What’s your current normal? Building culture in a remote world
2020 definitely has thrown us a curveball. Here we explore how our working life has changed, how we keep the team connected and find the right balance. We would love to hear – what’s your current normal?
BRANDING BEFORE BREAKFAST EP 52 What’s your current normal? Building culture in a remote world
Hi, I’m Jodie, and I’m the managing director at Tiny Hunter. Today in terms of brand, I wanted to talk about culture. Super important. Now culture is not just having a ping pong table. It is the combination of so many decisions. Little decisions and big decisions that you make every day.
So clearly 2020 has been a bit of a crazy year for everyone. We do not need to dwell on that. We are well aware. So I wanted to dig into the new normal for us. Or I like to call it, ‘the current normal’ because who knows what’s going to happen next?
So sort of halfway through this year we moved to being a fully remote agency when the office building we were renting actually shut down due to COVID. So, I mean, we were working from home anyway at that point, so it wasn’t too big a shift. But you know, it made a sort of really think about what does it look like moving forward? So some changes that we have implemented being a remote agency. We have a huddle. So it’s 20 minutes every day where we jump online and it’s kind of like you just bumped into someone in the kitchen making a coffee. Talk about your favorite TV shows, a new restaurant that you might have tried. It’s really socially focused and the team love it. It’s been really amazing for having everyone really quite close and quite bonded. Maybe even more than before because you didn’t necessarily talk to everyone all the time. So that’s been amazing. Obviously, we’ve moved all our work online, virtual workshops and meetings and everything and that side of things is going fantastic. We think that there may even be some pros to working in this way. But working from home can get monotonous. So we’re making sure that we sprinkle in little bits and pieces just to create a little bit of variety or a little bit of novelty. So, I sent everyone a work from home survival pack. Sort of had chocolate and muesli bars and stationary and a Dan Murphys card. Just, you know, we’re thinking of you and this might brighten up your day a little bit. We had a virtual morning tea and I sent everyone a Llama cookie making kit. Why llamas? I don’t know, just was fun. So we jumped on Zoom for an hour. We decorated them had a bit of a competition and ate the cookies and it was just a bit of fun. Then also, we’re getting together once a month in real life. So we’re remote but we are all based in Sydney which helps. So we’ll get together for a half-day, might have some inspirational content, a bit of brainstorming depending on what’s going on at the time, have something to eat together. So that’s great. And then there’s also obviously social engagements. So things like Christmas parties, of course, where we’ll still get together. Also we have On-Nomi. So that’s a Japanese word that means ‘drinking online’. So we have our Zoom call at the end of the week where we have a few drinks and just have a bit of social chat. So that’s some of the things in our ‘current normal’. I would love to hear what’s in your ‘current normal’. I think it’s so good to share and get tips and tricks from other businesses. That’s it for me. It’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Jodie de Vries
Published: August 27, 2020