How Travel Breeds Creativity And Happiness For Our Team

Traveling Is An Essential Part Of Our Business

Traveling is an essential part of our business, culture and identity. We believe that having a global perspective is crucial to the way we run our company and think about our clients.

This is reflected in our ongoing practices: at least one month per year of work away time and recommended minimum of 3-weeks of vacation.

We have started a semi-regular, subsidized Paper Crane Work Away in which we cover up to a month of hotel or home rental fees and provide up to $500/person in either flight credit or bonus to our team members to meet us at a designated location in a pre-determined country if they feel so inclined. The goal is to let them spend 4+ weeks abroad with very little difference, if any, in their overhead expenses.

As to the reasoning on why we built the Work Away in?

We believe that life and bucket items aren't something that our team should put on hold until they're too old to enjoy it.  By taking advantage of our month of built-in work away, company subsidized work away, and vacation time, our team members can be abroad for anywhere from 2.75-4 months per year if they so choose.

Traveling gives us more than just an education—it helps us create meaningful connections with people all over the world who inspire us every day.

How Else Does Travel Affect Our Team?

Traveling with your team can also be a great way to bond. Taking the time to explore new places together, tossing ideas around and bouncing off each other's opinions will help you to get to know your team better. Seeing things from their point of view can help you see them in a new light, perhaps even opening up new opportunities for collaboration or teamwork.

We're Using Travel To Continue Strengthening Our Team

Travel is a powerful force that can have a great impact on your team. It's not just about getting to know one another, but it's also about doing things that you wouldn't necessarily do at home. It's becoming more and more popular as an option for work trips, especially when you're looking to strengthen relationships among employees.

Traveling together creates an opportunity for new ideas and solutions because everyone on the trip has different backgrounds and perspectives on life. By taking time out of their normal schedule, they'll be able to focus more clearly on what their goals are while strengthening the bonds between all members of the group!

We've found that traveling with our team has made them happier and more creative in the process.

It’s not just the fun and adventure that makes traveling with your team a great idea. From experience, we found that traveling with your team helps you come up with new ideas for work. When people travel together, they share experiences and learn from each other—and this makes them more creative when it comes time for brainstorming at the office.

What About Remote Work?

Let's get this on the table right off the bat: we can be hypocritical, and this is a particularly evolving topic that we may not have the right approach on.

We do not hire fully remote staff at this time.

With one of our founders being a former full-time digital nomad, it may seem completely against our values to not hire staff around the globe, especially considering the online medium that we work in.

However, we've found that with our current processes, management capabilities, and team size, we don't have the capabilities to run a team that is both in-person and online. We are attempting to straddle the line, allowing for 2-3 days of work-from-home each week depending on preference, but it does still require local staff.

Could we be wrong? Absolutely. We acknowledge that we may lose talent, or close our doors to hiring great team members that can only work remotely. We also acknowledge that an office environment, constant in-person communication, and daily commuting may not be ideal for everybody.

Conclusion

If you're looking to grow your business, travel is a great way to do it. Not only does it give you a chance to get away from the grind of everyday life, but it can also help you build relationships with people who might not be close by but still want what's best for your company. The key is finding the right balance between work and play when it comes time for that adventure! There are plenty of great resources out there for finding inspiration; just make sure not all of them are books that talk about how much fun travel can be.