How #TeamThinkific has transitioned to working remotely

At Thinkific, people are at the core of everything we do. As the world grapples with a global pandemic, we’ve taken proactive and preventative steps to ensure our team, their families, and our communities are being supported.

Here’s a closer look at how our team has adapted (quickly!) to an environment that’s rapidly evolving around us each day.

Going Remote

One of the things that our team members appreciate about Thinkific is that we’ve always offered a flexible work environment — during any given week, you can see many Slack statuses letting you know which of our team members are working from home. So as the COVID-19 outbreak began to escalate, our team was proactive in making the transition to working fully remotely in order to reduce the spread of the virus in our community and do our part to keep all of our team members and those in our communities safe.

As we made this transition, we involved our team members and asked them to share their insights, feedback, and tips on how they’re making remote-first work for them. Together, we’ve come up with best practices (including how to effectively run remote meetings), helpful tools for everything from collaboration to communication (like Miro for whiteboarding and Krisp to eliminate background noise on calls), and ways to stay connected.

On top of these virtual resources, we’ve worked to ensure our team is set up for success with their physical workspaces as well. We’ve encouraged our team members to take home their office equipment if they need it, have donated desks and chairs from our office to those who didn’t have a home workstation set up yet, and have encouraged our team members to communicate any additional workstation needs to us.

Staying Connected

While we’ve shifted to working remotely, there have been tremendous efforts from our entire team to ensure that we’re staying connected. Meetings and interviews have been optimized for remote-first environments by ensuring that agendas are clear and shared early, and bookings are broken up throughout the day to allow for breaks. We’ve also noticed check-ins are happening a little more often, whether those have been with our People team, among team members, or during morning coffee chats with team leads. We’ve even run our weekly team-wide huddle virtually with our team of 120 to rave reviews!

“Just because we’re isolated, doesn’t mean we can’t spend time with each other online and be even closer through all of this.”

This is a message that Miranda, our COO, shared with our team. If you’ve followed #TeamThinkific on social media, you’re probably aware that our team enjoys spending time together through activities like team-wide outings, comedy shows, or regular office game nights.

We’re glad to share that this has carried on, even virtually! There are regular morning coffee video calls, team lunches (with themes like show and tell!), and virtual games nights. We’ve celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and have even hosted our monthly Cheers with Peers online!

Through it all, the most important things that our team has focused on to help with this transition have been open communication and transparency, which have long been tenets of the culture we’ve built at Thinkific. They’re more important now than ever — within teams when they’re working together each day, from each team member when they share their needs and how we can support them, and from our leadership team when they’re communicating important updates to our team.

Remaining Adaptable

As the situation we’re facing continues to evolve and impacts our communities, both locally and globally, our team is prepared to continue to adapt as needed. Moving forward, our focus will remain on ensuring both our people and our customers are well supported.

Internally, our People team is conducting regular check-ins with our team members, sharing reminders about Thinkific’s extended coverage for mental wellness, and ensuring that both our people and their families are using resources like our Employee and Family Assistance Plan to access help whenever they need it.

For our community at large, Thinkific recognizes that we are uniquely positioned to help organizations rapidly adapt to change by moving their education and training needs online. As part of our commitment to help, we’re offering free access and advanced support to all government and non-profit organizations working in public health on this issue — you can learn more about what Thinkific is doing to help during this global pandemic by clicking here.

While we continue to face uncertainty around what’s to come, one thing has been abundantly clear through the kindness, care, and compassion that we’ve seen #TeamThinkific show (not only to our fellow team members but to those in our own communities) — we’re in this together!