How we switched to 100% remote-working during lockdown
While it is relatively easy to introduce new tools to reorganize teams, our priority was to keep our people engaged and motivated
Like many other companies in the world, two months ago at Tiller we had to move all our activities to remote working in France, Spain and Italy to protect our employees’ health as well as to fight the spread of COVID-19.
As an agile, smart and young company, we’ve always promoted flexible working arrangements within our teams, but we knew that this time was different. First of all, because it was not a spontaneous and voluntary situation, but instead a forced one. Secondly, because time was not defined — how long would home confinement last? One month, two? There was no way to know for sure.
In such an exceptional situation, from the tiniest to the most important task that we used to take for granted among colleagues, like having a coffee together, giving a high five or briefly catching up, had to be either postponed or reinvented.
But while it is relatively easy to introduce new tools to reorganize workload and follow up with projects, it’s been a global challenge to keep employees’ motivation high and promote company values giving the external factors.
We’re proud to say that Tiller employees’ response and cooperation during this period has gone far beyond any expectations. No matter where we’ve been, each of us continued to deliver great performances and to respect the high standards of our community. That’s why we would like to share our experience on the internal initiatives we carried out over the past three months.
Beer Fridays transformed! 🍻
Every Friday in each one of our Tiller offices we used to host country meetings to sum up the achievements of the week and our next steps and objectives. During home confinement Zoom helped us a lot in this, while we transformed country-tailored meetings in one global meeting with all employees from the three different countries.
As you already know, the restaurant sector was highly impacted by the recent crisis and more frequent updates were necessary to keep our teams focused on the weekly objectives. Such meetings are vital to understand the weight that the work of each employee has on the overall performance of the company. In times of crisis, these Beer-Fridays helped us to reinforce the trust in our success no matter the obstacles.
Employees agents of change 👩💼
No company can succeed without the trust of its employees. That’s why letting our people speak about their proposals and ideas has been one of our key concerns at Tiller. Thanks to our monthly Tiller Mood Survey, members of our #TillerGang had the chance to express their sentiment and to drop specific requests to the HR department or to our co-founders.
New projects, organizational structure and holidays were some of the hot topics! But we also talked a lot about smart-working and how to make it sustainable in the long run after this transitional period.
Smart teamwork 💻
As a company, we surely learned a lot from this smart-working experience and we’re not afraid to say it. Everyone, even the most tech-friendly company, learned something out of all this.
As we said before, doing smart-working once every now and then and doing it on a continuous basis are completely different situations. Some employees required time to adjust to the new organization, others found it easier from the beginning, but the most important thing was to keep the company values alive for everyone!
What did we do, then? First of all, we reviewed all reporting lines and made sure everyone was aware of his or her own objectives and tasks. We encouraged regular meetings between high-level managers as well as between managers and their teams or among different teams. We organized Trello boards with achievements to accomplish and, last but not least, we improved our company’s Slack groups for real-time communications.
Virtual events 🎉
Raise your hand if you did any kind of training during home confinement! Of course, you did. From professional training (on video-making, on time management…) to leisure YouTube tutorials (yoga classes, anyone?), this lockdown has been the opportunity for many people to focus on improving their skills. But it’s not something you have to do alone, right?
At Tiller we decided to launch virtual events ranging from Tiller Classes to improve specific technical skills to Cooking Classes to share traditional recipes from France, Spain and Italy.
Tiller Classes were held by our top managers over different topics, spanning from how to develop company OKRs and how to prepare eye-catching presentations to SEM and SEO introductory training or email management. On the other hand, our Cooking Classes saw our Spanish Finance Manager’s sweet Carrot Cake and our Italian Finance Manager’s Carbonara (and we’re still waiting for our Spanish Country Manager’s Paella recipe!).
So, what was our takeover from all these activities?
At Tiller we hope to welcome back our employees as soon as possible in order to share that feeling of conviviality that goes beyond being just co-workers. At the same time, we recognize that all these initiatives made us grow and there will hardly be a “return to normality”, but instead a new normal — that will be sooner or later replaced by another normal and so on and so forth!
No matter where we are and work, we know that our values are our guiding beacon and our people are our first and most important concern. Shall we slightly review our values? Let’s try it:
- Go big even when at home!
- Good vibes only!
- Get it done… And don’t forget to mark it on Trello!
- We’re a tribe even when apart.
- Dare to try, even the unknown.
Have a look at our Culture Book to discover more about our mission and values!
