Living and Working from Home - Tips for Quarantine

Today, we are all facing an exceptional challenge — COVID-19 and the way we react to it can define many things both in our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

At SmartyAds, we believe that steady support and care for both our employees and our clients can help all of us to get through these uncertain times. It is now crucial that we have each other’s backs to get stronger together.

The well-being of our employees has always been the company’s top priority. For more than two weeks already all of our teams are working from home to keep everyone safe and healthy. With that being said, we also ensure that our teams have everything they need to cooperate with our clients and partners as efficiently and beneficial as always. If you are our client, your ad campaigns will remain unaffected — our products and services are at your disposal just like in regular times. And in the meantime, our team gathered some useful information, recommendations, and tips for working remotely on quarantine. In this post, we would like to share it with you.

In times like this, it is vital to take care not only of your health but also to keep calm and positive. SmartyAds HR team is doing a great job supporting our employees while working remotely during the quarantine. We know how stressful it can be to deal with the new circumstances, so we’ve asked our HRs for a few tips on how to stay connected during this time and raise the spirit of your remote team.

Adhere to the advice of health officials

The first and foremost thing is to make sure you and your teams are adhering to the advice given by your local authorities, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and WHO(World Health Organization). Educate your people on how to stay healthy and what to do in this uncertain situation.

Support from a distance

Promote social distancing (if it is advised in your area) and provide support while dealing with it: use video conferencing for important talks instead of face to face meetings. You can try some of the free services for video calls including Skype, Zoom and Google Hangouts. It is also important to support those dealing with isolation and promote mental health awareness.

Rebooting video calls

Although it may not seem so obvious, remote video conferences can actually be fun. Try using them for more informal meetings as well — suggest exchanging tips on organizing ‘home offices’. Organize regular relaxed talks on a given topic and make sure that everyone has a word. Some services also include opportunities to have some fun during calls — for example, try ridiculous virtual backgrounds in Zoom or change the color scheme on Skype (but don’t forget to put everything back to normal before your next call!).

Build your teams online

To build a stronger sense of belonging create informal chats where people discuss their favorite books and movies or exchange photographs of their pets. Talk your teammates into watching some movie or TV series together and then discuss them with the whole team. The same works for collective gaming — such a session can make your remote workers much closer to each other.

Organize challenges with prizes

This can be anything: from the best original picture contest (with or without a theme) to building workplace ideas or a fitness routine to try at home. Encourage your colleagues to share their dreams and aspirations — for instance, ask “what will I do after the quarantine ends?”. You can then choose winners judging by the number of votes and give them a certificate from the company to make these dreams come true.

4 Tips to work remotely during quarantine

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things about this crisis is that you still have to maintain your usual efficiency at work and in some areas you even have to make more effort than before the pandemics. Now that the world relies on the digital ecosystem, even more, we understand that the digital advertising industry is one of the pillars of this ecosystem. To help marketers lead the industry through this crisis, we decided to share some useful advices on working remotely during quarantine.

Stay healthy

Our basic instrument now is a sound mind in a sound body. Make sure you are staying healthy and take care of your loved ones. Don’t forget to keep up with your usual routine to keep your body healthy - sleep regularly and try to avoid stress eating. Make pauses throughout your work hours to have a short exercise and try to find opportunities for bigger workouts during weekends.

Take care of your mind

Don’t check the news or social media more than once or twice per day and try to lower your stress levels. Be mindful and attentive throughout your work hours — a strong concentration skill is a valuable asset these days. There are plenty of different anti-stress techniques, including various meditation practices, observation or taking notes. For meditations, it is easy to start with apps, such as Headspace, Calm or Insight Timer — most of them offer both guided and unguided sessions. Mastering this skill can help you with your long term goals as well.

Show love and support

Do that not only to your closest ones but also to your clients and partners. These are the same humans at the other end of the screen, so your calmness and positivity can significantly help someone to weather this storm. Remember that your most important task now is to reduce their anxiety, minimize your clients’ agitation and communicate a sense of stability.

Keep the positive attitude —

Throughout history, our civilization has survived much worse disruptions and “this too shall pass”.

Balancing private life

We have discussed how to work remotely during quarantine, but it is also important to remember about the balance between work and private life. It may be tempting to spend your free hours checking the news or discussing the latest events, but you can resist it and spend time more wisely.

Embrace and re-evaluate. There is probably something that you’ve been thinking or dreaming about for quite some time already. Use this time to develop these ideas. Besides, when you spend time on your own you can keep your mind clear and re-evaluate what is really important for you.
Learn something new. Luckily, the internet is full of high-quality online courses on platforms, such as Udemy or Khan Academy. Some of them even offer free courses as a response to the pandemics (Coursera, MOZ and edX.) You can also stick to one of the top universities’ open courses, such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. Moreover, there are currently over 400 open courses provided by Ivy League universities available to anyone interested in learning during quarantine. For more industry-specific courses check out Hubspot or Ahrefs Academy. There are also plenty of podcasts including AdExchanger Talks, Emarketer Podcasts, The Heartbeat Podcast, The Talking Stack.
Don’t forget to relax. Remember all those books, movies, and articles you’ve saved for ‘later'? Well, there you have it — that ‘later’ finally became ‘now’. The recommendation list could really go on and on. So instead, we’ve picked some tools which would make this choice much easier or more precise. Choose a random movie or get a personalized recommendation based on your filters. Here is a similar tool for books. You can also base your choice on Book Club suggestions or IMDb top movies lists.

The takeaway

The most important thing now is to keep calm and positive. Use our quarantine tips on working remotely and don’t forget about private life. Give love and support to everyone around you and we can weather this storm together. SmartyAds team wishes you to stay healthy and strong both physically and mentally. The darkest hour is just before dawn and we’ll get through it together!