This time last week, COVID-19 was rampant elsewhere in the world, but New Zealand still had under 10 known cases. We are now closer to 40 cases and businesses, including ours, are implementing their Business Continuity Plans and working out how to continue business as usual in these unprecedented times.

As of right now, Lucidity is operating fully remotely with all staff working from home. We are quite lucky in the fact that the tools that we offer to our customers are the tools we need to use to enable remote work.

With the Lucidity workforce ranging from Papakura in the South, Whangaparoa in the North, Beachlands to the East and Titirangi in the West, we are about as geographically spread out as you possibly can be in Auckland.

To bridge the physical gap between us all, we are utilising the technology we have at our fingertips to bring the company closer. In Lucidity’s Modern Workspace environment, Microsoft Teams, which was already our primary method of internal communication, is now our virtual office. We have mandated that video should be more widely used, so we can get some of the face to face interaction that we lack by not being in a physical office. This does result in the occasional furry friend joining into a conference call and we’ve found they have some valuable insights to offer if you’ll just let them!

We’ve also taken to sharing daily pictures of our home office, whether that be of our home office setup, the view out the window or what beers are on for Friday drinks. We are trying to keep everything as close to normal as can be, to ease the transition into our new working arrangement.

I reached out to the Lucidity team to get some comments that we could share about how working from home is impacting our day to day to lives – a selection of these comments are included below:

“I can actually be productive in the time I would usually spend in traffic each day! Plus, I also get to see the kids go off to school & kindy, talk about work/life balance!

“This morning I woke up at 8.45. Got ready in 15 mins and started work. “

“Personally, my biggest revelation has been what a great tool MS Teams is!”

“Our dog, Bonnie, thinks it’s Christmas with both pack leaders working from home! She is being spoiled rotten.”

“I was able to finish work and be at home at a respectable time. Also able to multi-function, the weekend’s washing is in progress.”

“I’m in control of my own climate Not freezing in our work office”

“Best of all is getting back to being able to walk with my husband and dog each morning rather than sitting in the traffic.”

We’ve been sharing tips and tricks on how to stay sane while working from home, while some staff are quite used to flexible working, others may be experiencing this for the first time.

Another couple of good resources that we have come across are:

With these difficult times having a wide-ranging impact, we’ve also found that it is important to keep spirits up by sharing a virtual laugh or two. This can be in the form of Work from Home Memes: