Working Differently Means Thinking Differently

In 1665, Isaac Newton retreated to his home town after an outbreak of bubonic plague caused the temporary closure of the University of Cambridge. It was during this time, that he first recorded his thoughts on gravity. — Source

Maybe you and I won’t rise to his heights, but the good thing about working differently is it’s automatically creating new neural pathways in our brains. This leads to new ways of thinking and who knows what might come of that?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

On Monday 16th March, SEEK took the early and wise precaution of asking us to work from home. Lots of us were, and still are scared, and no-one knows when this will end. There’s no routine until we create one, and it’s an uncomfortable feeling. To create order while we’re working differently, we’re trying to create a sense of familiarity, and most importantly, trying to stay connected. After just one week we’re already:

• running most of our social activities remotely
• creating new Slack channels to capture new ideas
• outlining our video conference do’s and don’ts
• finding tools to replace our physical card walls and whiteboards.

Keeping our social activities going

Firstly, we still want to see everyone’s faces. So we’ve had the first round of remote Happy Birthday’s without cake (we’re pretty big on birthday cakes, especially in the Melbourne office where there’s cake most days). We’ve also realised just how hard it is to sing in tune and in sync when you’re not all in the same room.

Next, all our meetings have been converted to remote meetings via Zoom. For example, we’re still running and have increased the frequency of our Product Bookclub sessions. Our daily stand-ups continue — for instance we’ve adopted a funny hat theme with elephant hats, top hats, and even my cat made an appearance, draped around my neck (it’s his favourite spot). As the week progessed, we started setting our Zoom backgrounds to places we’d rather be, such as in orbit around Jupiter or at the beach under the palm trees.

Photo by Pedro Monteiro on Unsplash & NASA

Staying connected with Slack

People at SEEK are starting to share great ideas about working remotely — our Slack channels are overflowing with solutions.

In amongst the hints and tips on where to get toilet paper and baked beans, we’ve seen numerous new Slack channels pop up . Some of them are light-hearted — like a water cooler chat to discuss AFL; a space to dissect tv shows we’re watching and books we’re reading; the obligatory #cats and #dogs to make us smile; plus a virtual hub for Friday drinks and quizzes. People have discovered companies offering extra broadband and mobile data, free online piano lessons for the kids, free online performances from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; and the reason why you can’t log on to MyGov.

In addition to these, and our standard team channels, we’ve also got some work-based ones— such as a virtual tech bar to help resolve technical difficulties (why can’t I hear anything on Zoom?) and #remotework for tips like customising Slack status suggestions to let your coworkers know when you’re out to lunch, taking a break, or just chasing down milk and bread.

But to feel really connected, we need to see other people. So, when we’re not chatting on Slack, we’re leaning heavily on Zoom video conferencing. Some of our teams have even created a permanently active Zoom meeting to encourage normal unscheduled day-to-day banter.

Creating video conferencing etiquette

Here are some tips we’ve found to help foster a safe and collaborative environment using Zoom:

• invite everyone to turn on their camera as this helps build rapport, and you can can see when someone is trying to speak
• ask everyone to mute their microphone unless they’re speaking to reduce background noise (space-bar is a quick mute/un-mute)
• enable gallery mode so you can see everyone, and also you’ll be able to pickup non-verbal cues (features like Zoom’s virtual background can be helpful for those who prefer not to share their location — they can also be a great talking point)
• outline the agenda as part of the introduction
• add co-hosts, so if you have to leave to attend another meeting, someone else can take over
• provide non-verbal feedback by nodding or shaking your head in agreement — it can be disconcerting to see people just staring at you with no expression on their face
• invite each person to speak in turn, as invariably, people will talk over one another
• use screen sharing — one of our Business Analysts says she often writes up what she hears from participants while sharing her screen so participants can see that she is capturing what is being said and they can correct her if she’s misunderstood anything
• don’t take screenshots of people unless you have permission.

Everyone’s online, but no-one wants to talk

Some people may just want to listen, but if you need to engage participants:

• let everyone know upfront that they may be asked a direct question, but don’t push people to engage if they would rather not
• always have an icebreaker — people are more likely to participate if they have already spoken. Here are some ideas — get everyone to introduce themselves, or use a virtual background and explain why you chose it. You could also adapt some of these ideas from one of our Business Analysts — https://medium.com/seek-blog/why-i-start-my-meetings-with-an-icebreaker-dbb7c30c1daa
• and finally, this is a humourous way to get people involved…

Source: Pinterest

Online collaborative tools

In addition to Slack and Zoom, we’re also using:

• Miro an online collaborative whiteboarding — really flexible but does take some getting used to. It’s a good idea to set up a template in advance — you can use any existing Miro board.
• Trello a project organiser with boards, lists and cards— really easy to use, and there’s something satisfying about moving each card from Backlog, to Doing, to Done.
• Visual Studio Code LiveShare for pair programming
• Slido a Q&A and polling platform which makes any meeting interactive by giving everyone the option to ask questions at any time
• Jira which creates transparency about what we’re working on, and finally
• Discord a free voice & text chat, to create a virtual office environment that is always open.

This new way of working is forcing us to think differently. And good things are already coming from that. How are you working differently?

Thanks to Rachel Coleman, Victoria Schiffer, Jonathan Cleary & Franca Moretto for these ideas.