Hi All,
The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused us all to adjust to a new normal. Our little corner of the world is no different. At ITS we have adjusted by making changes to our employee schedules and daily work locations. Every day, the majority of our team works offsite – outside of the four walls of our office. For a team that values personal connectivity and collaboration, this can be a challenge. We had two main goals in mind when implementing this change. The first was to make sure that no matter what we did, we would be able to provide the same level of support that our customers have come to expect. The second was that we must maintain our internal culture. We have always had the tools in place to allow our staff to work remotely but chose to use it sparingly in order to maintain this culture. We didn’t want our offsite team members to miss out on the “ITS experience.”
In order to try and maintain this culture, we have leaned heavily on our collaboration tools. We encourage the use of chat and video calls between team members. We’ve built group chats for quick announcements to specific teams. We have encouraged the use of web meeting tools between team members and customers. We also have a daily “stand up” web meeting. This meeting leverages video, audio, and shared documents. This is a useful time where can share information, successes, and lessons learned. We always try to make some time for fun too. Many of our team members have shown up on these calls with funny hats, or other “props”. All of this helps to keep us moving in the same direction and maintain our company culture.
This week has been especially busy assisting customers that want to implement similar tools and helping them gain access to their data remotely. More and more of our customers are moving in this direction. Most of these tools can be implemented remotely and quickly.
If you haven’t already finessed your remote-work plan and need some help, please reach out to us.
This doesn’t mean that we aren’t servicing the day to day needs that aren’t driven by the new normal. We continue to get plenty of requests for “normal” issues. Rest assured, no matter what your tech issue is, we are here to help.
Regards,
Joel Althoff