Afternoon all! At my company, ikigai, we are on a mission to help people grow their long term wealth and as part of that we offer free personal finance workshops, covering topics like investing, ISAs, budgeting, debt, pensions - generally how to make your money work best for you!

We’d be delighted to arrange a workshop for our Ops Stories community if there’s interest - please give me an emoji if you’d like to attend (or DM me if you’d like to arrange a separate free workshop for your team!)

Hey all! I want to reshare @nice-motherboard-85822's message on pensions here (it's in one of the threads) just because I think this is an absolute goldmine for anyone thinking about pensions, pension providers, salary sacrifice, etc. (@nice-motherboard-85822 thank you so much for this incredibly insightful answer!)

Hey everyone, Trying to help out a friend in need... My friend is Part-Qualified ACA, but with COVID and some personal circumstances has been massively struggling with the final exams. They're a) worried they're going to fail and b) considering doing something else. However, they're really worried that they won't be employable having failed / not managed to complete the final exams, and don't know what options they might have. They have been working full time (training contract) at a top-20 accountancy firm doing tax accounting for the last 4.5 years, and I can speak volumes about their capability, drive, and values. I would love to get your thoughts on what roles might be a good next step for them if the worst does happen (for clarity they're not looking yet, I just want to be able to point to a couple avenues to give them a bit of a confidence boost in a safety net to get them through this next period). Many thanks everyone - any feedback greatly appreciated!

Morning all, apologies if this has already been asked but does anyone have any good examples of updated policies for a return to work with a hybrid office/WFH approach? We're keeping a cap on office numbers for the moment, but want to give clearer guidance to the team on how we'll manage numbers, communications, etc etc. Also keen to see if anyone has drafted guidelines on communications/procedures if a team member is told to self-isolate or tests positive, especially if they've been office based (the government guidance is a bit too vague for my liking to just send to the team)

Hi everyone, at my startup, we have 30 days vacation days + 8 bank holidays and we do not offer any sick leave days. We are also a remote company offering flexible working. Could anyone please share what you offer in terms of the number of sick days and what you found it's working best for people/ making people happy? Thank you all for your help! This group is amazing!

Hi Everyone, hope you’re all doing well! Could anyone recommend any good brand agencies, ideally with fintech/paytech experience…we’re in need of a refresh/rebrand 🙂

I hope everyone is having a great start to the day! 🙂 Could anyone who works in consulting share with me how you assign/ separate responsibilities for line managers and project managers when managing their teams? What is the list of responsibilities for each of them? I would be very grateful for your help on this! We have line managers who run performance reviews for the team member, for example, and at the same time project managers who manage a specific project and the same team member while on that project. The project can run from 1 to 6 months and the team member can switch to a new project with a new project manager. The line manager is the same for the entire year. Thank you all for your help!

Hey! I recently moved to Barcelona, and wondering if anyone else in this group is in the city? 🤞🏼

Good morning! For those in the U.K. have any of you changed your in person meeting policies based on the most recent wave of delta covid cases? We want to plan a summer get together in August but are worried with the numbers increasing.

We have an office that we are looking to sublet immediately I wanted to see if anyone here might be interested or know anyone who's looking for a space? Details are as follows: • Location: Old St. • Size: 26 person office 1,410 sqft • Desks, chairs, storage all provided • 2 private meeting room • Kitchen and breakout space • Term: 12 mths + but we can be flexible https://hubblehq.com/office-space/7862/old-street-warehouse-style-office Cost: £7.5k p/m + VAT but open to offers. Please message me if you want to speak in more detail, or view the space 🙂

Morning everyone! Does anyone have experience moving from operational outsourcing to an in-house model? Relevant areas could be customer support, data mining, research etc.

Hi all, can anyone share your policy on the notice period - do you increase the number of weeks of notice based on how long the employee has been with the company? If so, then what are the timeframes and the #of weeks of notice that you apply? Thanks, everyone!

Hey gang 🙋‍♂️ we’ve decided to run a tender process for our cardboard box supplier ahead of our next big Veganuary push 📦 Would be suuuper grateful for any suggestions of board manufacturers in the UK who can fulfil ~10,000 units a week of custom cut and printed boxes 🙏 many thanks in advance!

Morning all. I'm looking to an intro to any car rental businesses for short and mid-term rentals. We offer car leasing but due to current supply issues need to find solutions for clients before their car arrives! Can anyone help with an intro (Avis, Enterprise, Sixt etc...)?

Hey all! I wondered if any of you knew of any marketing equivalent of COO Stories for CMO's, Heads of Marketing? Any thoughts massively appreciated. Thank-you!

Good morning all, an acquaintance of mine recently stated a new Ops consulting gig and is looking to be introduced to someone with senior product management experience, who would be interested in mentoring her on PM? Anyone interested or know of anyone who might please DM, so I can make an introduction.

Hi all, I was wondering if any of you can recommend 3PL providers in the US? We are looking to hold some stock there for local orders. Thank you!

Hi all. I'm planning a company away day and I'm looking for a really inspiring, motivating keynote speaker. Has anyone got any recommends?

Hey guys! I’m looking for a company to deliver lunch to all of our staff - we have staff all around the UK (incl. Wales). Does anyone know of any good companies for this that aren’t outrageously expensive? Ideally looking to spend around £20-£30 a head!

hey all I’m slowly starting to run out of our branded kit (shirts/mugs) and will start to look for a new supplier soon. Does anyone have any recommendations? Ideally I’d like to be able to order in smaller batches as we have very little storage space. OR alternatively if you know any companies that are easy to work with in terms of getting kit branded in smaller batches (only know of/worked in the 100s/1000s)

Hi Guys, I wondered if anybody either knows of any great freelance product designers, UX designers etc? In the past with another group we maintained a Google Doc with options, maybe we could do something similar for Ops Stories? 🙂

Hey all, I'm looking to follow more 'Ops' / 'Start Up' content on LinkedIn and wondered if anyone has recommendations on people / companies to follow. I've moved around industries so have a mixed bag of content popping up at the moment haha 🙂

hi everyone! we're going to finally purchase company laptops for our team, and I'm wondering if anyone has gone through the IT process of getting everything set up security wise/worked with a good outsourcing firm? Would love any/all recommendations/advice!

Has anyone worked with an excellent office broker (or individual who finds office spaces) recently (we're looking for a 30-40 person space in case that helps)? We're trying to avoid working with the brokers who only seem to have relationships with the big coworking spaces (e.g. WeWork, Second Home, Fora) as they've wasted our time in the past.

hey all! I'm trying to renew our Management Liability insurance and it's proving way harder than I thought it would be...our broker claiming that's because of COVID which took insurers' scrutiny to a whole other level. has anyone had similar experience recently? or breezed through the whole process (and if so, who's your insurer?)

Hi everyone! I'm looking to run an A/B test Wild deodorant vs. another deodorant - with a group of users who have never used Wild before. Has anyone done consumer product A/B testing like this before? We do a lot of testing with our own customer base, but I'm keen to access people that have never tried our product. Did you work with an agency? How did you source the users? Etc. Any insights welcome. Many thanks!

Hello all! Just wondering if anyone knows anyone at The Supper Club? 🤔 They are a membership network for founders.

Hey all 👋 - I'm looking to connect with folks who've got experience in Product Operations. I'm part of launching a new product at accuRx and we're trying a bunch of different experiments to drive adoption. I'd love to speak to people about approaches taken previously, creative tactics used and any specific tools you used as part of your workflow. Let me know if you have any experience in this area 😄

Does anyone have an example of a travel policy they could share? We haven't spent anything due to covid but there's likely to be some UK travel for the rest of the year. Mainly just looking for what is considered reasonable budget for hotel, daily meal allowance etc!