What we did during the crisis at Parkour3

There's no denying that the current crisis is unprecedented. In our respective businesses, we have all had to adapt in our own way to deal with it. Some have had to cope with increased demand, due to their sector of activity, while others have had to cease operations altogether. At Parkour3, we continued to work, but as with many marketing and IT companies, we saw a slowdown in activity. Early on, when the closures were announced, we were hard at work coming up with ideas and opportunities to minimize the impact of this government-imposed pause.

Technology at the service of telecommuting

We've been working from home since March 16. Fortunately, we were used to it, as our office was under renovation for most of the summer. Until recently, only our programmers didn't own laptops, butwithout even anticipating the situation with the virus we're currently experiencing, the company had remedied this situation a few weeks earlier. Also, as we are empowered to work in a cloud environment through the Google suite and via inter-team communication tools like Slack or Trello, this transition went smoothly. As far as Slack is concerned, we used to use it more in "one-to-one" mode, to discuss important but non-urgent matters with our colleagues. However, we have increased our use of this tool in the context of Covid-19. For example, we've created groups where we discuss specific initiatives. Another habit we've developed, using Slack, is to wish each other a good day every day, while sharing our goals for the day. In short, we've taken inspiration from scrum meetings to introduce this good practice, now that we're remote, whereas we didn't even have this good habit when we were all in the office.

When the team gets involved

Let's not forget that when the break directive for companies came down, the government had not yet announced any measures to help companies and employees. So we had to get creative as quickly as possible to break the deadlock. Although we were well organized to work remotely, we now had to ensure that the agency's employees had work to do in the weeks ahead. Our first initiative was to get together to assemble a list of current customers we thought we could help, either by adding Covid alert banners to their websites, or by contacting customers to offer to update their site's CMS if it was obsolete. Working as a team, contacting our customers one by one, and accumulating several small contracts here and there, we secured short- and medium-term work for the team. Another initiative we took, even before government training grants were available, was to apply to Emploi-Québec to train Parkour3 employees. So we all pitched in to find training that would benefit us. That way, if a downturn were to occur, we could use the time to hone our skills, and emerge stronger from the crisis.

Building on good habits

At Parkour3, long before the current situation, we used to meet as a team every Monday for a weekly meeting. This was an opportunity for members of the management, marketing, sales and production teams to discuss their objectives and commitments for the week ahead, and to ensure team cohesion in the process. Although we continued to hold the meeting via Google Hangouts, we initially did so with the camera closed, no doubt for fear of being seen disheveled, in pajamas, or in "floppy" laundry, as they say. During the 2nd week of confinement, we made it a rule to turn on our cameras during meetings, and frankly, it was nice to see our colleagues again, albeit more bearded and disfigured than usual. Having said that, we quickly realized that due to a limitation of Google Hangouts, we couldn't see the programmers, who weren't used to speaking systematically. So, in week 3, we encouraged all team members to share their success stories from the previous week, whether personal or professional. This habit, which helps us get to know our colleagues better, is likely to continue when we return to the office. On the subject of conference calls, I have to admit that personally, I take great pleasure in seeing my colleagues' respective environments. Sometimes a child pops up in the middle of a meeting, or a colleague's bedroom is used as an office, and this humanizes each person, who becomes a little more than a colleague at the same time.

Socializing from a distance

Like all of you, we've had to virtualize not only our business, but also our social lives. Many of us have already had the experience, a month after the start of isolation measures, of celebrating a holiday, or meeting up with friends via teleconferencing software. Although the first few minutes were often uncomfortable or even chaotic, with one person talking over another, or with the microphone muted for 10 seconds without our knowledge, we eventually got used to it. It was the same for all our colleagues, when we implemented daily dinners on Google Hangouts. Like a cafeteria, everyone is free to join in for dinner or not, whether for 5 minutes or the whole hour. Although described as "intense" by some colleagues at first, this lunchtime get-together has become a must for some, to break the isolation of living alone, or simply to keep in touch with colleagues. In addition to these lunchtime get-togethers, we quickly added a Friday 4 à 5, where everyone is welcome to enjoy a drink of their choice before heading off for the weekend.

When resilience rhymes with velocity

When I think of the positive impact of the current situation on the company, I can't overlook the marketing initiatives the agency has set in motion in a short space of time. Although our sales and marketing teams have been meeting on a weekly basis for some time now, and we've managed to put out an impressive amount of content and initiatives week after week, it goes without saying that a sense of urgency was felt from mid-March onwards. Faced with the current situation, we pulled together and started looking for ideas that would help our customers, prospects and the business world in general. And so, in the space of a few days, we finalized and released a piece of content we'd had in mind in early 2020, and came up with the idea for a post-Covid Webinar. For this Webinar, we found panelists, created questions, bought the software to run it and coordinated all the steps in a timeframe we wouldn't have thought possible before the pandemic. We also launched a round-table initiative for marketing experts by virtualizing the event. In other words, we're now bolder, more efficient, and confident in our ability to bring our projects to fruition, and we intend to keep that in mind as the crisis draws to a close.