In conversation with our chief OnHander, Sanjay Lobo
Being a Founder and CEO of a startup was never going to be easy. But when Chief OnHander, Sanjay Lobo started OnHand, we had no idea that we were hurtling towards a worldwide pandemic that would last as long as it has.
Not only that, but he’s got a wife and 3 children at home (and the recent addition of a rabbit called Bob). Juggling home and work life as a parent can be a challenge at the best of times, but juggling home life with an early-stage startup that suddenly needed to grow to meet a massive demand during COVID-19, as well as complete a round of funding? That’s another level.
I (Charlotte, copywriter for OnHand) decided it was a good idea to sit down (virtually) with Sanjay to see how he’s really doing. We chatted about working from home during the pandemic, how he’s managing to balance having one on one time with his children, and where OnHand is headed next…
How are you?
How am I?… I'm alright. I had a week off recently, which was really nice. I think I'm now more conscious of, having had a week off, trying to keep a relaxed mind frame. Which is probably impossible. But I’m much more conscious of it - like folks usually are after coming back from hols.
What did you do on your week off?
It was really interesting, actually. Completely different to normal, as probably all holidays are at the moment… But really different because my kids were in school, my wife was working, and so, really, it was just me.
Nice!
Yeah, which was really nice. I used to travel loads for work, and when you travel for work you’re kind of by yourself anyway so I'm used to that. It doesn't really phase me too much. I’m really fine with going to restaurants by myself and of course, the world's opened up again so I did a lot of lunches out. It was nice, I enjoyed that. I have no embarrassment factor about eating out solo... But I used to!
Did you used to take a book with you and pretend you were waiting for someone?
I think the first time, when I used to travel, I was like “well, I could just stay in my hotel room but this is getting really boring…” So I’d walk past a restaurant that I really wanted to go and eat in. I’d walk past it, like, three times before going in.
Plucking up the courage?
No, just getting hungry! As hunger levels were going up I was just like “damn it, just go in!”
It’s good to know that you’re alright and you’ve had a nice week off. If you could score your mental wellbeing on a scale of 0-10 throughout the pandemic, what would you give it?
It would be relatively low, for a number of reasons. I think during the pandemic I would probably say, like a five or six. I'm a naturally optimistic and happy-go-lucky person so that's great. My mindset is kind of predisposed to being happy and, typically, I’m reasonably high energy and all that kind of stuff.
During the pandemic, I had all the ridiculous pressures everyone in the world was under through being locked down and at home, not being able to do what you’d usually do, and being massively restricted …But the way OnHand worked during that period was changing hugely and really in-demand. Both really good things. As the pandemic kicked off, we doubled, tripled, quadrupled in demand volumes very, very quickly and our tech was really early stage, so we weren't quite ready for it.
The initial month or two was really tough on workload, and it didn't reduce, it just kept growing. Again, all really good for the business but I guess that meant taking on a life of seven-days-a-week-craziness for long periods of time - pretty much the entirety of last year.
And I'm married, I’ve got kids, and so there's that feeling of knowing you're letting other people down in your life. You kinda sign up for that taking on a start-up, but the reality is super tough. And then, at the same time, to ensure we can grow and meet the needs of our customers, we've gone through a funding round at the start of 2021. Funding rounds are always super busy, really intense, and take a number of months. Again, really good for the business. But in terms of personal mental health… Wow. That was an intense year.
How do you manage it? How do you stay happy? Because I think most of the team are very confused as to how you stay in such a positive mindset. You don't seem to get stressed, which is great for employees because then we don't feel like there’s anything we really need to worry about.
Good. That’s how it should be.
I used to feel really stressed at work, very early on in my career. I remember this guy who really should have been a lot more stressed than me. He ran an M&A team, which is always really, really busy - lots of high-risk money stuff. And he was just always ultra-calm. In any disaster scenario - “this deal’s going completely wrong, there's no way we should do it, panic, panic, panic” - he was just always incredibly relaxed and calm in his manner. The way he spoke, the way he reacted. I remember asking him about it and he was just like, “yeah, it's all crazy underneath but my whole persona has to be cool, calm, collected. Because if I'm not, then everyone else is going to lose it.” And that kind of stuck with me.
In my early career as a manager, I could see people having the same kind of stress levels that I had when I was a junior. I think I'd always take that mindset of “cool, calm, collected” and, when people were panicking about something I’d ask 2 questions straight off - first “Has someone died?” (in the scenario I was working in then it would have been very, very unlikely that someone would have) and, second, “have we lost a million pounds?”. And almost always, the answer would have been no to both. And then immediately, that person would take a massive inhale of breath and would relax before telling me about what they had been panicking about. Basically I’d set the bar for what to really panic about, most other things we can find a way to fix. And if you’re not panicking, hopefully that helps the team tell you when things are going wrong so you can give help in those situations early Vs the team being afraid to share.
It’s about keeping a healthy perspective on things.
Yeah exactly. Recently one of our investors passed away. There are all these other stressors in anyone's life, but someone dying completely unexpectedly… it puts things in perspective. There are almost always many worse things going on in the world. I don’t want to trivialise my or anyone else's stresses, but perspective has helped me.
That kind of leads me to my next question… If you could give your pre-pandemic self some advice, what would it be?
It’s probably very similar advice for most occasions in life when stress levels go up. “It’s gonna be alright!” Very helpful advice most of the time, but you only see it with hindsight.
OnHand switched to being a B2B offering during the pandemic. That was a complete rethink on how OnHand monetises and creates a sustainable business - literally starting from zero again and, like all start-ups, with a clock ticking on your runway and cash burn. When we made the leap we had several really good signs - like our first customer, Newcastle Building Society, cementing the idea for us and then several more businesses coming onboard within a few months of launch - including great places to work winners like Softcat plc - when we had no proof points to show. But if the idea didn’t work, that was it - we’d likely fail to reach sustainability or be able to raise money again…
Several months into the pandemic, we’d proved OnHand worked to engage WFH employees - not just that - doing good was great for their wellbeing….employees really loved it. Many employees were posting about their experiences on social media and things really took off for us as more and more businesses tuned into the wellbeing needs of their teams. I remember thinking “if we keep going on this trajectory then we really should make it” but there are definitely moments in that period where you just don’t know….and of course right at the start no one is there to tell you “it’s gonna be alright”!
It’s the benefit of hindsight… it’s all going to be okay. Of course a tonne of work and the team really smashing it also helped!
Yeah, I guess you never know what’s around the corner anyway.
Well, no. We started off as B2C, earning a revenue stream from the people we helped, and of course, the people we helped - older and vulnerable folks in the community - were on day 1 of the pandemic suddenly the most vulnerable people on the planet. So charging them was completely wrong. Flipping into a completely different business model during the pandemic was a huge risk but completely necessary and, you know, thankfully it's worked out for us.
Yeah, it made everything feel a lot easier. As it was happening, it was stressful, I think, but afterwards… It just feels like we're on the right path now.
Right, yeah! And that takes out loads of stress. OnHand has grown into a far stronger business - as an employee engagement and wellbeing offering, because of Covid. The path we’re on feels like we’re meeting a huge need that’s relatively new, unmet, and there’s great demand for it.
That brings different stresses but it takes off the stress of “will we survive?", “will we be able to keep everyone employed?”, “will we still be here in a year’s time?”. That’s gone. Now it’s more “okay, there’s great demand for what we do. How do we service it all really well?”
It’s a different level of stress.
I feel like that’s kind of a “good” stress though? ‘Cause it’s kind of inspiring you to carry on and be the best. That’s much more fun.
Yeah, much more fun! Running out of money is a terrible stress, personally and professionally. The stress of having to meet the demand of customers that really want your product? And that product being great for engagement, wellbeing and community? That’s a wonderful, wonderful scenario to be in.
What are some of the things the team could be doing to support you?
Thanks for asking. So, first off, the team is amazing and I think I've said it occasionally to you guys in our team sessions.
So, what's happened over the last year is the team has got better in all areas of the business than I am in any aspects of the business, which is great. It means I can rely on you and the marketing team to deliver wonderful content that brings in new leads for us, I can rely on the business development team to convert those leads better than I can, our customer service team to look after them, again, better than I can, and the technology to work all behind it, as well as our partnerships team to bring on new partners, onboard them and work on launch plans, again, better than I can. I love the feedback that we get from partners!
I think the one thing I can get better at is giving the team more responsibility. There’s this kind of conflict as a startup. As the founder, you have got to be fairly manic about the control over the business and direction it goes, and all other aspects of working. But then to let people grow, you kind of have to push them to answer the questions themselves. I'm not saying the team doesn’t do this, lots of the team do this already ….but the first management lesson I got was around delegation and how when people ask you a question, you should ask the question back. Not “here’s the answer”, which I can tend to do, especially when we're really busy. I tend to just answer the question vs saying, “Hey, Charlotte, what do you think the answer is?”
Typically you'll find your team just know the answer, they know this stuff really well. They just need a bit of confidence. If someone like me always answers the questions then they’ll always ask. I can definitely empower the team to answer the questions themselves and be confident about them.
Generally speaking, a way employees can help management is by taking responsibility and having confidence in making their own decisions. But it’s a two-way street - they can’t do that without management making them feel comfortable to do so. It’s okay to get the answers wrong and it’s okay to do something, do it wrong, and not even have checked with me first.
That’s something I’ve never really experienced in another company. Constantly being reassured that getting something wrong is fine… because none of us really know what we’re doing.
Haha! Yeah, I think that should apply in all organisations - people will make mistakes. You gotta learn from mistakes. In the startup world it's even more pronounced because we've never done this before, nor has anyone else, so you can't know what the right answer is a lot of the time. So go ahead, get it wrong ….moving fast and learning is more important.
So in the next question, we’re moving onto home life. What has working from home looked like for you this past year?
This is a really interesting question. I loved working in the office. I loved our office, I love seeing people in the office. I loved that it would give me focus when I was in the office. I loved hearing people chatting about the things they're up to and hearing stuff you just wouldn't otherwise. And I kind of liked being away from home… where the washing up or the laundry was. All that kind of stuff. And I'm a procrastinator who will distract myself with anything that's vaguely possible to distract myself with.
The immediate pain of working from home was difficult for all the reasons that are probably the same for lots of people. And then, sharing space with three kids who were remote-schooling and my wife who had just, pre-pandemic, started working quite a bit… That was tough. Haha. That was painful. I’ve been relegated to the basement which gets no sun, so that’s painful as well. We’ve sort of vaguely begun to decorate it and that feels nicer, and I’ve taken my coffee machine down there now, which is also nicer.
I guess over time, as with everything, you start to get into a routine and it starts to kind of work. I still think it's nowhere near as good as having some office time, it certainly doesn't have to be all the time, but some office time I certainly miss. I definitely think it’s not as good for me in terms of focus.
On the flip side, there are benefits. Having the kids at certain times is lovely. They finish their school at 4 or 4:30 pm and ….when I was working in offices, I would typically miss their dinner. And so having a family dinner almost every day is kind of cool. Now that they’re back at school I drop them off most mornings and it’s just lovely. So there are massive benefits to working from home. Sure, there's stuff I don't like about it. I hope the world, or the vast amount of the world, gets it right in having the balance of home plus some office life in the future. It seems like that's widely recognised as the most likely path and I think it will work.
It must be nice having the kids come and disturb you at 3:30 or 4 because that's like the afternoon slump as well. So you have something to break up the afternoon.
It’s a weird one! The bit I struggle with now is that I haven’t quite finished at that time, so what do I do? Do I stop and go back to work much later? I haven’t got the balance quite right yet.
How do you manage to carve out time with the family?
It’s really difficult. It's really difficult because of the volume of work we have at OnHand. I don't think I've worked this hard ever. I mean, I've worked really hard as a lawyer and in some of the exec roles I had in the past. But actually nothing as intense as this. It's intense more than anything. For long periods I’ve worked seven days a week. It's fine for a little bit, but then if it's multiple years, which it is, it feels completely nuts. So the balance of work and life is completely out of whack. I think there's an acknowledgment of that across me and my family.
You have to try and balance it and think “well, where can I have those moments?” Being in lockdown, the massive benefit is that they actually have no choice. They’ve gotta hang out with me! So when they come and disturb me at 330 or 4 o’clock that’s kind of cool. I always try and make some time for weekend stuff. We try and do something every weekend. And then I take an interest in the kids’ stuff. Last night, I would have taken the oldest kid to football practice and it’s probably the only time we get one on one together, which is really cool because he's 14, so he’s at that age where life gets a bit more experimental. So that's kind of fun, if a little embarrassing, having those kind of chats.
I guess for me it's about taking the moments where that can naturally happen, embracing them, realising that they're not completely ideal, but you've got to embrace those moments and find other ways to compensate for the reality of start-up work/life balance.
It’s hard enough having one person to neglect because you’re working too hard. But you have four people to spend one on one time with and then all together as well. That’s a lot!
Yeah, right. Well, you take the moments. One of the highlights of my day is just breakfast. I have breakfast with the two younger ones. Every morning I wake them up, we have breakfast together, and it's just fun. I put on the radio and do stupid dad dances. That’s the highlight of my day. So, embrace the moments which are there for you if you make them.
Very wise words. How do you wind down? Do you have a point in the day where you’re like “okay I’ve got to stop working.”
I think the honest answer is that work is almost always in my mind somewhere. I’ll very likely be thinking about it while sleeping, on occasion. Work is almost always in the back of my mind and I’m really conscious of it. That’s startup founder reality ...and I hope it translates into OnHand becoming the sustainable business I believe in. That we do good, massively helps.
I go running when I can, which is great because typically when you exercise it hurts at some point, so you can’t really think about anything. Running has been wonderful. Something with the kids at the weekend will distract me as well: going for a walk or watching a movie or something like that. And drinks with buddies. I have two ‘dad groups’ that I go out with which is lots of fun and definitely relaxes me.
What are your top 3 most inspiring moments at OnHand from the past year?
We’ve had some great moments in the last year. The first was the tech kicking in. As we started the pandemic, we were still really early on in our tech experience on the app. It didn't quite work. It certainly couldn't match people so that the volunteers contact the people they were helping directly, get the shopping list directly, then go get the shopping and have refunds processed automatically. It just wasn't at that point. But the tech kicked in within two to four weeks of the pandemic starting. And it worked!
Our tech lead did an amazing, amazing job of putting that live. It meant we could go from older adults calling us, trying to give us a shopping list, us trying to contact volunteers and let them know what to get and where to go, then us manually processing hundreds of refunds….to the volunteer picking up the mission on app, calling the older adults and getting the shopping list themselves, going off and doing it all then claiming automated refunds via app, without us being involved at any step. We just track that it actually happened, which let us go from helping hundreds of people to helping thousands and now we’re on our way to tens of thousands and more. Basically the idea of making volunteering as easy as ordering your take-away on Deliveroo - the tech made that real, really early in the pandemic.
So that was the number one highlight - seeing the tech work. And understanding that it could scale. We can scale to hundreds of thousands of missions, then millions of missions, anywhere.
Magic!
Yeah, right. It was magic because all of a sudden, so many things came together. The app works based on your location and because people were now working from home, we had volunteers across the country that could access missions near them and then go and help someone locally. All of a sudden we went from being in London, to being in London and Newcastle, to “actually we can just do this anywhere.” All of a sudden, we were helping people anywhere in the country, with volunteers anywhere in the country. It’s all down to the tech, the tech really enabled our growth.
Highlight number two is winning awards. Six months or so into the pandemic we won Tech For Good at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. One of our Tech for Good heroes, Olio, was also a finalist. We see them as one of the trailblazers for Tech for Good and hope we can follow their success. We're still early stage so it's just really nice, a huge recognition. Huge recognition that this thing we've got, others also think it’s great, and they also have the same belief that we have - that this could be a huge thing and massive for community.
Winning the award was really wonderful but it’s reflected in the team. None of it happens without the team being really fantastic across the board. A new corporate wants to work with us having seen some of our marketing content, the biz dev team convert and the partnerships team then onboard them, a referral comes in, our CX team picks it up, puts it on the app, our volunteers...having been onboarded by our partnerships team...accept those on app and so on. And, the tech behind it all works for that to be a seamless experience. Winning the awards is great to get the recognition, but especially because it's such a team effort that makes the whole thing work.
Highlight number 3, for me, is the volunteers. I can't remember how many thousands of volunteers signed up with us within weeks as Covid kicked off. Ridiculous volumes. The tech worked to allow them to sign up, but it was mostly the volume of demand to help that was incredible. We work with businesses who pay a small amount for their employees to volunteer with us. It’s great for wellbeing and it works from wherever they are. The demand from those corporate volunteers has meant we could change the business too. We’ve looked at the skill sets of our corporate volunteers and think there’s more they can do. It's not just picking up some shopping anymore. Wouldn't they be great for youth mentoring, or helping a homeless person with their CV or interview skills? So that's the direction we've gone into.
So the third highlight is how we've grown the service from older adult help, which we still do massively, to youth volunteering - things like mentoring interviews, CV help, ad hoc advice on careers, which has been hugely popular. We’re matching hundreds of opportunities at this point and want to do thousands. We have just started environmental missions too with homelessness opportunities to come. So yeah, that expansion would be my third highlight.
A very inspiring year. So, last question… What has most influenced OnHand’s move towards the holistic wellbeing space?
Wellbeing for employees is still a relatively new concept. Organisations are trying to find the right solutions and there’s no one way of going about it. I speak to a lot of companies who are taking various different solutions and aren’t quite sure what’s going to work, but the desire to help is certainly there and they’re trying to figure it out. There’s a lot of experimentation going on, and that’s a good thing.
The more that OnHand has looked at the space, there's a whole spectrum of different wellbeing needs but the education level around that isn't huge. Wellbeing is not just how people feel emotionally. It's not just your physical or financial wellbeing, there's this whole spectrum of wellbeing needs including social connections and doing good. I think I've come across, you know, half a dozen articles around the holistic wellbeing approach and what those different needs are. There’s lots of noise at the moment (you know, wellbeing is hot!) but understanding of the different wellbeing needs is still limited.
It feels like we could help the B2B customers we currently have, and others, understand more about those different aspects of wellbeing, and who the players are in those different wellbeing spaces. That’s certainly not just us. We don't play across a whole bunch but we play across a few. There’s loads we don’t do, and there are many companies doing things really really well and very differently to us. I think we can help with the education of what holistic wellbeing, if that’s the right term, is, what companies should look for to support their employees, and, of course, how OnHand play a role in that. That’s why we have started a Wellbeing Essential webinar series and it’s been great to see hundreds of attendees for the first two - including our upcoming one with the CEO of Investors in People. Still loads to do here, but I think we’re making a good start.
It’s gonna be an exciting next couple of quarters, I think.
Yeah, I think so too! It’s great to see how companies are responding to our offering. There’s wonderful research by Deloitte that’s come out about the impact of volunteering on wellbeing... how 77% of employees view volunteering as “essential for wellbeing” and - in Deloitte's words - the “unprecedented” rise in loyalty where employers can meet their employees' need for purpose.
Seeing how many businesses want to do something great for their employees is exciting. I think we’re on the cusp of systemic change in where and how work is done and I’m looking forward to helping.