Last fall, Flywire, the Boston-based payment tech company that earlier this month filed plans confidentially to hold an initial public offering, created a “quarantine house” for 12 of its employees. For five days, the employees, or "Flymates" as the company calls them, worked, played games, went swimming and participated in theme nights at a resort in Newry, Maine.
“The house was really big. It's called Ski Esta and it can actually sleep up to 38 people, but we only had 12 people there. Everyone had their own bedroom. There was also tons of outdoor space, and we had beautiful weather. People were able to kind of scatter and work from different locations and be apart. But at the end of the night, we would all eat dinner together at the dinner table that actually seated exactly 12 people. Since we all had negative tests, it was nice to kind of feel at ease and be able to see other people,” said Sam Mackowitz, a senior communications and social-media specialist at Flywire.
In order to visit the “Fly Lodge,” the company’s name for the quarantine vacation house, employees had to comply with Maine’s Covid-19 travel regulations, which included receiving a negative coronavirus test result 72 hours prior to arrival.
Although the Fly Lodge was created during quarantine, executives at Flywire actually had reserved the resort for an offsite meeting that was supposed to take place in early 2020.
“Obviously, once Covid happened, and there's travel restrictions, they had to postpone that," Mackowitz said, "but they couldn't get a refund for the reservation, but they pushed it to September. So you know, they weren't sure how the world was going to look in September. So our CEO, Mike [Massaro], and the other executives had the idea, Why don't we open it up to Flymates, and make sure they're following the guidelines for the house in Maine? ... They didn't want it to go to waste.”
And it didn’t go to waste. During their time at the lodge, the Flymates worked remotely together and had fun, whether they were collaborating in the kitchen or trying not to topple a giant Jenga tower. Kelly Devoe, a project manager at Flywire, also attended the trip and she extended her skillset to planning the excursion, specifically the theme nights. For example, the theme for night two of the trip was Tuscan Tuesday, and the Flymates made charcuterie boards, drank wine, ate pasta, salad and garlic bread and played card games.
“We had a different theme each night. We did Italian one night, we did tacos another night we did burgers and hotdogs on the grill one night. So it was just fun to work with people in that kind of setting,” said Mackowitz.
Although Flywire gave its employees a budget for the week, the company did pay for food and the items that the resort required its guests to bring like paper towels and toilet paper.
Overall, Mackowitz believed that working with her fellow employees remotely was easier than working from home alone. “Three people from my team were there. So if I needed something quickly, I could just grab them in-person, versus setting up like a Google Hangout, or slacking them back and forth,” she said.
Mackowitz also said that if she could change anything about the trip, she would make it longer than five days. If the Flymates had the weekend, they could have gone on a hike in the surrounding area or explored the Sunday River Ski Resort nearby.
The company already has three more Fly Lodge experiences lined up, including one in Vermont in March. Mackowitz will be attending the Vermont trip, and she mentioned that this excursion is set up a little differently than the last. Instead of renting a house for one week, Flywire rented a place for two weeks, which will allow more employees to attend. There will be two groups of employees going on the trip—group one will be at the house for one week and then they’ll leave and group two will arrive for the second week. Two of the company’s global offices are also planning trips—one in Tel Aviv, Israel and one in Cluj, Romania. No matter where the Flymates are, they will be following all COVID guidelines before and during their travels.
And even though the first Fly Lodge only happened a few months ago, the original Flymates are already planning a reunion. “We have a joke that in a year we’ll have like a reunion or something, and hopefully, by then the COVID restrictions will be a little less strict,” said Mackowitz.
