Q: What’s a good way to promote interaction and alignment between all of the offices within my company?

A: a-connect, a Switzerland-based company with offices in Zürich, Dusseldorf, Boston, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Singapore, sponsors a “Partner Abroad” week during which staff members spend a week per year in a different a-connect office around the globe.

The purpose of the week in another office is to share best practices, increase transparency, and encourage a collaborative work culture between the offices. The main benefits of the “Partner Abroad” week tend to be the informal cross-pollination, friendships, and trust that form outside of the workplace as well as an enhanced understanding of what the business looks like in other regions of the world.

CEO Hanne de Mora explains, “Our mission is to attract the best talent to our organization and to our pool of independent professionals… Our internal team is relatively small and we expect even our most junior employees to think and act as entrepreneurs and General Managers who build their own businesses within a-connect… We treat our employees and independent professionals as real partners and human beings and we listen and respect our partners and value their views and contributions - which is the essence of democracy.”

To learn more about a-connect and their democratic practices, click here.