The majority of us have been plunged into unknown territory this week as we shift to homeworking; for seasoned professionals who work this way regularly, it’s business as usual; for others it’s daunting and a bit scary.
 
Business etiquette is being challenged as we navigate through the do’s and don’ts of video calls. For one unfortunate businesswoman this week, a video on social media showed her call being ‘interrupted’ with her husband in the background who had just come out of the shower – over-sharing on new levels!
 
The plates are shifting beneath our feet as we transition from homeworking as an exception to being much more the rule. Undoubtedly there will be other ‘shocks’ to the system whether that’s related to climate change, weather or another coronavirus situation but we’ll have lots of learning we can take from our experience now to better prepare us for the future.
 
We already know that in times of crisis customers want to speak to us more and hearing from many members in our network, a rise in voice contact has been inevitable. We’re all human and we want and need that reassurance; and we also want to be able to give it. Teams and businesses working and co-operating together like never before. Those organisations that deliver for customers at this time must surely be the winners when our lives go back to ‘normal’?
 
Delivering for colleagues too is equally high on the agenda. Businesses trying to balance resilience and continuity with increased absence (a lot of it paid) whilst unpicking large, centralised operations to more dispersed and distributed set-ups. 
 
The CCA team and I this week joined the cohorts of homeworkers. As a small and nimble team who already had a cloud-based system, the transition has so far been pretty much painless enabling us to operate as if we were all together at CCA HQ. We too, however, are also learning to adapt. Team communication is key. Whilst we can’t just talk over the office to a colleague at another desk as easily, we are using collaborative tools to keep in touch and to keep business open as usual. 
 
What we do know is that there are many homeworking experts who we can learn from and we are, as we speak, building an expert panel for members to ask questions of. An online webinar on Wed, 25 March will give our network the chance to understand top tips for engagement and communication, best use of technology to support teams and customers and what best practice can we learn and learn fast to keep our operations moving forward. If you’d like to join this free to members session, please click here. 
 
In the meantime, I wish you all a restful weekend and hopefully as we get closer to Spring, we’ll see some new shoots sprouting; not just in our gardens but in our businesses too as we work towards a ‘new normal’.

Stay safe and healthy,

Anne Marie​​​​