Lessons Learned Working Remotely: Keeping Your Cool During a Crisis
As things slowly begin to normalize, it’s important to assess what we’ve gone through and how COVID-19 has changed the way we work. Things may not be the same as they were previously, but we need to move forward with confidence. After all, the pivot to a remote workforce may just become the new norm. The last several months have been a learning experience for us personally and professionally. So how do we leverage what we’ve learned to better ourselves for a more connected and engaged tomorrow?
At Productive Edge, we’ve taken a number of steps to improve productivity, enhance operations, and bring coworkers together during remote work. From weekly virtual happy hours to colleague conversations through Swirl (a Slack add-on that uses a personal profile to create connections between colleagues with similar interests), we have been proactive at dealing with the doldrums of quarantine. It is important to identify what has been the most impactful.
“We’ve always been successful when connecting via video calls, but we put a greater emphasis on communication while working remotely,” said Evan Roth, Director of Data, Automation, and AI at Productive Edge. “We’ve encouraged people to take simple conversations that might typically occur via chat and instead have a quick video call in order to keep personal contact going. We’ve also been encouraging more flexibility. Current events have upended work and family schedules. Some additional flexibility is needed, especially for those with young children at home. Being understanding of unique situations has resulted in increased remote engagement while maintaining our productivity standards.”
Getting involved is important. So the PE Social Team has gone above and beyond to set up opportunities for folks to get together virtually. Doing so helps reduce feelings of isolation or exclusion from important conversations. It’s all too easy to feel alone during these times. Additionally, PE Cares has still been engaging with the community on a number of initiatives.
In April, PE staff came together for a Virtual Craft Night for the Anti-Cruelty Society. Linking together via Zoom, participants collected old t-shirts laying around the house and turned clutter into dog tug toys. All toys will be donated to the Humane Society of Chicago. For May, we partnered with Cardz for Kidz!, an organization dedicated to lifting the spirits of hospitalized and/or traumatized children across the globe by delivering inspiring homemade cards. Collecting paper, stickers, markers, and anything else that would be useful for crafting uplifting cards, PE staff joined each other to virtually decorate the cards that would be sent to children in hospitals worldwide.
Productive Edge strives to be a dynamic workplace by offering employees the flexibility necessary to succeed during trying times. We promote a workplace of understanding and growth. As a result, we are confident that we will come out of the pandemic stronger than ever before. For more information about Productive Edge’s workplace and culture, visit www.productiveedge.com/about.
