A new normal for Callia Web

It is with some sadness that we have decided to close our office in Marlborough. However, please be reassured that Callia Web definitely hasn’t closed!

We had the office for two reasons: firstly, so we can all get together as staff to discuss what we’re working on, and secondly, to welcome and work together with our clients.

Local clients often told us they loved being able to pop in and meet us to discuss their website projects. However, many of our clients are located too far away to be able to pop in – we have clients across the UK and as far away as Japan and Chile.

During the lockdown period, like many people, we’ve been working from home.  Throughout this time we’ve exclusively used the telephone, chat apps (such as WhatsApp and Slack), and video conferencing apps (such as Zoom, Whereby, Skype, Google Meets and Teams) to communicate between ourselves and with our clients.

As lockdown has been easing, we’ve been thinking about the future. We think for the next few months – maybe a year – people will still want to minimise contact where possible. So it’s likely our office would continue to remain mostly empty, and therefore it doesn’t make business sense to keep it.

It’s not uncommon for web agencies to be fully remote – Automattic for example (the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, etc) is a fully remote, distributed company.

At the end of June 2020, we’ll formally close our physical office. We have taken out a virtual office at Bowman House in Royal Wootton Bassett where we can hire meeting rooms in future if clients do want to sit down face to face.

Our main office numbers remain the same – 01672 666001 / 01672 666002 – thanks to Voice Over IP (VOIP) phones, and of course, our email address remains the same too: hello@calliaweb.co.uk.

How are you changing your working arrangements to adapt to the “new normal”?