Meet Circular: Laura’s Story
Having a strong set of company values is great for employer image and attracting talent from the outside but actually implementing them and making them part of the day-to-day decisions making and way of working? Now that’s where companies can become unstuck.
At Circular, we have been working hard to achieve consistency when talking about and implementing values. We recently updated our values for that very reason. We had too many which made them difficult to implement and to be recognised as the backbone of the company. So, we decided to take a step back and ask ourselves, what are the beliefs, behaviours and principles that drive Circular? As a company, we settled on four: Human Connection & Togetherness, Agile Driven, Accountability and Bold.
Today, we’ll be telling Laura’s story, maybe you can guess which value we’re talking about?
Circular moves fast and whilst we’re growing, welcoming new team members, opening new cities and changing lots of things, our principles remain consistent: putting people first, building trust, taking care of each other, building relationships based on honesty and transparency, while always celebrating diversity and ensuring inclusion. And we are not just talking about internally within our team, these are also principles we stand by in the service we provide to our members.
Back at the beginning of 2021, Laura and her boyfriend got engaged 🍾 and of course, the celebration had to be up to the special occasion. At that time Laura had been part of Circular for 2 years where she had made a great impact on the Product Team. As the only Product Manager & Product Designer in the company at the time, Laura implemented a lot of features like our reputation system and messaging feature.
Laura and her boyfriend love travelling. They’ve done road trips, and travelled around most cities in Europe and even to remote islands in the Philippines. So, a once-in-a-lifetime trip around North America and its surroundings was looking like the best option to celebrate this life achievement.
Following our people-first culture, Laura decided to speak up about her situation and discussed with the management team the possibility of a long-term leave following her wedding.
The start of 2021 was an important moment for the Product Team. They were developing a lot of new processes and features were growing the team and Laura was an essential part of this transition. Despite this critical moment for the business, the Founders of Circular, Teo and Pedro stand by a people-first culture. They listened to Laura’s decision and perfectly understood how important this occasion was to her.
We already mentioned that things move quickly at Circular (we don’t like crunch time) so Laura, Teo and Pedro got down to work on an action plan in order to make it possible for Laura to leave for a long period without disturbing the product team and future business operations. Soon, a new person was on-boarded in the Product team, Laura organised a detailed handover and trained the new joiner so they got up to speed fast and everything was prepared.
So after some weeks of hard and efficient work, Laura’s dream could come true! She took 10 weeks off and travelled to North America, the Bahamas and Hawaii, enjoying the best moments of her life with her husband, and celebrating this life milestone in the best possible way!
“I am very grateful to be able to work in a place where family and work are equally important”.
LAURA CARO, PRODUCT MANAGER @ CIRCULAR
When her trip was over, it was time for Laura to re-integrate into her team. Upon her return, things looked very different! The team had almost doubled in size, new departments had been set up and many processes had been changed or updated. But, Laura got settled quickly, thanks to the unity and great communication of the team.
Human connection and togetherness shouldn’t just be a principle we stand by at work or when we’re in the office. We work hard during working hours so we have time to spend with family and friends in our free time. We’re happy to have made it possible for Laura to follow her biggest dream while staying with us!
