Remote working – maintaining our relationships

By now, you would have read our article, “teaming during isolation” and this is a continuation of that piece.

As we find ourselves on the doorstep of entering a nation-wide shutdown, we have been experiencing immense feelings of gratitude for being among the fortunate businesses whose operations will be minimally impacted. We have been doing our part in flattening the curve by working remotely this past week, however working from home has meant thinking of new strategies and approaches to ensure the relationships we built up in our business continue to take centrestage.

We consider the relationships we’ve built, as would many others, to be the backbone of what we do. A core focus for us this next while will be to protect these relationships, while at the same time redefine what we previously thought of as the precedents of our working dynamics. We urge other businesses alike to use this time to find ways to develop innovative ways of connecting with clients and colleagues, be it through setting up virtual meetings, quick digital chats and/ or frequent check ins with important connections.

Afro Ant cherishes and takes great pride in our ability to maintain real human connection (something that gets a bad rap in our industry) and we’ll have our work cut out for us in finding and integrating new ways to meet “face-to-face” in a digital context. While we’ll miss driving across town for a coffee chat with an Ant or client, we are all learning to engage in new ways and believe that with time, patience and potentially trial-and-error, remote-working is indeed a possibility.

We look forward to hearing some of your ideas for maintaining solid working relationships during this period of social distancing.