Like much of the world at the moment, Envisionit is hunkered down and working from home in the midst of a pandemic. In these uncertain times, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and a little stir crazy from social distancing. However, as a company, this newfound distance has had some unanticipated positive effects on our culture that we didn’t see coming.
Here are four ways WFH has really brought us together.
Video calls for “business as usual”
Working from home definitely hasn’t affected our ability to bring timely solutions to our clients. As a digital marketing company, we were already set up with the tools to productively work from home, thanks to video conferencing, Slack, and email. As everyone who’s participated in a Zoom call recently with their friends can attest, seeing each other through video makes all the difference. We’ve put a huge emphasis on conducting meetings via video. While this does mean having to brush our hair in the morning, we’re still maintaining a level of “business as usual.” Teleconferencing has helped us to conduct routine team check-ins and continue to be our clients’ greatest asset.
Community within communities
This productivity isn’t limited to just work life, though. We’ve started creating sub-communities within the company of coworkers with shared interests and passions to keep each other inspired, accountable, and frankly, sane during this time. There’s a fitness subgroup that is dedicated to sharing Google docs of exercise routines, giving everyone a heads up when a fitness app has a free trial and sharing healthy recipes with each other every day. There’s another subgroup of music and podcast lovers who share motivating playlists, podcasts they enjoy, and songs they love. We’ve brought our weekly Whiskey Club tradition to the digital world, too. Last Thursday, we started a virtual happy hour where we shared a beverage and chatted with each other about our day. It really speaks to the quality and caliber of people we have here at Envisionit that we’re able to keep each other’s spirits up and make the best of an unprecedented situation.
Learning more about each other
Envisionit has gotten creative when it comes to keeping employee engagement up. Our Culture Club was amazing about springing into action to sponsor daily challenges on our WFH Slack channel like Best WFH Outfit, Best Coffee Mug, Best Solo Performance, and Most Rolls of Toilet Paper.
These little challenges have a big impact! They’re not only fun and engaging, but we’re learning so much more about our coworkers than we ever have before. We’re finding out about our coworkers’ sense of style, sense of humor, apartment decor, and even hidden talents like singing and tap dancing. We’ve virtually met their spouses, kids, and pets, and we have been able to see the joy they bring to their lives. It’s great to live in a time where staying in communication is easier than ever, but the human component of caring and learning about each other has been one of the highlights of our time spent working from home.
A culture that’s here to stay
Our team- and company-wide communication has truly never been better, and it’s so great to see everyone rising to the occasion. The most unexpected outcome of working from home for Envisionit is that it has changed our company culture in the best way possible. The sense of community we’ve created during this tumultuous time is going to have a lasting positive effect. We had no idea being forced to be apart would make our company’s sense of community and solidarity stronger than ever.
We’re all in this together, and as an agency, we’ve never embodied that sentiment more than now.
