Same work; different view...

The CompanyNet team are now completely working from home after the UK Government advice moved from 'suggest' to 'must'.

We're in a fortunate position in that our technology setup and collective experience makes this change relatively seamless. Office 365 provides the bulk of our toolset so as long as there is an internet connection, almost any device can be used.

Microsoft Teams has been brilliant since we switched over to the platform (two years ago now?). It now forms the basis of almost all internal communications and information collaboration, so in this sense things are well taken care of.

The 'interesting' part is adjusting to everyone being remote. Although we have the capability for remote working, typically we'd work in the same office as it brings a host of collaborative benefits. There is no doubt everyone connecting from home requires a few changes to make sure this collaboration and communication continues.

The internet was already full of advice about remote working and this has unsurprisngly increased enormously in recent weeks.

As with most things however, there is rarely a silver bullet or standard template which can simply be applied and everything 'just works'.

Instead, adapting to being a distributed teams requires pragmatism, a little experimentation and constant review.

Within CompanyNet, besides all the things we were already doing, we've introduced the following;

• An all-staff chat on Microsoft Teams. We already use Teams for almost all internal communication, but 'Cabin Fever' was created with a specific ban on work topics. I've used this in previous roles with distributed teams and find it works well to promote a common conversational thread. Some gentle moderation may be required but if people are sensible then it's a great way to keep office chat and other nonsense going.
• Turn on the camera. For calls, people are now encouraged to use their webcam. It's not mandated, but amazing the difference it makes to the quality of engagement.
• A daily check-in call. We're a small team and having a short video call each day to catch up and make sure everyone is ok feels like a worthwhile investment of time. This is not a Scrum stand-up or reporting meeting, but a quick checkpoint.
• Encourage small gaps between meetings. Back to back meetings are always difficult, but it can be even more difficult when remote. We're encouraging the late start or early finish to provide an airgap. It would be great if Teams or Exchange Online enforced this, but at the moment it's not quite there.

There is no doubt that things will continue to evolve as we learn new things, but I wanted to share a few small changes which we've made. I'd also be interested to hear what others are doing and any challenges which are emerging.

Everyone is having to rapidly adapt under the most disruptive of circumstances and even the most thorough of business continuity plans are being stretched.

Seperately I'm going to post how we're already helping customers and what else we can offer for organisations.

In general though, if there is anything myself or the wider CompanyNet can help with please get in touch.