As NZ entered Level 4 Lockdown on the 25th of March, many of the Putti team had already decided to work from home.
Why? Because we didn’t see the need to risk anyone’s health when we could work from home perfectly fine.
Now, we were extremely lucky to be able to make that decision due to our line of work, and similarly, we have managed to find some wins throughout this crazy period.
So, here’s a bit of an update as to what Putti has been doing over the past 4 months.
As soon as we were forced to work from home we were all working at full productivity as if nothing had changed.
How did we manage this?
Well the sales team moved from in-person meetings to online ones, the designers and developers weren’t impacted, and well, that’s our entire team.
So for us, working with remote teams now, we only ran into minor inconveniences with not being in the same room. We managed to mitigate a lot of our troubles with productivity tools such as messaging apps, timeline apps, and regular calls.
We were still producing high-quality solutions like our remote working solution Team Safe that was picked up by Fletcher Building and others, and the Check-in solution that saw thousands of people safely checking in, but with all this work in a different environment, how was our mental health coping?
Well, being able to spend more time with family, less time commuting in Auckland’s horrible traffic, and being able to enjoy nutritious home-cooked meals more often actually did wonders for us. Not to mention our wallets after less petrol, less parking, and less Mamak for Bruce!
But after a few months, the team started to miss each other. We pined for the table-tennis table and Friday beers. Because, well, we are a tight group of people here on the Shore, working hard to build digital solutions.
So we came up with a good middle-ground to get the best out of both worlds.
Everyone comes in Monday to align for the week and Friday to reflect and celebrate on the work we’ve done. Then, Tuesday through Thursday, we can work from wherever we want. This allows us to reap the benefits of uninterrupted flow states for developers and seeing family more often, whilst also having team alignment and cohesion.
This is bolstered by our daily stand-ups that help to bring us together. A process we’ve actually been doing forever… maybe that’s why we found it so easy with this whole lockdown shakeup in the first place…
So here are some tips from us:
- Daily stand-ups help keep teams aligned and connected both professionally and socially. They don’t need to be long – 30 minutes is enough!
- Don’t book more than hours and hours of meetings back to back. Do other things!
- Give the blended approach a chance if you can. Working from home can be great for efficiency, but having some chats face-to-face can really keep the team-bond strong and add a bit more flavour into your days!
- Be transparent about what you need to do. You may need to look after someone who’s sick or run the children around, that’s okay, just be super clear and make sure to communicate this with everyone involved.
- Remember to be considerate of everyone else’s working conditions.
Got any work-from-home tips to share? Hit us on the comments below!