How bunny.net Keeps Spirits High in a Fast-paced Startup Environment

For anyone working in a startup, we’re sure you know how hectic things can be. It’s both exceptionally rewarding, and at the same time, very stressful. Priorities can change overnight, and you’re trying to run so fast, that you forget your legs behind you. All that, while trying to build the next exceptional thing, with ever-more ambitious goals.

At the same time, life poses challenges of its own, and it’s ever so easy to end up in a situation where it’s all just too much. With that in mind, our team's mental health and well-being aren’t just a buzzword for us at bunny.net. Even though we race towards building a faster internet, one of our core values is to put our team first and acknowledge that our people are what makes bunny.net hop at all.

Of course, keeping everyone happy is not always simple, or even possible. We’ve had our fair share of successes and failures, and our goal is to keep trying new things, learning, and improving with the goal of building a company where people love to be, and feel comfortable racing fast, while also feeling great.

Today, we want to share some of the initiatives we do as an organization, as teams, and as individuals that keep our spirits high, and help us bring closer together, while we pursue our ambitious mission.

We hope these might help other teams around the world come together better and keep spirits high, even in fast-moving environments.

Turning Remote Work Into a Work-Life Harmony: Being remote first from the start, our journey has taught us the importance of flexible working hours. When you think about work, it doesn't really matter when to start and finish, as long as we're productive and mentally sharp during those hours. Whatever works for each individual, is what works best for the rest of the team.

We worked extremely hard to build an async culture and enable the ability for each individual to work where they want, and when they want to make time for hobbies, family, and rest. Enabling this is crucial for us, after all, a rested mind is a creative powerhouse.

Positive Work Environment: We strive to create a workspace that is not only productive but also enjoyable. Whether you need a moment with a guitar, a book, a cup of coffee, or a PlayStation controller, it's all about creating spaces where our team can hit the recharge button.

The #amazingness Channel: Feeling good and motivated is all about small victories. To keep celebrating each other’s accomplishments, we created an #amazingness Slack channel, where we encourage each other to give high fives to each other for doing something great. When bigger goals seem very far away, it’s important to keep our heads up, and this channel is our way of keeping each other running forward.

A Well-being Budget: We put people first, and know that feeling good physically is a big piece of the mental wellness puzzle. To help with that, we introduced a yearly well-being budget to help our team members feel great. Yoga, boxing, or maybe those new running shoes? It's on us.

Destigmatized Access To Mental Health Support: Life's ups and downs don't clock out at 5 PM, and neither does our support for our people. From day one, every bunny.net team member gets access to BetterHelp.com. Private, no questions asked. Because sometimes, we all need a bit of extra support to navigate through those tougher moments. It’s not an answer to everything, but we’ve seen lives completely turned around for the better.

Building The Bunny Squad: More than anything, we consistently ensure that working here is about being part of a community that genuinely cares. Building towards a faster internet, we're in it together, celebrating the good times and supporting each other through the not-so-good ones. We actively train, and encourage all of our leaders that they are there to put their people first, even in challenging situations.

At bunny.net, we're not just working; we're growing, laughing, and sometimes stumbling together. And through it all, we're committed to making sure everyone feels like they're part of something special. Because when we look after each other, there's no limit to what we can achieve.

While these initiatives work for us, and we’re excited to see the fluffle raving about how much they enjoy being a part of our mission, we know we’re still a long way away from being perfect, and we keep trying new things every single week.

It’s important, to keep in mind that each team and each company is different. What works for the culture at bunny.net, might not work for everyone else, but, but we hope we’ve sparked some new ideas for other teams to try as well!