ingogo | Blog

Technology is making it easier to stay connected with your workforce wherever they happen to be working on any given day.  With everything that's happened around the world, the flexibility to transition a people driven company to remote work was crucial for ingogo. For 12 months now, ingogo has worked without an office, yet our team feel just as connected.   When we entered lockdown, we stayed productive and quickly developed new ways of working.  It was so good, we now work wherever there is power and a good internet connection.  Here's how we did it. 

Any company needs a good internal messaging system, regardless of if they are remote or not. Even before leaving our office, Slack was used extensively to communicate internally. However, since closing our HQ, it's even more clear how important a tool Slack is. Being able to get in contact with someone instantly makes you more productive and wastes less time. Slack themselves wrote a a great article on what features to use while working remotely. From simple things such as custom statuses, to tell people if you are on break or in a meeting, or using an announcement channel to highlight key information.

Sometimes instant messaging doesn't quite cut it and you need to have a meeting with a group of people 'face to face'. Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing tools, and our choice of the bunch. For us, the ability to move our monthly catchups online, meant staff who couldn't make it to the office could still tune in. Also the ability to invite people from outside our organisation is crucial. All we need to do is create a session and send the link and we can communicate with any of our customers or collaborators.  

For an innovative company such as ingogo, brainstorming and iterating on ideas is crucial. Being able to chuck ideas on a whiteboard helps us be creative, when we are in the same room. Without the whiteboard sessions, our pattern and visual thinkers felt constrained and the team missed out. To help with that we use a tool called Miro, a tool straight from a creatives dream. Miro is an infinite virtual white-boarding platform at it's core, with numerous templates and tools which makes brainstorming and collaboration easy. 

Every now and then we still need to meet up face to face. Technology is never perfect and can't replace meeting up with someone in person. If you find yourself in this position, taxis are a safe way to get around. Research conducted at the University College London, show that confined and crowded places, such as buses or trains, act as hot spots for the transmission of infectious diseases. 

Remote working isn't for everyone, but with a few tools your company can become more agile when needed. Things can change very quickly and having the right tools means you can adapt quickly, stay productive and connected.

What are your favourite tools to use while working remote? let us know in the comments below!