Communications in times of crisis: EMPAUA’s approach

Community is one of our core values and guiding principles at EMPAUA, which we have put into practice successfully over the last few weeks of lockdown.

The coronavirus crisis has made us reinvent how we interact with each other and stay connected with our colleagues.

Luckily, working from home is not a new concept for us. In fact, working remotely is one of the great perks of working at EMPAUA.

Fortunately, our community is strong, and the real challenge was not being able to meet our colleagues and continue normal office life (which is really fun) for long weeks.

The first step was the creation of a Taskforce team.

The purpose of the taskforce was to be as proactive as possible regarding all Covid-19 topics, understand how the crisis was affecting our company and work out how to keep connected with each other and our clients.

‍Everyone had the possibility to join the taskforce team and contribute their time to cope with the crisis effectively. In the end, the team consisted of 5 team members from all different areas of our business.

This way the communication was not done top-down through the managing directors but the authority was distributed among trusted colleagues.

These unprecedented times raised many questions for all of us, such as what financial implications do we have to face? What do our governments offer in order to support us? How can we support colleagues with kids or soon-to-be parents? How can we make the home office as enjoyable as possible?

Our Taskforce team aims to provide answers to all these concerns as swiftly as possible and provide instant support to all of our team members and their families.

To keep us all in the loop and ensure no one misses any important information, we have scheduled a meeting once a week called “Corona All-hands”.

Here, we review all financial reports, the latest sales activities and projections as well as the working situation of our colleagues in Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Spain, respectively.

Transparency is another of our core values and guiding principles.

Finally, we run through all the upcoming virtual activities that have been organised and invite everyone to join in.

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The current coronavirus situation has been new to us on so many levels: there has been a lot of uncertainty, which leads to many concerns both in our professional and personal lives.

‍That is why we also scheduled a catch-up call, a method to connect with each one of our team members, so we make sure that everyone feels supported, can voice their concerns and ask as many coronavirus related questions as they want or need.

In both Germany and the UK, people are allowed to go back to their office spaces, and we understand that this might be quite exciting news. However, we feel we still need to be cautious and take all the measures necessary before returning to our daily routines.

That is why we’ve told our colleagues to take turns if they would like to be at the office again and fill in a record sheet where we can monitor who’s been in and when.  

It’s great that slowly things are getting better, but we still need to stick to our plan and abide by the government regulations where each of our offices are located. Undoubtedly, it has been hard, but we feel ready to take this opportunity as a new beginning and give the best we can.