Humans
How We Brought Our Culture Home With Us
Like for many companies these days, COVID-19 has led to a lot of change for trivago. Within one week, more than 1000 talents switched to working fully remote. While we’re lucky that our work allows for home office, we have to admit that our culture and way of working is strongly determined and influenced by human interaction. With trust as our fundamental value, we heavily invest in the relationships among talents and teams.
However, social distancing has quickly become the most well-known and most discussed concept in the current situation. Because of this, a brand new challenge has emerged: How can we keep these interactions alive while everyone sits more or less isolated in their apartments, trying to stay sane and connected?
First important insight:
Social distancing actually means physical distancing and with this comes some good news: We’re all still allowed to socialise!
Second important insight:
A well-functioning video conferencing system is like water these days – essential to survive. Zoom has enabled us to not only run remote meetings efficiently, it also gives us the opportunity to see each other virtually: the smiles, the tears, the laughs, the joy.
And with these two insights we were perfectly equipped to transfer our culture out of our offices and directly into our talents homes.
Remote culture activities: Stay healthy. Stay productive. Stay social.
Next to keeping human connections up, we also wanted to support our talents in staying productive and healthy while working from home. Previous events have shown that our people are keen to get their hands dirty, share their passion and skills, and contribute to our community. It was no different this time around. So, we started a call for talent to get as many people involved and waited for their replies:
And we were not left disappointed. From hacks on how to survive your home office days, to morning coffee sessions, sports classes, flow sessions, meditation, cooking classes and nutrition insights – our talents went above and beyond to connect. Yes, there is even a remote party on Friday nights with our resident DJ on the schedule – all remote, of course. Looking at what emerged within just a couple of days, we’re more than well prepared for the weeks to come. I truly believe that this is only possible because we have already invested so much in our culture in the past. The trust we’ve built over the years now elevates our remote collaborations to the next level.
Now that we’re a few weeks into home office, this is what a typical week looks like for us in terms of remote events:
Here’s a preview of some of the sessions talents have joined from their home offices so far – from hosting podcasts to exercising with their pets!
Weekly Rock the Quarantine session 
Banana bread baking class
“Let’s move together” – walks in the park 
“Let’s move together” – (pets)ercising
We’re all in this together
The beauty of this remote work setup, is that we’re all in the same boat. Even after just one week into full remote mode, you could already see how the way we’re collaborating across different locations is changing. As everyone is now in their individual remote office, we’ve become more aware of each other’s situations, we’re finding new ways to share knowledge and collaborate, and events can be joined from everywhere. Borders seem to vanish and with all the struggle that comes with the current situation, our remote culture is stepping up to the next level. I think there is such a strong sense of unity at the moment.
Times may be weird, but it is up to us how we approach it and deal with it. Through our unique culture we were able to adapt quickly to the new circumstances. We embraced the change and sharpened our focus as a business while staying true to our identity. Looking at what has happened only within the last two weeks and how trivago dealt with it, I’m proud to be part of this very special community.
Thanks to our Denise, Vlad and everyone from our Organisational Experience team for starting this initiative and for sharing how we brought our culture home with us!
