Staying Creative while Working From Home with XaitPorter!

At Xait we have now worked from home for almost two weeks, just like many of you. As we prepare ourselves for a long ride, we have already gained a lot of useful (and not so useful) experiences that I would like to share with you.

Being a tech company, it is safe to say that transitioning from office work to working from home went very smooth for Xait. Well, at least technically!

Most of us in Xait have laptops, high-speed internet, and extra VPN capacity. With XaitPorter for writing content, and other cloud-based external tools for email, video conference and chat, we were instantly up and running!

But most of us also have families. And as homeschooling and home office have become the norm for everyone during the last couple of weeks, suddenly we all had the additional challenge of sharing the home office with the rest of the household members!

Some of us escaped to a dedicated room in the house and in the attic, and some to a garden shed a bit further away. Myself, I decided to bite the bullet and have everyone sit together in the same room around the same table. I can confirm that those noise-cancelling technologies come in very handy for this scenario!

I would like to give extra credit to those parents who have toddlers in the house! During some of the video conference calls, I have seen them playing loudly in the background or even climbing on their parent, who is heroically trying to have a serious conversation with the rest of us. Perhaps a challenge for the parent, but good entertainment for the rest of us.

Once we figured out how to survive the home office workday, it turned out the whole afternoon also had to be shared with the same household members! And there is no sports to watch! Luckily there are plenty of streaming options these days!

We made an attempt at a movie night. We haven't done this as a family for a while, and it turns out our movie preferences are no longer aligned. No more than 5 minutes into a movie I ended up choosing, my son had left the room to play a video game, while the others were on their mobiles browsing social media...

Social work interactions

So after more than a week of home officing, what do you miss? I miss people! Co-workers. The coffee machine conversation. The ringing of the bell when we win a new contract. Actually this whole ‘social distancing’ measure has made most of us much more social!

At Xait, we have tried to feed the urge for social work interaction in different ways. On our internal social media platform, we share our experiences and stories every day. Fridays are the happy socks day, and we have continued to share the colorful socks via the same platform.

On Fridays we often have a short gathering where we eat cake, ice cream or waffles. Last Friday, we experimented with an Xait Virtual Waffle break. It didn't replace the physical gathering, but at least my waffles tasted just as great!

The fact that many companies are able to successfully work from home, shows that the digitalization efforts over the last couple of years have had a true impact. We see that our XaitPorter users continue to work more or less at the same rate all over the world, even from their homes.

Some are still writing proposals for active tenders, some are writing proposals that will be ready for when this situation has passed. Some are using the opportunity to clean up and update the XaitPorter content library. Some use the opportunity to write other useful documents, like business continuity plans, communication plans, technical documents, HR documents or even annual reports.

We fully support the social distancing measures that are being put into effect in many parts of the world. It seems necessary even though it has a massive impact on our businesses. We also praise the efforts of governments, health care and schools, who selflessly do everything they can to minimize the impact of the situation.

Xait is happy to be in a position where we can continue to serve our customers and new incoming customers with the same level of quality and support as always. Our focus is to make sure we continue helping all our users get the most value from XaitPorter!

At the same time, we send our thoughts and best wishes to those businesses and people who struggle. It is clear that especially hospitality, transport and parts of retail are being hit hard by this. We have needed you before, and we will need you again!

We encourage companies and people to find ways to help all businesses as much as possible. Continue to buy software and subscribe to online services. Buy online goods, buy takeout food and support your favorite artists in creative new ways! Finally, the most important to remember for all of us at Xait and for you: Stay safe and stay healthy!