The coronavirus has upended the lives of people all across Los Angeles, and those who are fortunate enough to still be working are adjusting to a new normal, one in which their home also serves as their office and, for some, their child’s daycare center or school. The way people work has also changed, with all in-person interactions replaced by video chats, messaging apps and email.
It’s a stressful and lonely time for many, and things may get harder before they get better. Yet even as many of us struggle to navigate the uncertainty of it all, many more are finding ways to lift each other up. We recently checked in with leaders from tech companies across Los Angeles to see if they’ve encountered any bright spots during these dark times and were greeted with story after story of teams coming together and connecting in unique and thoughtful ways.
How are you and your teams coming together? Share your story using #UnitedWeTech.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
After powering through the initial shock and fear, our team quickly adapted to this new normal. We have over 700 employees and dozens of contractors, vendors and freelancers across nine studios around the world but have experienced very little — if any — disruption in our day-to-day processes. Given the magnitude of our circumstances, this seamless transition speaks volumes to the passion and dedication of our employees.
Another powerful positive that has come from this is the connection we have with our players. As soon as cities started going into lockdown, we sent a “just checking in” message to our community to see how they were doing and if games were offering any sort of comfort during this time. The responses came in droves and were humbling, uplifting, hilarious and everything in between. To hear firsthand how something so simple could offer a way to escape, stay connected digitally or just help pass the time is a truly profound reminder about the power of just checking in with each other. Amidst all of the chaos and despite being isolated, we have never been more connected than we are now.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this, and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
To kick off the year, we hosted a town hall with all of our offices, and one of the main points we wanted to drive home was that, above all else, we are stronger together. This mantra unknowingly foreshadowed our current circumstances, but the principle is now truer and more relevant than ever. Once things return to a version of normal, I’m confident that this newfound camaraderie, heightened empathy and eagerness to solve problems will carry over into the physical offices.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
The sheer frequency of kind acts displayed by our team since the quarantine started is mind-boggling. Even during the initial fact-finding stage, people were offering up various solutions for the betterment of the company and always made sure to give a voice to their teams, their clients and their families.
Additionally, this has allowed us to break down the barrier between remote workers and those in our bigger offices around the globe. Suddenly, we have all found a balance through mirrored set-ups and identical, unrelenting situations. So now, a little more reliant on co-creation and dependent on modern technology, we are a little more flexible with time zones and more focused on understanding the global perspective.
We make sure we move together on Mondays, gather on Wednesdays to play video games or watch movies and share a beer on Friday afternoons, just as if we were in the office. The brilliant and generous response from not only our team but also our families and our professional networks has been the unexpected silver lining for us.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this, and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
The last few weeks pushed us to reveal our boundaries and embrace the unknown. This is challenging some of the norms we have created and settled into over time. However, we quickly rallied around a core message: Together we are one, and this is how we write our legacy. So now, with a new set of norms, we set out to make it happen.
The impromptu change to our operating model won’t come to fruition overnight. It can, however, improve day after day, as long as we maintain our sense of humor and keep a blue head (our version of keep calm). We will overcommunicate using the channels available to us, and we’ll figure out new fun ways to share knowledge.
We’re not so sure there will be a “normal.” All we’re sure about is that we can be flexible as a business and flexible as members of the Los Angeles community.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
Our mission is to turn healthy habits into a ritual, and this couldn’t be more relevant today when people are working remotely and trying to find balance in their routines. I’m proud to continue offering a high-quality, clinically-backed multivitamin to women that helps support foundational health. Beyond supporting our customers, this moment has been important for us as a team to support our employees.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this, and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
We started working from home earlier than most on March 9. This precaution to protect our team and their families has resulted in great trust in our leadership team. We also had great technology in place thanks to our head of engineering, Daniel Archer, which made the transition to working from home very seamless. We’ve maintained our all-hands meetings virtually and have even instituted weekly team leads meetings. The key has been overcommunication. Beyond helping support our customers' health at this time, we have continued to extend that to our employees with weekly virtual yoga classes, virtual happy hours and virtual lunches.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
I am so impressed that our team has taken lemons and made lemonade as they adapt to new working environments. Our employees continue exhibiting out-of-the-box thinking day in and day out and have tapped into their creative sides in unique and incredible ways. Our mission is to give sports fans the chance to win every day, and our vision is creating experiences that fans cannot wait to share with their friends. The team has shown their commitment to the company and our customers, and we remain as committed as ever to giving our fans more ways to win while supporting their colleagues during this uncertain time.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
One of our core principles at FanDuel Group is “we are one team,” and it is one that everyone is taking to heart right now. We are dispersed globally across multiple time zones, so we are no strangers to video calls and virtual communication. However, we are now faced with the challenge of balancing work along with home life. Over the past couple of weeks, our team has continued to collaborate on video calls and has taken it a step further by creating cross-functional Slack channels that didn’t exist before.
Our employees have been able to utilize working remotely to get to know their colleagues in new ways. We have also had the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look into each other’s homes and appreciate what makes our employees who they truly are. Whether it is seeing children make an appearance on our virtual calls or hearing family pets barking in the background, we have taken the importance of teamwork outside the office walls and brought it to life. FanDuel employees will continue carrying this mentality and dedication to each other long after this period is over.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
With all of our interactions happening digitally, we’ve discovered that asking one engagement question a day tells us a lot about our people: who they are, where they come from, what they care about, when they can or want to engage and how they prefer to communicate. We also learn from who’s not posting but still engaging with reactions or emojis or who’s not engaging at all.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
The insight we have from our daily engagement questions is helping to guide us in the development of new company-wide initiatives and how we communicate them, both in our current environment and for the future. Although empathy was already a principal value at Signal Sciences, I think this experience has deepened our understanding of what our people need and will have a greater impact on our work moving forward.
We know this has been a trying time for everyone. But as your team has adapted to new working conditions, have you found any positive takeaways from this experience?
True human connection. BQE has offices worldwide and the COVID-19 outbreak has threatened everyone globally. This unplanned experience, where employees from all over the world are working from home, has allowed our teams to connect with their fellow employees from different cultures and develop a distributed work culture that ignores borders.
What lesson do you think your team has learned from this, and how will you carry it forward into the business once things return to normal?
Many employees at BQE have been asking for an opportunity to work from home to avoid commuting to work. Now that everyone is working from home, all of them are looking forward to being back at the office. The lesson learned is the importance of being around others. Socializing at work is necessary to maintain a balance in our lives.
