2020 has been a year full of challenges for most companies – some of them trying too quickly, even desperately, to adopt processes and tools that allow them to continue their day-to-day work in a remote schema. Other companies were surprised to see that a remote schema didn’t impact their objectives. In contrast, they discovered that in some scenarios their employees were more productive and didn’t need to punch in a time-clock to ensure they were committed with their assignments – and wow, trust was there all along!
Finally, there are other companies like Zemoga, which for years have implemented a working-from-home strategy with a solid foundation to do so in a way that guarantees that quality of life, objectives, and career paths are prioritized, no matter the location from which team members are working from.
For companies that had to adjust and shift to a 100% remote-working with secure environments, it wasn’t just about purchasing video conference software licenses. There is a complete process chain covering important aspects like security, IT support, electric and internet backups, and so much more, but there are even more important challenges like ensuring the team – though remote – continue creating human connections and interactions together.
Virtual spaces as the new norm
As a technology team, we work in an environment where we don’t just support the growth of individual ‘rockstars’; we are all rockstars as an entire team. We make it a priority to constantly foster our growth together, and we do so by always referring back to one of our mottos: “there is always something to learn, but there is also always something to be shared”.
We promote that ideology as something that applies to every single person within the team. We have always had open-mics, workshops, technology ‘brown-bag’ speeches, some of them from our offices and other ones carried out remotely. But this year, with the pandemic and a 100% pure remote work model, our challenge has been to continue what we do to enhance the same motivation of knowledge sharing. Granted, some of the interaction is not the same as when we have the advantage of using our physical spaces like Zemoga Academy within our Bogota office, we strongly believe that having remote spaces – whether for learning or just talking and catching up – create a lot of motivation and a team connection.
On top of those sessions within our own technical teams, when you have an HR team that also promotes remote spaces company-wide that support other people-centered activities like art, culinary improvement, quality life-style sessions, and so much more – then the perfect balance starts to appear.
Stay hungry to learn
My advice for those navigating these strange times, for other companies, and even for our own team, is to continue to foster knowledge-transfer spaces no matter if they are directly related to the work or not, and seize the opportunity to always share what you know and at the same time learn from others.
If your workforce is located over different places around the world, this is the perfect time to not only gain knowledge from different ways of working but also to also understand other cultures and how getting the best of those cultures will enrich the way we are, the way we work, and the way we live.
