Welcome to Yobah Life: The Lockdown edition, we’re into a 7th week of lockdown and it’s fair to say Yobah Life has been looking a little different of late and that’s not just down to our home haircuts and penchant for elasticated waists (The COVID10 lbs is a real thing guys!)
Seriously though whilst even pre- COVID19 our working practices were always flexible and with the option to work from anywhere, we’ve had to make some changes around our processes, supporting our clients and supporting our own team too.
Here we share what we’ve been doing to make lockdown life and work that little bit easier:
We’ve got really hot on the diary management
Most of our regular catch ups were face to face, at least one day a week and perhaps a little ad hoc too shall we say! but this is no longer possible, schedules are wildly different and time is tight as a result so we’re scheduling everything! from team meetings to regular catch ups to calls and social time together. We even phone each other and just have each other as background noise to feel like we’re together and sharing desks – just like the old days (ah!)
We’ve automated our processes
Our ticketing system ensuring we keep track of issues and processes is now more important than ever, we are not together and we can’t just ask about that ticket or have a conversation over the desk. So we’ve added extra automation into the process flow to make sure we keep on top of SLAs and updates and keep delivering for our clients, because ensuring our ‘business as usual’ runs smoothly means theirs does too.
We’re closer to our customers
In one respect life is a lot busier but in another it’s slowed down and we’re feeling this from our clients, the need for social interaction is now very different and instead of simply raising a ticket or dropping us an email we’re talking to our clients more over video and socially engaging much more than we did before. At the core of our business is our desire to be trusted partners for the businesses we work with and in this respect lockdown life has been hugely beneficial.
We’re keeping our team well fed
We’re a fan of a team lunch or pizza catch up and so as a business we’re still picking up the tab just like we would in the office, only our location has changed so why miss out on a decent stuffed crust! and now the extended members of our team are joining us too,. Whilst our wives and partners don’t ‘work’ in our business in the formal sense, we’re very much a business with family at its’ core and so it’s been great to share these catch ups with our partners, kids, dogs and cats – we do have to buy a bit more pizza now though…
And like everyone we’re juggling
We are doing the juggle, with partners who are also working, caring for really little ones, stopping mobile little ones from destroying our homes, homeschooling slightly bigger ones, ensuring we get our one hour a day in the outside world, building dens in the garden, playing LEGO, missing our families (a lot!) and most importantly keeping safe and well.
We hope you are too.