Working as a team despite social distancing is currently a challenge for many companies – including us at blink.it! In this article, we share our spontaneous and creative solutions for how we can continue to work productively and well-connected while working from home.

For nearly 3 weeks, our entire blink.it team has been working from home, just like many other companies probably are right now. Today, we want to show you tools and tricks that help us work productively as a team despite 'social distancing.'

Communication is the key to success!

Even in the office, exchanging ideas with the entire team is particularly important to us, and we maintain this at home just the same. Since many of our (communication) processes already run online, this transition wasn't too difficult for us. These 5 measures for increased productivity and team spirit while working from home have made the transition to remote work significantly easier for us:

1. Direct communication within the entire team

For quick exchanges with other colleagues, we like to use the messaging service Slack. The advantage: You can chat not only with individual people but also in groups or about specific topics – the so-called channels. Slack is available not only as a web version; you can also download a desktop app or install it directly on your smartphone (from my own experience, this is particularly practical if your home internet goes down and you have to rely on mobile internet 😉).

To work as transparently as possible here, we currently have the rule that we indicate in our status whether we are working from home 🏡, on break ⏸, or in the office 💼. If someone is currently unavailable, they add a short note on when they will be available again. This way, we all know when to expect a reply.

We stay in touch via Slack, as you can see, everyone is working from home. // Source: blink.it

2. Internal agreements within the individual teams

One thing that has changed due to team working from home is the frequency of agreements. What used to be quickly discussed over coffee in the office now has to happen remotely. Each area therefore meets once a day (digitally) to discuss specific topics.

For example, our marketing team always meets after lunch to discuss the current tasks of the day and plan future projects. We usually hold these brief meetings over Zoom.

3. Daily group meeting with all colleagues

The daily huddle is a fixed part of our work routine at blink.it: Every lunch before the lunch break, all colleagues gather and report on what they are working on today. This meeting currently takes place digitally, of course. For this, we use Zoom, as multiple people can participate in a video conference there. In these 10 minutes, everyone from the team gets a rough idea of what the others are doing – successes and problems can be communicated to the entire team.

Additionally, our colleague Dennis had the great idea to also maintain our shared lunch digitally via video call. So we have a digital room that everyone can enter during lunch breaks to chat with colleagues.

Daily meetings also work remotely via Zoom. // Source: blink.it

4. Central tool for task management

When it comes to tasks being worked on in the team, we have an incredibly important tool: GetFlow. At this central location, we create projects with corresponding subtasks assigned to different team members. This way, we always keep an overview of large projects fully digitally – and every team member knows exactly what needs to be done.

Of course, we could also communicate smaller tasks via Slack chat. However, there is a risk that important information could get lost.

5. Digital data storage in the cloud

To ensure we can access the most important internal documents anytime and anywhere, we have stored these in the cloud – of course, in compliance with GDPR. For questions and issues, there is the central blink.it hub, where we collect important information, guidelines, and process documentation.

Additional information can also be found in our own blink.it courses, which we like to use for internal training. If I have questions, I occasionally check my personal onboarding course, where my colleague Laura has compiled all the important information about working in marketing and explained it in short videos. It also contains links to all the important tools for our work in the team.

My personal onboarding course at blink.it. // Source: blink.it

As you can see, meetings play a central role in our work; the exchange within the team is currently particularly important to us. We believe that we can only be productive if we do not lose sight of the focus of our work.

• Regular agreements help us achieve our goals.

• If we have questions and problems, we refer to our internal help pages and courses, making it easy to work from home.

• The regular video calls even create a bit of office feeling at home 🙂

What has been your experience with working from home? Is the exchange with your colleagues and employees going as well as it is for us? Are you facing any challenges? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments!

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