4 Rules on Working from Home like a Pro and Social Distancing without Losing Connection
Like a lot of the offices that are able, Tailwind has moved to working completely from home. While we have a few stellar team members who are seasoned pros at remote working, the majority of Tailwinders experienced a range of emotions at the change: worry, frustration, concern, sadness, excitement, apathy, and even a bit of dread.
Mainly, a lot of questions arose. How do we remain as productive as possible with so many distractions? How do you separate work and home when you’re in the same space? How do you ever stop working? How do you START working? How do you stay away from the allure of the fridge when it incessantly calls your name at 3:00 every day?
And of course, the concerns weren’t all about work. How can we support small businesses during this time? How can we not go bananas being cooped up inside constantly? How do you entertain (or continue to educate) your kids when schools are closed?
A general “ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!” could be heard from our new #wfanywhere-tips (Working From Anywhere Tips) Slack channel, so we’ve put together some tips from the team we want to share:
1- Keep your routines
Patterns are important to our brains. We need routine, and working from home is no different, even if those routines need to be tweaked a bit.
To “give a stronger sense of work stopping and starting,” our QA Specialist, Taylor, advised us to take a walk before and after you start work to replace that commute time and get your mind in a different space. Listen to your audiobook, podcast, or music that you typically enjoy on the way to work before you come back inside to your workspace.
Put. On. Pants. — get ready, even if you’re not going anywhere. Changing out of your pajamas will bring you into a new mindset from your morning sluggishness (along with all those cups of coffee). And fixing your hair will make turning on the camera on your virtual meetings easier, which gives you more face time!
When you have virtual meetings, continue your standard cadence as much as possible. We embrace the awkward at Tailwind and give an emphatic and purposefully unsynchronized “Team!” at the end of meetings. Still unmute yourself and close with that! Keep those quirks that make your job fun!
With a lot of gyms closing, we’re also all searching for ways to get energy out and keep healthy. One of our team members is starting to host some workouts that anyone can join!
Or you could always actually try out those at-home workouts you pinned on your Get Healthy Pinterest board three years ago 😉
Keep your children engaged in learning. There are tons of great resources out there, including Teachers Pay Teachers — a place where teachers can upload their created resources for purchase. You can also create an at-home science experiment with your little ones, like our Customer Success Associate, Sarah, did with her little cutie! This one involves simply combining baking soda and food coloring in a muffin tin before adding in vinegar — use a toothpick for stirring.
2- Get (virtual) human interaction at work
We have open-concept workspaces — our CEO and leadership sit in the same spaces as the rest of our team. Collaboration is vital to us and makes our workplace and our product better, so we don’t want to lose that productivity and connection with our team. Moving to completely remote work raised a fear that our communication wouldn’t flow as easily as in-office. We want to eliminate as many blockers as possible, so keeping in contact with our team members is critical.
As mentioned above, when in meetings, make sure your cameras are on — seeing each other’s faces will keep connections stronger and communication less complicated because you can see each other’s facial expressions and body language. Interacting in the fullest way possible helps everyone stay more engaged (plus, you’re more likely to catch a cute dog or kiddo in the video background!)
Have daily virtual meetings for work streams to reduce blockers and hold each other accountable. Chief of Staff, Ellana Walker, set up this daily check in with the team.
Try to make it feel as natural as possible, start with an ice breaker (even just talking about what you had for breakfast). Then move into some standard questions you’ll cover each day — What was a win from yesterday? What are you focusing on today? Are you stuck on or need advice about anything?
In teams where in-person communication is key, this has been a huge help!
Have virtual water cooler chats with your team! We made a permanently-open hangout that anyone can join just to chat and replace those random conversations you have in the office between work — ask what they binged on Netflix, the new recipes they’re cooking, and inevitably chat about all the news stories popping up.
We’ve also made a point to still have lunch together via video.
We also set up a #virtual-water-cooler Slack channel and share more fun things with each other outside of video meetings and asynchronously: everything from sharing our St. Patrick’s Day attire to finding the joys in working from home (we are loving the extra time with our pets! 🐶😻)
3- Find ways to stay entertained indoors
Human interaction and communication isn’t all about the workplace and keeping us productive. Our extroverted friends (and our introverts too!) are yearning for the social interaction working at the office provides.
Social distancing to flatten the curve of COVID-19 has caused some anxiety across the team beyond their work lives, and we’ve gathered some tips to address those concerns as well! While the news creates more anxiety and cautions people to stay home unless completely necessary, it’s even more important to take some time to have fun.
Have a date night with your partner inside! Make s’mores and snuggle under some blankets telling campfire stories. Bring it up a notch and build a blanket fort and tell some ghost stories to include your kids!
Actually FaceTime that friend from college you haven’t talked to in way too long. Write someone a real deal, physical letter. Make a handmade card. Send a thank you note or email to a mentor or old colleague — dig deep and explain how they’ve influenced you.
Get creative! Pent-up energy needs to be siphoned somewhere, and using a different part of your brain than you might in your work can help release more of those antsy feelings.
Our team members are brimming with special talents:
Share these new or re-visited hobbies with your friends and coworkers!
4- Practice a lot of empathy
Our leadership team along with our CEO, Danny Maloney, have been extremely influential in helping our team remain prepared, but unpanicked. On March 5th, they created a very detailed doc explaining COVID-19, the team’s response, and plans.
Everyone on our team received an extra $300 stipend on our last paycheck to cover potential medical copays, supplies while we socially distance, and better desk chairs to comfortably work from home, extra childcare expenses while children are out of school, or the myriad of other things that will pop up in response to the current health pandemic.
Danny has chatted directly with our members about their fears, concerns, and hopes surrounding the novel Coronavirus and especially their concerns about the future of their businesses. We’re working on how to best help our members continue building their brands and address their concerns about traffic impact, potential income loss, and the other personal challenges that arise from a situation like this.
Tailwind is sincerely dedicated to supporting small businesses and our communities, and our team members really care about that. We’ve been coming up with ways and sharing other tips we’ve seen to lessen the impact of social distancing:
- Buy gift cards you can use later but will still give places a source of income now.
- Order curbside pick-up or delivery instead of eating inside restaurants.
- Pick up prescriptions from a local pharmacy or find other ways to move your essential needs over to local or small businesses especially now.
Wash your hands and open your blinds for some sunshine ☀️. We’ve got this.
Please share your challenges and ideas on how to make the most of the current situation and working from home!
