During these difficult and volatile times, it’s harder than ever to be able to work with your team and effectively maintain business as usual. For the first time, many companies are faced with the challenge of converting their processes and infrastructure to accommodate a remote workforce. This is certainly not an easy transition, and it’s especially difficult for some companies depending on the industry they are in. This is the first time in the history of the modern workforce that companies are having to deal with a situation of this magnitude. Certainly, nobody could have predicted this current situation or imagined where we would be today.
At Jukin Media, we’ve tried to implement what we’ve been calling the “3 C’s” to help our business continue to operate during this difficult time: community, collaboration, and communication. These are the three themes we’re focusing on to keep the business moving forward.
We have made a concerted effort not to allow the fact that we are working from home hinder our activities that foster community and promote a positive culture.
Community
We have a strong sense of community at Jukin, and it’s something we’ve always prided ourselves on. We have a dedicated culture committee—made up of volunteers who’ve raised their hand to participate—that meets twice a month. Their main objective is to help think of ways to effectively reinforce our principles and values throughout the organization, which can include social gatherings, contests, and team-building exercises. We have made a concerted effort not to allow the fact that we are working from home hinder our activities that foster community and promote a positive culture. It has forced us to become more creative with the limited resources we have at our disposal. Some of the activities the culture committee has implemented during this time have included virtual happy hours, daily virtual art lessons, company shared-music playlists, cooking contests, and home-workout routines, just to name a few. More than ever, it’s important for us to continue to put community at the forefront of our operations.
Collaboration
Teamwork has always been part of what makes Jukin tick. In these times, we’re exploring a number of avenues to foster collaboration: we’re testing online courses and training; sharing best practices and tips between internal teams; and encouraging participation in webinars related to our industry as a way of keeping employees aware of how other industry professionals are coping with similar challenges. We have daily check-ins—with video always enabled—where we’re leveraging technology to interact with one another. Using VPNs and other shared-file-storage methods, our teams are able to share project files and collaborate seamlessly from their homes.
Communication
By leveraging the communication tools we have available, we’re trying not to miss a beat. Zoom and Slack—and especially the Slack ‘Calls’ feature, which was used quite sparingly prior to now —have been more essential than ever to allow us to communicate everything that we do. We have active Slack channels including Creative Inspiration, where team members are sharing tidbits that might help inform future production and programming, Social Media News, where the latest learnings and industry happenings are discussed, and Jukin News, which is used to facilitate important internal communications and company updates. Obviously emailing remains more crucial than ever, allowing us to provide company updates and helpful information throughout the week. If anything, communication is the key that has allowed us to hold everything together. It’s crucial for companies and teams to stay in constant communication during this time, as it perhaps might be the most important part of the list.
