One year remote working with vitero

It is almost twelve months since corona completely changed our daily work routine. The switch to working from home was fortunately easy for us, the vitero team, as our virtual team room was already the established standard in our meeting and training culture. So the communication worked. The actual challenge was rather to keep the mood in the team high and to not neglect interpersonal tones.

What did we learn?

• More frequent team meetings and plenaries strengthen the sense of unity.
  When working from home, you often feel like a lone fighter. This makes regular virtual team meetings even more important. In our experience, all hands meetings – with important information, team reports, etc. – via web conferencing help to keep the team spirit alive and to keep an overview of the entire company.
• Interactions are virtually even more important.
  Common experiences connect and create cohesion. Whether it’s brainstorming with a card query, project evaluation with points or even a mood assessment with a survey: working out and discussing results together makes meetings more lively and brings teams together.
• Open rooms encourage informal exchange.
  The “chat in the coffee kitchen”, which is so important for team spirit, happens automatically in the office. Virtually, this is more difficult. This is where virtual rooms show their full strength: you can use them directly at any time without booking and see who is talking next to you. In our vitero Café we also like to meet internally for a “quick chat” and spontaneously get into conversation.
• Small gestures preserve friendship.
  Sometimes it’s just little things that distinguish a good day from a bad one. Whether it’s changing quotes on the lock screen (submitted by employees) or digital thank-you cards to colleagues: small, unifying elements are important for a positive mood in the team.
• A look is sometimes worth a thousand words.
  Webcams used in a targeted way are a great thing – e.g. to virtually see colleagues live again after weeks at home.
• A bit of reality is the salt in the virtual soup.
  For our virtual Christmas celebration, each employee received a package by post that had to be opened only during the celebration. Shared guessing about its content and shared anticipation bonds just as much as shared experiences. Creativity is called for here.

We are pleased that the mood in our team (according to our regular, internal, anonymous surveys) has remained consistently good or even improved slightly, depending on the aspect, even after almost a year of working remotely. We continue to work on keeping it that way.


Stay healthy!