How strange the past few months have been for us all! The landscape of life as we know it has been looking very different to what we thought it would be at the start of 2020. Plus, given the big changes everyone has been making and shifts in priorities at work and at home, it’s likely that things will continue to be different in the new normal.

Myhrtoolkit and the new normal

So, how has myhrtoolkit been faring in lockdown? Here are some snapshots of how the team have adapted and collaborated, while adjusting to remote working.

Getting set up

The myhrtoolkit director’s team moved quickly to put working from home in place for everyone when we realised the country would be going into lockdown. So, everyone was soon taking their laptops and supplies (and in some cases tables and chairs!) to set up comfortably at home. Here are some of our homeworking setups:

From top left to bottom right: Senior Marketing Executive, Camille Brouard; Accounts Manager, Lindsay Dale and her assistant Lily; Developer, Alex Fenwick; Technical Manager, Kirk Docker; Infrastructure Engineer and Systems Analyst, Dale Green; Partnerships Manager, Marie Cheng and her assistant Millie.

Our furthest flung worker is Senior Marketing Executive, Camille Brouard, who set up back in Guernsey where she grew up for the duration of lockdown. That’s a bit of a commute from Sheffield! Thankfully, the tech available to workplaces now has enabled us to keep in touch easily and work collaboratively from different places.

Making the most of our tech

We already had a lot of cloud-based systems and documentation processes in place, choosing highly secure systems via our ISO 27001 accreditation. This helped us hugely when it came to the shift to everyone working remotely.

Some of our most relied-on systems have been Microsoft Teams (for instant messaging and team video calls), ClickUp (for project and task management), Microsoft SharePoint (for secure file sharing and organisation), and Zoom for webinars (more on that below).

Members of the myhrtoolkit Sales & Marketing team on a call

Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention our very own HR software system as a great remote working HR solution (although, admittedly, we are biased!) We have found that customers have been engaging with more aspects that the myhrtoolkit system offers as a result of lockdown and an increase in remote working, as demonstrated by our highly popular training webinars series. Speaking of webinars…

Webinars, webinars, webinars

Myhrtoolkit CEO Jon Curtis speaking on one of our webinars

One of the biggest positive changes that has arrived partly thanks to lockdown has been our passion for delivering webinars! A drastic shift to mostly online communication meant that our existing plan to deliver regular webinars to the business community became even more pressing and relevant. The coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdown hugely shaped our choice of focus, with furlough and staff wellbeing becoming popular topics.

You can find all our previous webinars on our Webinars page.

Socially distanced meetings!

Starting in July, our Technical and Sales & Marketing teams have been meeting in person periodically with social distancing measures in place. Here are some photos our Partnerships Manager, Marie took of a Sales & Marketing team meeting outside the Triple Point Brewery in Sheffield!

From left to right: Customer Relationship Manager, Chris Walsh; Customer Engagement Director, Bob Teasdale; Sales and Support Team Leader, Simon Ross; Customer Relationship Manager, Juliette Passam; Marketing Manager, Cliff Hewson

The future of working remotely…?

The future is looking more flexible for many organisations - lockdown has certainly shown how businesses can survive and even thrive in the face of big changes. According to a recent study, employers expect remote working to double compared to pre-pandemic levels.

We appreciate that this has not been the case for many businesses, who have really felt squeezed throughout lockdown – as a software provider, adapting to the current circumstances has been easier than for businesses within other industries. For more on this topic, see our recent opinion piece: The future of employees working remotely – what do employers think?

How has your team been adapting to the new normal? We would love to hear from you on social!