March 16th was no ordinary Monday. Instead of sitting in rush hour traffic or riding public transportation to the office, most Americans remained at home. Classrooms, cubicles and restaurants sat empty as concerns over COVID-19 reached a boiling point. While “business as usual” remains anything but, the Sol team has actually been preparing for this moment for a long time — whether we realized it or not!
For the past four years, I have been working remotely for Sol as my husband’s career has moved us across the country. While our agency previously embraced remote working on a limited basis, over the years we’ve moved to hybrid models where some employees have worked from home several days per week. In fact, as recently as a few months ago, we moved to a new spot in Atlanta, which promoted additional work from home options for our team because of the size. So, when social isolation measures were implemented overnight, we didn’t skip a beat. We were already equipped to collaborate remotely and extend the same level of responsiveness to our clients.
Redefining Work Hours
While working remotely poses its own set of challenges, as many of our clients have realized over the past week, this “new normal” reopens the door to explore new ways to be flexible, efficient and inclusive.
While being connected to our phones and computers all the time can be a double-edged sword, it does provide a level of flexibility for working parents. Kids of all ages (even college students) are at home right now, attempting some type of distance learning. This means those of us who are fortunate enough to have a position that allows us to work from home are balancing family caretaking and work responsibilities simultaneously. Yes, kids will need your attention in the middle of the workday. Your dog will bark loudly in the middle of a conference call because the wind blows outside. It’s life. It happens. We do our job, respond to emails and routinely communicate outside “business hours” because several breaks are necessary throughout the day.
Reinventing Collaboration
Our team lives on Slack. We’ve even encouraged our clients to join us on Slack. It offers an instantaneous way to review and respond to client-specific requests without getting lost in our email inboxes. We’ve also found that Zoom offers a good way for all of us to “see” each other every day and efficiently brief each other (or be silly). Since we service clients throughout the U.S., we’ve used Zoom to conduct design reviews, brainstorms and project kickoff meetings. Of course, there’s always good old emailing, phone calls and texts.
As far as collaborating on content, design and development, we’re set up on a virtual server, which allows us to access our file repository from anywhere. To ease the feedback cycle for video production (logging timecode edits are incredibly time consuming), we love Frame.io, which allows us to easily add comments to the video itself. And, I cannot stress enough how much easier it is to copy edit using Google docs. I do a happy dance every time I don’t have to use Word.
Responding to a Changing World (and Workforce)
We don’t know what the outcome of the current pandemic will be but, right now, it feels like we will never get “back to normal,” whatever that is. Many companies have already implemented remote work for a variety of reasons — health, cost, lifestyle, etc. — and I can only imagine that more will embrace this practice in response to recent events. While working from home is not right for every company and every employee, it does open the door for companies to broaden their talent pools (by recruiting outside of their immediate geographic region), keep their workforce healthier (by encouraging employees to stay at home when they are contagious) and reduce turnover for families with young children, aging parents and military spouses.
From our home offices to yours, wishing you safety, strength and health during this unprecedented moment.
