Me, myself, and Yarno
I work at Yarno as a content creator. It’s my day job, my current LinkedIn title, and my paycheck, but I also genuinely like it here. Yarno has a fantastic team, an engaging and positive culture, and a considered approach to remote working. 10/10 would recommend.
However, this isn’t a one sided thing. Yarno likes me too. So much so that they hired me, invest in my growth, and even put up with my terrible puns. They didn’t offer this role to a skillset or to a CV. They offered it to a whole, bonafide, capable, flawed, free-thinking, multi-faceted human being: me.
This isn’t about tooting one’s own horn or gushing over a mutual soft spot. This is about realising and embracing the fact that although a company will hire you because of relevant abilities, it will also be because they like you. Chances are that there are plenty of people - and automated programs - that share some of your capabilities. It’s you as a whole package that signs the contract, and that whole self turns up to do your job.
Building a team, not a system
The Yarno leadership understands the craft of building a team dynamic. When they are hiring, it’s not just about ticking boxes or jumping through role-related hoops (I had to write about bin chickens, but that’s for another blog). A brilliant team needs a brilliant mix of strengths, perspectives, personalities and even communication styles. So as well as asking how an applicant may perform a role, it’s also worth asking:
How will this person bring out the best in their colleagues, and vice versa?
What unique skills are they contributing to the team?
How does their life experience and unique take on the world influence our workplace culture and add value to our external offerings?
It’s one thing to find a tool or program that performs a function (and we make full use of software and systems that work for us), but it’s a whole other thing to find a person that contributes to a company’s culture and embodies its values, as well as ‘doing their job’. Rather than being a cog in a machine, a top-grade hire will not only be effective and capable, but also be shaping the future of a company through their interactions and innovations. A tool can do a job efficiently. A team member can also do it thoughtfully.
Just a girl, standing in front a job, asking it to like her
“You never need to hide the fact that you have a baby.”
During the application process, I was upfront about the fact I had two tinies at home. Despite feeling like it might blur the focus on my job suitability, I was immediately assured of the above. Yarno operates as a remote yet highly connected team, with plenty of understanding for the twists and turns of life with kids. This understanding meant that my fresh parental status wasn’t seen as an automatic red flag, but rather an indicator that I was adaptable, empathetic, and super keen to put my (non-baby) brain to work.
In other words, what I did - and who I was - beyond working hours was just as worth considering as my employment history. This is one reason why Yarno holds a team-wide meet and greet as part of the interview process. Colleagues need to get along in order to get work done, so it’s absolutely worth meeting prospective employees rather than just skimming over their credentials. Again, this goes both ways. I was a whole person being introduced to other whole people, and just as I was hoping they’d ‘like’ me, I was hoping to ‘like’ them beyond their job titles too (spoiler alert, I did).
You can leave your hat on
A conventional approach to work has meant putting on your professional hat and replacing it with your domestic hat (a beanie, perhaps) once you get home. However, this paradigm is shifting. There is growing recognition of the importance of bringing our whole selves to work, with benefits including more meaningful connections, more diversity of thought, and more focus on wellbeing.
It’s fair to assume that the concept of work/life balance requires this more traditional compartmentalisation. In order to truly engage in both spheres, you need to be able to switch cleanly between them with no bleeding edges. However, working environments that aim to support their people - as whole people, not as worker bees - can actually provide a better experience both at work and at home.
At Yarno, we’re supported to be our whole selves at work by:
- Taking wellbeing days a few times a year to do something meaningful, refreshing and empowering for ourselves
- Sharing great vibes from our weekends in team meetings
- Having dedicated spaces for chats about family, books, pets, travel or whatever else floats your fun boat
- Investing time in internal learning projects
- Having the ‘output over hours’ mentality of a flexible workplace
- Encouraging a culture of communication, feedback and collaboration
Bring your whole self to work. I don’t believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional and it is all personal.
Bringing your whole self to work doesn’t mean you should be clocking time rattling off the minutiae of your non-employment hours. It also doesn’t mean that you should disregard boundaries (yours and others’) in terms of work/personal life. It’s not appropriate to share everything, and not everybody will feel comfortable sharing aspects of their lives. It’s also important to recognise that there are situations where people don’t have the luxury of being their authentic self without fear or prejudice. Society has some way to go, but we can do our part by helping to build workplace cultures that are supportive, self-aware, and psychologically safe.
Bringing your whole self can enhance your work performance, rather than be a hindrance to it. We are whole people, not numbers in a production line, and the fact that you’re a new parent or poetry enthusiast or capoeira champion is not something you need to sweep under the rug when doing your job.
Not shutting off my ‘other’ self makes me a more creative and motivated employee, and feeling accepted and supported at work has a hugely positive effect on my life outside. Bringing your whole self to work means not needing to hide your other roles and recognising the capabilities you bring to this one.
