Magic happens when you are together?

 I hope you and your loved ones are all safe and sound. There is a Dutch proverb that says ‘Under pressure, everything becomes fluid’, meaning that fixed positions, ideas and habits suddenly loosen up under pressing circumstances. This is what happened to me this last week...

Nmbrs has no official working-from-home policy. As you may know, I prefer people to be in our beautiful offices. It is my strong conviction that magic happens when you are working together in a trusted environment that “feels” like home. I feel our approach of offering a happy workplace works, as we have loyal and highly engaged employees that enjoy our shared adventure.

Since Friday 13th of March we had to take the decision to close down our offices in Amsterdam and Lisbon. All Nmbrs® employees became part of the majority of the knowledge workers that are sent home to do their jobs from there. Our employees have been forced to change their desk for the dining table. 

Of course all our employees have internet access and laptops to support their jobs. Also, it’s encouraging that we were already used to working together in squads (teams) with both Amsterdam AND Lisbon employees. Our digital infrastructure, Google Meet, Slack usage, virtual standups and cloud software everywhere, made it easy to keep our core processes running smoothly. So far so good. 

So how can we keep connected? 

Video calls are great! Video calls can stimulate people to appear fresh and fruity before the camera (at least upwards from their waist). That’s a good start for their working day. However if you go off-topic or the content is not relevant, you literally lose your audience as they are just a mouse click away from leaving the meeting. Therefore we started to ask in advance what people expect from a meeting and what they want to know or get out of it. Relevance is essential. 

We have planned time for fun/social activities too. Our People Squad /Coaches have created a program of fun things to break-up the working day in the coming weeks. Everyday @15.00, we take a moment to step back from your work and maybe get a virtual bootcamp, have a laugh, meet your colleague’s pet (or maybe their plants!). Each day there will be something new to join, with different hosts and activities. Even our Friday drinks are still going strong and are now Virtual Friday Drinks, which even made it to RTL late-night news. Keeping the social connection alive is vital. 

Communication is key and we communicate more than ever before. Last Friday we hosted our first online company meeting. In this company meeting I presented some measures Nmbrs as a company needs to take to prepare for the coming storm. Our aim of the company meeting was to be open and transparent on how we as a company are dealing with the current uncertain times, giving our employees some peace of mind on at least their job here @Nmbrs.

As we are working hard on keeping the connectivity of our workforce, our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Together with our partners we are providing business critical services. We know that many of our partners are looking at ways to provide additional support to small businesses. And with a close connection to our partners we are able to develop specific features to help them and small businesses during this challenging time.

So can we keep the magic alive? 

Everybody is working together, finding each other and customers on hangout and continuing their work on top of all the extra work which is coming to you because of this COVID-19 situation. Some people have to take care of their kids, some are all by themselves in a strange country away from their family, some are together with their roommates all gathered around 1 kitchen table in a small kitchen. But even in these circumstances, we feel the Nmbrs vibe present in each meeting we have. It shows we are agile and we are adapting. Magic happens! 

I thank everyone for taking responsibility and doing what they can. 

Hang in there! We are almost there.

Michiel Chevalier