new environment, new ideas – and great future results – are created.

Finally, a workation does not have to be expensive. Whilst our employees have been as far as Brazil and Indonesia over the last few years, our most recent workation took place in Tenerife. What’s more, if you are self-employed and unable to take holidays, take your work materials to a local coffee shop and work from there. If you’re a contracted worker, put in a request to work from home. After all, a change is as good as a rest!

The Outcome of Our Last Workation

The last Hostinger’s workation took place at the end of the first quarter of 2018 in Tenerife. It combined new and established members from the marketing, product, and HR teams to help create the upcoming OKR goals of Q2, 2018.

Giedrius explained that the biggest takeaway from the last Hostinger’s workation was “getting to know colleagues from other teams, and increasing trust amongst employees. Moreover, being in a non-office-based, informal environment, means everyone is more relaxed. This leads to more beneficial discussions, which then lead to more creative solutions being implemented across all Hostinger departments.”

During the last workation, we also launched our Spring Flash Sale. Since our successful Black Friday event last November, we received a huge number of requests from our loyal customers to run a similar sale campaign with equally large discounts. During our trip, we decided to take action and implemented a Spring Flash Sale not from our office, but straight from Tenerife.

Additionally, we used our time in Tenerife to reflect on our successes and failures from Q1 2018. Whilst setting ambitious goals for the future will help us sustain the massive levels of growth we have experienced over the last few years, another company philosophy at Hostinger is reflecting on past mistakes. We believe that by looking at the past, we will be better prepared for the future.

When looking over Q1 2018, we identified that the main issues we faced were a struggle to keep focus and inefficient use of our time. Through a number of discussions and disagreements, we identified what we need to do to improve these areas, and by the end of the workation, and set comprehensive goals and milestones we wish to achieve in Q2, 2018. At the time of writing, one month of Q2 has already passed, and we are much happier about our level of focus, the numbers of positive user feedback are through the roof and we feel we are getting closer to where we want to be as a company. Furthermore, we do not plan on stopping.

Have you ever been on a ‘workation’? If you have, let us know more about it and whether it worked for you.