Simon is a director at AND Digital.

AND Digital was established in 2014 and is one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies, employing over 600 people and generating an annual turnover of £42m. In this year’s The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For, AND was ranked at number 10, demonstrating its people first focus for tech talent.

Given you hold a senior role in your organisation, can you explain the motivation for what you do?

There are a couple of angles to that. I feel an immense responsibility for both the clients we serve and the people I’m responsible for, so there is a clear motivation in terms of doing right by them and doing the very best I can for clients who pay us money to deliver results. There is a significant motivator there in terms of ensuring that we do that and we do that to their satisfaction. 

There’s a big responsibility in terms of making sure I support, protect and look after and help grow the people in the Club. That’s a weighty responsibility and something I take very seriously. 

And on a simple level, I always want to do my best. I want to finish each day knowing I’ve done everything I can to deliver the best results. Often there are challenges, but I suppose that’s why you’re in the role. 

What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – professionally and personally? 

Professionally – in senior roles you manage a lot of change and ambiguity and that’s been heightened in this scenario with the need to provide a degree of clarity when there is little out there. There’s been a lot of focus on managing client work where either there’s a move to complete remote working; or just finishing because a particular client’s financial position has changed significantly and they have to pause or stop the work or the projects they were doing. It’s about managing those aspects, which one does anyway, but it’s been significantly increased in this period. 

And then, I suppose, managing people on furlough. So furlough – great scheme, hugely, hugely appreciative of the support the government has put in place. But where we’ve got people who aren’t out with clients, we’ve put them on furlough. It’s the logical thing to do. Then we have to manage that group of people ensuring that they’re falling within the guidelines in terms of not contributing to work with the company, and supporting them and helping them be engaged and motivated. To make sure we’re walking that line effectively in terms of looking after the individual without compromising any guidelines. 

And then personally? I suppose I’ve tried not to dwell on that too much. I’m not doing the commute, which is great. I’m doing a bit more in terms of exercise, which is good. Lovely to see my family more, most of the time! The homeschooling – I’ve got a new respect or increased respect for teachers. Yeah… one does miss those informal or chance encounters with people, or interactions, whereas everything now is structured and I spend all day, every day on Zoom at my desk. Now, there are far, far worse things in life, but – you know – that human interaction, those chance conversations… you have to be very deliberate now in order to affect those. 

What were the main challenges you faced in your role before the pandemic, and what were the causes of those challenges? 

In professional services and in the digital world we operate in, the key challenge is ensuring you’ve got the right skills to fit the client’s needs. Now and in the future. So trying to make sure you’ve got that match and you’ve got that compelling proposition – that’s the one of the big questions you face. I don’t think that necessarily changes in this scenario. It’s probably eased to a certain extent. So with our model, we look after our clients within the club. So if we can’t service a particular need for a client, because of a specific tech stack we might not have experience of within a club, we typically have to turn it down rather than reach out to other clubs. Now, with everyone operating remotely, that gives us a bit more leeway actually in terms of a bit more of a level playing field – so it’s far more easier for someone in Edinburgh to support a London client. I prefer to think of the positives in these scenarios, rather than the challenges. 

Work with our financial sector clients is cracking on, going well. As the lock down hit and the Covid 19 implications began to play through there was a bit of a wobble but, fundamentally, we carried on and the work we’re doing is going really well. I think where our clients have to change their business model to adapt to the new scenario, how that plays through takes longer. Media – when advertising revenues drop, how do you address that gap in the revenue coming in and the content you’re putting out? How do you generate different revenue streams? Obviously there will be different revenue streams and there will be a load of ideas coming through, but in some instances where there are fundamental issues it can take a bit of time for those to flow through. Media is an example, retail is a really great example: some retailers are thriving; some, where there is no online retail presence – huge issues, what do they do? Do they get up online quickly? If not, how then do they manage? So yeah, some interesting questions.  

Many people are talking about Covid-19 being a game changer for society. What do you understand ‘re-set’ to mean? 

I was thinking about this this morning as I was preparing for the call. It seemed to me that it’s quite similar to New Year’s resolutions. It’s a much bigger example, but it’s a chance to pause and reflect on: what do we take out of this, what are the positives, what are the behaviours or the ways we’re working or the cultural shifts that have happened in this period that we want to continue with and how do our priorities change?

And I suspect that someone will continue – some will be stuck to, and some will be broken. 

I think there are some obvious ones, which I’m sure that the other individuals you have spoken to have spoken about. The myth of working remotely has been exploded, I think, in terms of where people didn’t have confidence it could work or didn’t have confidence that a workforce or their employees would be able to operate in that space… actually, by and large, in my world in the digital space and I’m sure across most, it has worked very effectively. So I think there will be a shift. Now I don’t think that means we’re all going to work remotely forever, but I think it will be much more of a natural aspect within a working week. 

I suspect that most companies will look to have a higher degree of financial stability for those rainy days. I think a number of companies were caught on the hop in terms of level of reserves. Now everyone can be very clever in hindsight and I’m not suggesting that people should have done better, but having a greater ability to ride out a rainy day might be sensible going forward. 

I do think that one of the real positives has been seeing the positive impact, to a certain degree, of the environment and the planet. I think if that can be continued and held up as an important aspect of moving forward I think that will be a really big win. 

And I think, finally, respecting those key workers who are the ones making the world turn at the moment. Who are actually keeping us together. The food producers, the health workers, the delivery drivers, those people who make the fundamentals of this world work in terms of what we need rather than what we want. And I think the people who deliver what we need, making sure we actually, I hope, in a respect and remuneration sense, acknowledge them more fully than maybe we have done previously. 

What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example? 

In terms of the ability of people to work remotely I think that there’s been a huge shift in terms of tools and ways of working. There’s all sorts of meeting tools, communication tools and so on, all of which are being refined and approved. Zoom is updated pretty frequently and, actually, 3 months ago a lot of people wouldn’t have had the confidence to use it because they hadn’t had exposure to it. But it’s becoming much more accessible. There are a load of digital solutions that are enabling people to operate effectively remotely and we should continue that and hopefully that type of capability will be taken forward. 

I do think there has definitely been a greater respect, or caring, for each other at a personal level. And I think if we can continue to remember and do that when lives probably become busier again then I think that will be a huge, huge positive off the back of this. So when someone went to shop for their elderly next door neighbour, is there any reason why that kind of relationship does not happen when we rush back to offices or when schools kick off again? I hope not. I hope when we actually say thank you to the delivery person or the nurse or the doctor who has a big impact on your life… I hope we all have a bit more respect and support for those people around us. 

Thanks Simon.