It’s safe to say that we are all facing a time of change at the moment. It’s one that can be challenging to navigate in regards to workflow, as well as in regard to how we keep moving forward overall, personally and professionally. 

I count myself very lucky to be able to work from home. We’re in a very fortunate position at Fourth Floor, being digital and online-focused, with a product, clients, and audience that follow suit. In fact at the moment, online content is being viewed more than ever, and videogame sales have surged due to people having more time to spend at home. But the fact remains that adaptation was necessary, and that can be difficult, especially for a resolutely team-focused business. 

Fourth Floor were ahead of the curve as the COVID-19 crisis first became apparent. Rich and Cat - Fourth Floor CEO and COO, respectively - were closely monitoring the developing situation long before official lockdown occured, following all emerging guidelines to protect everyone from the first moment we knew of the threat. Before long we were instructed to take what we needed from the office and set up to work from home for the foreseeable future. Armed with some extra monitors, I set up my cosy new space and made sure to make it look and feel as good as I could so that I was comfortable there for as long as I needed to be. But that was just the start of the Fourth Floor journey of lockdown evolution. 

From the very beginning, we’ve prioritised keeping ourselves connected and maintaining our culture. In fact I’m incredibly proud and grateful for how we have been helping each other through. Our staple morning Stand-Up meetings, for instance, have transformed into morning Google Hangouts, this quick 15-minute catch up with our teams helping to maintain procedural consistency, while also proving vital in keeping us up to date on progress and needs across our projects and squads.

This time is of course an invaluable communication bookend at the start of the day, ensuring that we keep things running as smoothly as we did in the office. But it’s also an important, guaranteed human check-in point. Not to mention that the addition of a webcam does help to motivate me to keep up standards and remain presentable for the day. Sometimes the urge is strong, but I’ve settled for comfortable clothes outside of the PJ drawer for this reason. Thanks Stand-Up! 

In addition to our morning squad calls, we have been taking additional measures, shifting our standard working practices to cultivate greater connection with our other team members. One good example of this is our new creative planning sessions. Now a much more collaborative, connected process, we’ll get people together from across departments and set up an online Post-It Note mood board similar to how we operate in the office. Regularly bringing people together for this is hugely helpful to make sure nobody is ever burnt out or struggling on a task in isolation, and also gives us a much faster, more economical route to concepts we can integrate into our pitches.

In a recent LinkedIn post I talked about the importance of Fourth Floor’s end-of-quarter meeting days, where we participate in fun team activities, while presenting and reflecting on everything we have achieved during the previous months, and discussing where we are going next. And we haven’t let lockdown prevent this! In April, our brilliant events manager Kat Langner organised a digital meeting complete with live participation mechanics, polls, group tasks and live feedback, helping to keep what could have been a long and rather flat meeting as engaging and interactive as our usual events. 

We were each also sent a care package with a few little gifts that definitely made us smile, and kept things feeling tangible rather than virtual, while the meeting was topped off with a visit to The Online Arms, the new digital ‘local’ that opens after work every Friday for those who want to share a drink and a chat over Hangouts.

Work-fuelled activities aside, our new daily ritual of an early-afternoon Watercooler Chat on Slack has also been a lovely way of connecting and sharing more of our lives, making sure that we keep functioning as people rather than just job roles. Each day, 2pm brings a new topic to the channel, and away we go. Whether we are sharing images of ourselves as kids, comparing and discussing favourite pieces of art that we love in our homes, or collaborating on extracurricular creative projects and putting together themed Spotify playlists of everyone’s favourite music, it’s a thoroughly engaging high-point of the day, and gives us all a fresh way to stay in contact and stay human in very abnormal circumstances. 

This has all come off the back of our ongoing wellbeing efforts. The regular meetings fuelling that part of the company culture have of course become more important than ever, now running weekly with an expanded group. And even with the gyms closed, we’ve continued our long-running group fitness activities by sharing workouts we’ve been doing at home, via a dedicated Slack channel and an excellent - and ever-expanding - spreadsheet of resources. With every workout even coming with a user-submitted rating, from ‘Easy’ to ‘Kill Me Now’, there’s truly something for everyone! 

We have also been looking for additional ways to support those looking to take on extra personal goals and hobbies throughout the lockdown too. Whether one of us wants to to be able to run a 10k or complete a puzzle book by a certain date, these small, rolling goals now have a Slack channel called Challenge Accepted, where everyone can post (and be supported for) their progress. 

With lockdown, the challenge for me personally hasn’t so much come from simply working from home, as this is something I was used to at previous jobs. For me, the challenge comes with the fact that I live alone. I don’t have housemates, or a pet, and I don’t even have real plants in here. It’s just me and my little set-up. More than ever I am realising the importance of separating myself from my desk at the end of the day.

I’ll admit that I haven’t been great at this as having my new set up allows me to play games with friends online more comfortably. On a couple of occasions I have forced myself to go and sit on my sofa instead, and each time it helps me to switch off into relaxed mode a bit more. This too is something we’re all encouraging each other to do, and that's also emblematic of how the Fourth Floor culture is defining our working practices at this strange and demanding time. As well as making sure no-one feels isolated during isolation, we know when to make each other step back as well.

As this lockdown continues, we are all trying our best to get used to a new kind of normal, and at Fourth Floor we have used this time to evolve our culture to even better support our business and collective wellbeing. I’m glad to feel so supported by Fourth Floor, and hope some of this insight will be of help to others. If you have any lockdown tips of your own, or if any of our ideas have inspired you to try something new, then I would love to hear about them. In the meantime, stay safe out there!