Challenge Accepted! Work from home at BE-terna

Two weeks ago, everyone's work-life balance was turned upside down. We were faced with having to remove the boundaries between work and home and were challenged with many issues regarding remote work.

However, if there's one thing that people working at BE-terna are best at, it is finding solutions, along with coming up with new ideas and looking at the bright side of every challenge, which we have now proven!

14-day "Work from home challenge''

On Sunday, before the first day of working remotely, we were thinking about how to maintain our bonds during this time and we came up with our 14-day 'Work from Home Challenge'.  What was originally meant to be a local initiative became a group project that has helped connect all our employees in 6 countries, and has brought 800 people together within the BE-terna group.

These challenges helped us get to know each other on a more personal level - they made our day brighter and kept us waiting expectantly for what the next day's challenge would bring to us.

At the end of every day, we created a video montage of all the photos that we received during the day, and posted them on our Instagram and our internal Microsoft Teams communication group chat channel.

We are delighted to see that we were able to connect employees in all 6 countries, not only at a business level but on a personal level as well.

We asked Dara how she experienced this challenge:

I already miss the office dynamics and my team immensely, so this made me feel a little more connected to my co-workers. I must admit that I looked forward to reading our daily challenges every time I turned on my computer in the morning. Moreover, it allowed me to get little glimpses into our co-workers’ home-office lives, whether it was through seeing the socks they were wearing that day, the breakfast they had, the views from their windows or of their desks, or simply by sharing a photo of their favourite plant. It has certainly had a positive impact on our morale, and it has enabled us to keep sharing little pieces of ourselves in a fun and relaxed way. Can't wait to see what’s planned for next week!

Here you can see our results

• Day 1: Coffee mug challenge
• Day 2: Socks challenge
• Day 3: View challenge
• Day 4: Snack challenge
• Day 5: TV challenge
• Day 6: Furry friend challenge
• Day 7: Back in time challenge
• Day 8: Home office table challenge
• Day 9: House plant challenge
• Day 10: Cheers challenge

 So, what's next? We are organising on-line LinkedIn workshops that will help us expand our knowledge of business-oriented social media and will help us get to know each other even better.