Cindy discusses how the pandemic changed her company and how SurveyConnect’s Work from Home survey helped.
Employees of Blue Moon Digital (100 personnel) have been working from home since March 16th. We are in our 16th week with all of us working remotely and we have learned so much.
Fortunately, as a Digital Consultancy, we had the technology infrastructure already in place to work from home. Everyone took their multiple monitors home and set up their home office environment.
How work has changed
While we had started to use Microsoft Teams and Zoom in 2019, they immediately became our primary channels for communication.
Our clients went through the exact same transition, and Zoom video calls became the default. This has actually brought us closer to our clients!
We are based out of Denver, Colorado and most of our clients are on the East Coast and West Coast. On average, we are saving $40,000 a month in travel expenses, and with video calls, we have proven that we can close new business without having to get on a plane.
It is an incredible time when you consider not just COVID-19 and the coronavirus, but also Black Lives Matter and the fact that it is a presidential election year.
Insights from the Work from Home survey
Keeping the staff informed, engaged, energized, and focused on their client deliverables is a primary role of mine. We deployed the SurveyConnect Work from Home survey in the last half of April to better understand how the transition to working from home from the employee perspective.
Based upon our employees’ input, we have:
- provided funds to ensure that employees have the best technology at home,
- instituted Happy Hours,
- 2 “all staff” meetings a week where we have a different host (down from 5 meetings a week!), and
- “learn a new craft” once a month.
For the first 2 months, we did a weekly exercise challenge, and then the same 3 or 4 people kept winning, and we agreed to move onto something different.
The sales and marketing teams continue to find relevant topics and speakers for webinars and happy hours where our clients and prospects join us for lively conversations, networking, and sharing successes.
I’ve learned that I have an incredible staff. They are responsible, resilient, and care deeply for each other, for our clients, and for our company.
Due to the pandemic, we are forever different. I believe there will be a large percentage of the staff that will choose to permanently use their home office. Just like Twitter, Shopify, and Lambda Schools (1), it will be their choice.
I’m not sure what to do with 3 floors in our downtown office building, but I’ve learned that working remotely can actually improve productivity, and it has forced us to be better communicators.
