1.5 years of remote work: How not to go crazy and continue to enjoy your work. ASKfm team experience

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Before the blink of an eye, the calendar is already on the 18th month of a new reality, where work is online, negotiations with partners happen in Zoom, and you have seen new colleagues only on the avatar of the corporate chat.

The ASKfm team went to remote work in time and quickly rebuilt work processes for the new reality.

We started remote work with a huge boom in Latin American countries. At the beginning of the pandemic, more than 1 million users returned to their accounts, nostalgic for communication, which was sharply lacking offline. By the time all workers of the Ukrainian and Latvian offices had moved to work from home, the app skyrocketed to 1st place in Play Market in Mexico.

These 1.5 years of remote work have been productive for the team. The launch of new public and anonymous chats, coin packages, and ASKfm subscriptions – this is not even a complete list of updates that came out during the pandemic.

Working at a high pace can quickly lead to decreased productivity. To keep the mood, the team made some useful traditions:

• Start the work week with an Allhands call
• Share updates within teams at daily standups
• Present your results personally at the end of the quarter
• Meet colleagues outside of work

Since the project offices are located in Ireland, Latvia and Ukraine, some colleagues had not seen each other since the beginning of the pandemic. It was nice to finally meet those with whom we are in touch every day.

We talked a lot about quarantine, work-life balance, hobbies and discussed work!

Sedentary work and quarantine realities, in which the road to the “office” takes no more than a couple of minutes, left no doubt about choosing the teambuilding format. Active games, a large area for walking and dancing to a common playlist.

The team spirit and face-to-face communication cannot be substituted by business correspondence alone while working remotely. Therefore, physical team meetings are very important to keep the morale high. And the emotions that one can experience together in just a day will definitely help you to achieve better results at your work, understanding each other perfectly.