5 Ways to Boost Company Morale While Working From Home Amidst COVID-19

In light of the coronavirus (COVID-19), many businesses are pivoting to mandatory work from home. It can be a challenge to maintain a sense of normalcy, but the team at Avenue looks at it as a new challenge to overcome. There are plenty of ways to provide employee connection, socializing opportunities, and even host fun events. We encourage you to try a few of the examples below to stay connected with your employees despite social distance.

Morning Check-in Huddle

We like to start our days feeling united. This has always been true for Avenue, even before work from home. Our days start with a quick daily huddle (that we now do via Zoom) where we check in on our planned daily tasks, see how we can provide assistance to team members, and where we share one thing we are grateful for. We find starting the day off with gratitude greatly boosts our mindset and focus.

Virtual Workout Class

While working from home, it can feel like work never ends -- as your home is now your office. To break up the workday, we’ve found moving our bodies to be beneficial, both for getting in a good stretch and alleviating stress. As a team, we’ve implemented weekly virtual yoga sessions. Through a video conferencing tool, our team is able to participate in a live yoga class with a local yoga instructor all from the comfort of our own home. We enjoy the calming and restorative nature of yoga, but feel free to implement this team exercise with any kind of workout class!

Virtual Happy Hour When your main form of communication is online chat, it isn’t quite as easy to quickly catch up with a coworker or share a good laugh. We’ve found when working from home, it’s important to be intentional about socializing, that’s why we’ve enjoyed virtual team happy hours. A time where we don’t discuss work, but catch up on our personal lives and enjoy our time together.

Don’t Reschedule, Adapt

We’re sure if your business is anything like Avenue, you have team events on the calendar that aren’t completely conducive to working from home. But before you reschedule, evaluate if there is a way you can adapt the event to the current situation. For example, this past week was Avenue’s 4th birthday! We were all looking forward to the celebration we had planned. Instead of postponing, we made this event virtual. Our team had celebratory cupcakes delivered to each team members house (safely of course) and hopped on a video conference call to enjoy our cupcakes and share our favorite Avenue achievements over the past four years. So before you reschedule, see if there is a fun way to adapt.

Weekly Silver Linings

In light of everything going on in the world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We aim for Avenue to be a source of connection and positivity. To bring a little brightness into each of our lives, each Friday we share a quick bulleted list of the silver linings. We know that staying home is keeping both ourselves and the community safe, we are fortunate to have the privilege of maintaining our work from home. We take this time to highlight all the good we’ve experienced to keep focus on what is most important. Things like extra pet cuddles, new hobbies, and an opportunity to slow down.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to continue providing for our clients from the safety of our homes so we can do our parts in protecting those serving us on the front lines. We hope these suggestions encourage others to find unique ways to stay connected and united during this difficult time. We’d love to hear from you! Let us know if you’ve tried any of the techniques above or if you’ve found other exciting ways to engage with your team.