GetMyInvoices – Behind the scenes: Baby on board

As part of our series “GetMyInvoices – Behind the Scenes”, we take a closer look behind the scenes and reveal how family and career can be combined in our company. For this, we spoke to Christian Heimrich, a newly minted father.

We can reveal this in advance: There is no such thing as “sleepless nights” for the Director of Business Operations because Christian has already “implemented” very effective routines for himself…

Christian, congratulations again on the delivery. ?
How old is your son and what is his name?
Paul is three months old now.

Are you actually married?
Actually, no. My partner Katharina and I were planning to get married last year. But then the pandemic intervened and we didn’t want to have a “Corona wedding”. So we are getting married next year.

How did the GetMyInvoices team or the fino family
reacted to your new baby?
Super sweet! Right after I posted in Slack that I became a father, we got a lot of nice messages and hearts, plus a huge gift. That was really nice.

Du So you took some time off after the baby was born, right?
I had a month of time off for parenting. After one year, when Paul is already able to do things, I will take a second month off. Katharina and I split the parental leave in such a way that she takes a total of 18 months and together we come to 20 months, of which we receive parental allowance for 14 months.

And for that one month, you really didn’t check Slack or your email?
I don’t really remember that. The question is what you consider work. I’ve certainly forwarded emails, given my input in Slack, and talked to Björn, the product owner of GetMyInvoices. But it’s not like I’ve done anything operationally or engaged in anything that I would call pure work.

Zum Interview mit Björn Kahle

 

How is the home office situation with the little guy? ?
In terms of space, I have a room for myself to work in. We have established a good routine around the home office. I pretty much sleep through the night and at 6 am Paul and I wake up. I take care of him until about 9, which means I purposely don’t schedule myself to work until then. Then I work until lunch at 12 and then again until 6. Katharina also finds the organization very good, because she can give me Paul anytime in between. We just work it out among ourselves, and the home office allows me to see Paul much more. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my father to leave the house in the morning and come back in the evening. I think it’s extremely nice that I get to see more during the week, too – despite the effort.

Has your productivity suffered as a consequence?
I used to always enjoy starting work at 6:30 or 7 a.m. because it’s quiet then. From 9 o’clock on, all your colleagues are usually there and you start to be contacted frequently. Obviously, that’s different now and I still have to get used to that. Additionally, I would say that I am not as efficient as before…but I think that is only noticeable to me. The routines make me work very efficiently and we can design them to improve more aspects over time. ?

Where do you see the potential for improvement?
Now I have to see how I can integrate a bit more exercise. I’m thinking about putting a fixed blocker in my calendar every day. That’s difficult, though, because GetMyInvoices currently has so many exciting topics that we could jump right into.

Has working with the home office obligation changed to any extent since before? You already had a remote culture before Corona.
Before, most of our team came from Kassel, and only a few came to the office from out of town for meetings. Now everyone is widely dispersed. That means we’re all in the same boat because we all work from home and exchange ideas via online meetings. In that respect, it’s better now. There’s nothing worse than hybrid meetings where some attend on-site and others are connected online. I guess that we’ll keep that going after Corona, and it won’t be the norm for us to go into the office more than once a week.

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