Behind the scenes: Life at GoCardless

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been busy working on our new video showcasing life at GoCardless, which you can find on our new careers page.

In this blog, we take a sneak peak behind the scenes of the video and how we decided to tell our story.

Why have we created a new team video?

Our original team video did a great job of showing what it was like to work at GoCardless in 2016. Since then, the team has grown by more than 150 people and we have moved in to our new bespoke office (three times the size of our previous home) – we needed a fresh video to help us tell the story, share our vision for the future and showcase life at GoCardless as it is now.

As we’ve grown the team in London, we have also expanded internationally. GoCardless is now available in 23 countries, with offices in Paris and Melbourne.

A taste of Life At GoCardless

The aim was simple, to answer the question:

‘What is it like to work at GoCardless?’

To get a real picture of what it’s like to work at GoCardless, we spoke to lots of different people across the company, limiting the number of questions to allow people time to expand their answers.

To warm up, we started with: ‘Can you describe GoCardless in one word?’

There isn’t a one word answer for this but everyone’s answers together start to paint a picture; fun, inclusive, unpredictable (at times).

As we scale, our values continue to underpin everything we do which is why we did not shy away from the bigger topics; women in tech, diversity and inclusion.

“We have a 25% target for women in leadership roles. We’re not setting quotas for the sake of setting quotas and reaching a number, it’s more a bit of a reminder to ourselves that we need to encourage lots of different talents when we’re looking for new people and also to encourage people who wouldn’t naturally apply for a role to come forward.” Nanna, Director of Banking Operations.

Actions speak louder than words

Filming in the office was a natural choice. Our space is designed to fit our culture and we were keen for people to feel as comfortable as possible. We created a pop-up studio in our office with the GoCardless blue backdrop for the talking heads.

As well as hearing from the team, we wanted to give a broader picture of what it’s like to work here. From meetings on the bleachers, to team lunch on the benches, to the football pitch, to yoga mats, to our Hackathon; we wanted to bring the Life to Life at GoCardless.

The most common theme to come out of the interviews on filming day was the importance of the team. We’re lucky to be surrounded by talented people here, but GoCardless is also a place where people are comfortable being vulnerable and asking for help. The video includes raw footage of people as they had mics fitted and began answering questions. We intentionally didn’t feed them the questions before so we could capture the most honest responses.

Telling a story in 2 minutes is testing, especially when you have so much to say. We collected hours of footage; from weekly stand-ups, to coffee in the kitchen, to our mission and goals for the future. At GoCardless we are united on a mission to become the first global bank to bank payments network.

The challenge has been producing a short video that encompasses all of the above.

To find out more about our story and #LifeAtGoCardless, keep an eye on our careers page and social media channels (@GoCardless).