Avenue Digital has had a fully flexible remote working policy for well over a year now and it’s something I am always recommending to other business owners – since well before Coronavirus hit and we were all forced to make the transition to a remote workforce whether we were prepared for it or not.
Our clients are the central pillar of our business and our schedules are always worked around their requirements. There is an implicit understanding that during working hours – and sometimes even slightly earlier or later as a result of flexible working – we will always have a senior expert on hand to help with matters as they arise.
Since the pandemic began, it has become more clear to us than ever that a team culture is not built around the four walls the team inhabits Monday to Friday. It’s about having a trusting and respectful working relationship and being flexible and agile in approach to ensure that we’re consistently delivering superior performance efficiency for our clients.
Since March, we, like all businesses, have had to adapt our approach as we take remote working to the extreme, but it’s something that we’ve been able to adapt to with ease:
- We operate across the full Microsoft suite – collaborating, video calling and chatting across Teams, and project managing all of our workflows through Microsoft Planner, which allows us to manage work seamlessly without the need for in person catch ups.
- All of our work is saved in the cloud via Sharepoint, which not only allows us to access documents remotely, but also collaboratively edit documents simultaneously. Having used this software for some time, no training was required to get everyone up and running at home.
- We now have our all agency meeting via a big video session on a Monday morning, which has allowed the working team and furloughed employees to come together to discuss priorities and agency strategy. In addition to this, we have quick practical working sessions daily via video link for the implementation teams, to ensure that work is being delivered on time and to a consistently high standard.
- Friday afternoons are our social time, with a weekly team quiz and drinks – something that has become the new norm for many of us over the weekend too!
The team obviously all miss each other and are looking forward to a post-Covid-19 era when a lunch out or a pint at the pub are back on the agenda. However, in the meantime, we are all happy staying safe and getting our work done remotely.
Investing in a sound technical infrastructure to facilitate remote working back in 2019 was one of the best business decisions we’ve made, as it has turbocharged our performance in a challenging landscape and set us up ready to tackle the future with strength.