So you're working from home now...

Raisely is an online fundraising platform for ambitious charities across the world. We empower thousands of charities across the world to take control of their revenue and improve the wellbeing of people and our planet.

Many workplaces are finding themselves suddenly having all staff work from home for the first time. At Raisely we've been a remote team from the start and we've learned a few things about how to make remote working both productive and enjoyable.

Feeling a sense of team

One of the hardest things about working remotely is beating the sense of isolation. At Raisely we use text and voice chat to stay connected.

Even if you're not working remote there's a good chance your office is already using Slack or similar. Places like the #general channel are good ways to beat isolation with chat and sharing memes, and other non-work stuff of interest.

At Raisely we also set up a Discord chat once a week. Discord is a voice chat app where you can set up chat rooms, and set a push to talk key on your keyboard so you can chat to each other as you're going about your day.

It's kind of like the cross desk chat that would happen if we shared an office  (yes, we know that's why people hate open plan, that's why it's only once a week).

Push to talk is like the button on a walkie-talkie, others can only hear you when it's held down, and you can use it within any application so you don't have to interrupt your flow to join the conversation.

(My own hotkey is Shift+Fn, something I'm not likely to accidentally press, so no-one hears me humming along to Do you hear the people sing when I'm not talking)

Telegram is another option if you need to send secure messages easily.

Replacing the Water Cooler

We use Donut for Slack which allocates our team into groups of 2 or 3 for a virtual hangout every fortnight. Those groups organise their own zoom call sometime in the fortnight and talk about not work.

Online Meetings & Workshops

We love using Zoom for meetings and recently discovered the breakout rooms feature, which could be great if you need to move workshops online.

Breakout rooms let you split call participants into their own rooms for smaller chat groups of 2 or more. (Groups of 1 are also possible, but

not great for beating the sense of isolation)

Work-Life Balance

Now your work is at home, it can make it easier for work hours to seep into non-work hours. You may still want boundaries so you have some clear non-work home time.

Some of our team use routines and setups to ensure they keep good boundaries between work and leisure time. This can include using a separate room for work, or starting and ending the work day with a walk around the block so that they get the sense of arriving at and leaving work.