How positive remote work culture got us through Lockdown

Published: Friday 24th July 2020

When it hits the fan, you’ve got to adapt

For a lot of businesses, the outbreak of Covid19 and the subsequent UK lockdown has forced them to innovate to keep essential processes and business going. The moment Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the complete lockdown of the UK meant that the normal way of doing things for many businesses was thrown out the window. Suddenly things that seemed second nature became impossible; face to face meetings and getting documents signed in person were taking off the table and businesses had to adapt to new remote work culture.

Video calling is the new black

It’s funny, at Signable our culture has always supported and encouraged remote working, video call meetings and keeping in touch via Slack, but personally, it’s something I have struggled with.

In March when we went into lockdown I had never even heard of Zoom, one of the plethora of video call tools available (though surely I can’t be the only one there) and it took me a fair amount of time to get used to it as the new normal. If we had been playing a game of Zoom bingo I definitely would have filled up the card in no time, I’ve said the words “can you hear me?” and “I’m sorry the connection is terrible” more than enough for a lifetime.

But as they say, humans are nothing if not adaptable, within a few weeks Zoom and Google Hangout calls became as easy and straightforward as anything else.

Bernie Sanders and Slack

Video calls are just one example, it can be argued that the lockdown situation has simply accelerated a lot of tech adoption that would have happened anyway. There’s an interesting article from last year that looks at how candidates setting up their US presidential campaigns looked more like tech startups than traditionally run campaigns.

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke (amongst others) campaign staffers used Slack, Trello, Dropbox and Zoom to keep things moving fast and collaboratively. Eventual Democratic nominee, Joe Biden’s campaign is mentioned in the article to be using Upland, an online collaborative project management tool. They all see the benefit of taking processes and making them easier to use.

What happens to these tools after Lockdown?

There are a lot of companies that have started using Signable electronic signatures for the first time during the lockdown, many finding themselves in a situation where something essential needs to get signed but unable to go about it the usual way.

Signable has been there every step of the way, providing an easy to use platform that gets the documents signed quickly during a difficult time. Organisations such as Access Nursing have stated that they will keep using Signable, even once the lockdown ends, as “it removes the barrier to signing on new clients and gives us comfort in our compliance processes.”

A recent article from the Wall Street Journal discussed how many businesses have people that struggle to adapt to new technology. During the UK lockdown many have had no choice but to adapt, thinking about it it’s difficult to understand why businesses would hit the reset button this, making the time people have spent learning new platforms a waste and going back to, at times, old processes that are actually more time consuming and expensive than the ones they’ve adapted over 2020 so far.

Ease into the new normal with electronic signatures

If you are looking for a fast, flexible and affordable solution to keeping essential business and processes going you can try Signable free for 14 days. E-Signatures are easy to use, can increase your signing rate and save your business time that can be used elsewhere.