On Our Minds Managing Work, Life & Our Mental Health During COVID-19 Mohamed Hamad On Our Minds 5 mins read 3 years ago The Coronavirus (COVID19) is taking a toll on everyone. Businesses are struggling, and morale is at an all-time low. Because the safety of our team and our clients is paramount, we’ve had to put measures in place in reaction to this global pandemic (read more about our response here). Third Wunder has been working remotely during this time, and to keep things running smoothly, we’ve been staying connected with our preferred set of tools and practices. We asked our team their thoughts on the tools we’re using to get the job done, and how we stay sane during these trying times. Leveraging our tools for remote teamwork As a digital marketing agency, we’ve already developed a workflow that’s almost completely online. We use a bunch of tools that help us get the work done: Project management & Communication Cloud collaboration tools like Asana and Google’s G Suite have been at the core of our business from day one. They allow us to easily share documents and assets between each other and our clients, and manage projects seamlessly. Since we primarily work on Macs, we use the Spark Email app for Mac & iOS to give the team the collaboration and workflow features that are missing from other email clients like Gmail. Spark gives us the means to discuss an email thread directly in the app using their private team conversations feature to ensure all the necessary team members are involved and in the loop. Marketing In response to no longer being in the same room for brainstorming sessions, we’ve recently introduced Miro to our toolset. Miro is a collaborative whiteboarding app that we use for workshopping customer journeys, empathy maps, and other strategic frameworks. Campaigning Although G Suite is our primary platform for documenting, planning and organizing, we adopted Coda when we found that content planning (especially for social media) was difficult using Sheets and Docs. Now, we’re able to bring all elements of content into 1 flexible doc that we can share with clients and collaborate with ease. Creative Last year we made the jump over to Figma from Sketch, overhauling our design workflow to make dev hand-offs smoother, and creative projects more collaborative. So when self-isolation became the norm, we were uniquely well set-up to create together, remotely. Development Programming and development is inherently collaborative. With code reviews, version control, deployment pipelines to testing and staging environments for quality control. Keeping spirits high We’re living through hard times at the moment. Self-isolation is making everyone a little stir-crazy and there’s no end in sight to when we can return to normal life. That’s why keeping morale up is extremely important. We’re a team, and that means we need to keep each other in good spirits to continue our work, not only for our clients, but for our own mental well-being. We asked the team how they’re boosting their moods and helping their teammates: Tips for working remotely Working from home can be amazing, but it can also be a nightmare. Pets demanding attention, kids needing childcare, roommates distracting you at every turn…it can be a mess. So, how are we making working from home a breeze? Here are a few tips to keep in mind: Just keep swimming We’re hoping this pandemic will settle down soon, and we’ll all be back on our feet and reunited with our friends, family, and coworkers. For the time being, keep social-distancing, try to stay positive, and keep tabs on your teammates. Whether you’re struggling to transition your team to remote set up, or you can’t seem to focus when you need to, we hope these insights can help out. If you’re looking for help adapting your business to an online, remote approach, we’re here to help. Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email
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