How Your Majesty is staying together while working apart

In the past decade, the number of people who are working remotely/from home has increased by more than 140%. While this trend is on the rise and has obvious benefits for companies and employees (read productivity, flexibility, low overheads, less stress), working from home in these pandemic times feels like a necessary, albeit forced choice.

At Your Majesty (YM), remote working is not a new concept. In fact, it is quite the norm — from global clients in several time zones, to a flexible work-from-home and vacation policy, YM has always found creative ways to cater to the changing needs of work culture. Our ethos is uniting the curious to shape the future of work — it is what drives creativity at YM, and spreads positive vibes.

But maintaining a positive mindset amidst blasts of #covid19 content can be unnerving even for the most optimistic people (that we are). So when the lockdown was announced, we entered unchartered territory and everything felt uncertain.

The one thing we knew we could count on, was each other.

So we’d like to share a few ways in which we feel not-so-distant in these times of social distancing.

1. We are working from home together

Our Monday mornings usually start with sharing weekend highlights. We always have a few virtual attendees, but this was our first virtual-only Monday breakfast. We grabbed the opportunity to befriend technology, inviting each other into our homes by sharing workspace (and breakfast) videos. That has set a positive tone for us to be comfortable in co-working from our homes — be it in meetings or jam sessions.

2. We are keeping each other company

From sharing morning workout inspiration to lunching together, we are continuing on with our communal activities that have strong roots in our people-focussed culture. Now more than ever, we are checking in on each other, sharing the small details of our day-to-day, and amping up the fun quotient :)

3. We are lending a helping hand

Setting up (an almost) permanent spot to work productively at home isn’t an easy task, especially when you have the luxury of multi-screens at work. To avoid putting everyone at risk of exposing themselves in this virus-infused environment, our office hero, Florian, took it upon himself to drive through the city and hand-deliver office equipment to people’s home ❤

4. We are being resourceful

Our founders have done a great job of pivoting our business operations to being digital-only, accommodating for flexible working-parent needs, and keeping us informed about the latest updates and resources that we should have handy during these times. Transparency has always been one of our core values, but keeping a whole company safe and calm in turbulent times deserves special love. There has been overwhelming support from everyone to avoid disrupting routines — from sharing updates (in different languages for the non-native speakers) on the situation, providing tips and tricks for remote working etiquettes, and sharing the freshest memes on the internet which can light up the grimmest times :)

5. We are in this together

Adversity has a way of bringing people together. You see people make an effort to help each other out and stay positive. But in our case, it has simply made our positivity louder. As hard (and weird) as these past days have felt, being remotely together has helped us not only stay positive but more importantly stay connected — and at the heart of it all there is one reason for this — because we care.

We are sharing this post to serve as a reminder to us, and to all of you out there in the world — We are in this together. When all this is over and we have survived, being better people is what will truly matter. The lessons that we learn in these times of turmoil, will only make us better, kinder (towards each other). So keep showing up for each other, helping each other out, caring genuinely for each others’ well-being — because we don’t need a pandemic to practice caring, we have that in our hearts all along.

Stay safe and connected,

Your Majesty

YM hosts hangouts every Friday at 17:00 to share our work and talk about cool stuff. Typically we do this over drinks at our offices. But since we cannot do that currently and are determined not to let social distancing hamper our creative outlets, we have decided to turn the Friday meets into virtual hangouts (with drinks of course). If you need some social connection, are craving some good conversations, or simply want to join us to add to the creativity, please email Hugo Wiledal at hugo@yourmajesty.co