Of course the global Covid-19 pandemic is horrific. It’s changed the way that we all live and work. It’s brought out the best in many people. We have realised we are adaptable and resilient . And at Redmill, we’ve realised that it’s actually helped us to focus on what’s really important in our lives.
So, taking a more positive view, here are the five things that we’ve come to appreciate more during this crisis, and that we hope we will take with us beyond it.
Great communication underpins everything we do. Communication with each other. Communication with our clients. And creating more opportunities for regular dialogue – a daily Teams dial-in, an end-of-week online wind-down, a WhatsApp chatroom – has given us a really good platform for problem solving and sharing ideas, workload issues and the odd joke too! Good communication doesn’t happen by accident, no matter how many water coolers we have.
Family is the MOST important thing, we all have one, we must treasure them and we must be there for them. Redmill has always pretty flexible when it comes to adapting working practices. But we’ve had to stretch this with many of our colleagues juggling working from home with no-school childcare. So the introduction of open-ended, self-policed flexible working hours, extended breaks during the day, the ability to swap weekday work for weekends have all been well received and hasn’t impacted negatively on our high levels of client service - a positive impact all round. Some of this will stick.
The Redmill community is a tight-knit one. With colleagues in the UK, China and Turkey, we’ve always been pretty good at looking out for each other. What we’ve remembered over the last few weeks is that our community goes beyond just our staff. We’re trying, wherever we can, to continue to support our suppliers who do so much to support us all year round. A little help goes a long way.
These are serious times, but in the face of adversity, humour always rears its funny head. How many memes, videos, one-liners have you laughed at this week? Having fun at work IS part of work. Laughter is contagious too. If you want to be included on some of our nonsensical and completely not work related meme distribution list, let us know. We can spread some fun.
Sometimes we need to step back and consider how we really help our clients. As many of Redmill’s clients and their agencies set about the emergency re-working of their 2020 media plans, the instant access to complete global media data that Redmill provides them has really come into its own. With visibility comes control. With control, better decisions. We can be proud of what we deliver, especially in these times of uncertainty.
So these are some of the things that we’ll be holding on to when we get to the end of this tunnel. We’re interested to hear what positives your business is planning on taking through to the other side.
