We often get the question “What does working in a virtual office feel like?”
The Teemyco online office is adjustable, and behaviours can be as unique as your team are. However, to give you a sneak peak of what a day is like in our hybrid “teem” and in our own virtual office, let me tell you about last Thursday as the CEO of Teemyco.
08:55: Today I am working physically from the co-working space in Stockholm where 10 entrepreneurial companies also sit. My finance Manager Daniel joins me today and our headsets are our best friends while co-working. The past two days I worked from home. Opening up my laptop I enter the virtual office. As always, I see early-bird Linda logged in. Located north of Stockholm this mum of two starts her day at 6am. Our data intern Munashe, based in Harare sits alongside the co-working desk. Jumping into the virtual space I switch my audio and video on. After we say a brief good morning I resume video only and minimize the screen, enjoying their presence in the bottom corner of my screen although I can’t hear them.
09:10: Happily my co-founder & CTO Oleg enters the office, I need to catch him for a quick technical user related question before the daily dev team standup starts at 09:30. I hover over his avatar and invite him into the meeting room. He joins me and the bottleneck is resolved.
09:30: The daily dev standup starts and I see the developers gather in the Dev room. Usually I sit in and listen to get an overview of the day ahead, but today I need to resolve a UX design-related question. I hop into the design cave where I can see our 2 designers engrossed in something technical. I ask Eli to grab me when she has some free time and leave them to their conversation. I’ll swing back to the devs instead and say good morning to colleagues in 6 countries.
10:00 It’s time for the first external meeting of the day. Today I will miss the business daily standup at 10:15 but I have fed in via Slack beforehand. I place myself in the phone booth as I open up the interview. The candidate is curious to see our office so I share my screen and show functionalities like the office story (oh look, our Polish recruiter uploaded a picture of her dog!) and the coffee button. I’m super proud to show our product to those who have never used something similar before, and see it come to life before their eyes.
11:00 Time for the weekly full “teem” meeting, where Kim in Ireland presents the latest marketing & growth stats. As she finishes love, clap and giraffe (our mascot office pet Gilbert) emojis are flying around across the video call grid view. She did a great job, and later I see a “hard worker” kudos hat sent by a colleague placed on her avatar. Having reviewed KPIs and key updates, we wrap up our weekly all-hands with our internal tradition of “the word of the week” (We pick a word each week and translate it into our respective languages). After the meeting most of us signal we’re grabbing food by being in the “Back Soon” space. Today the plan is to eat together in the kitchen like we do on the last Thursday of every month for our “This is Me” Sharing Lunch :)!
12:15 Today developer Mila tells us all about her life growing up in Ukraine and all about her hobbies, family and interests. These sessions are optional for anyone in the company, but very popular, pretty much everyone joins for this half hour to listen. Linda is logging in to Teemyco from the phone while walking her dog. Mila shares a picture slideshow; we learn what gives her energy, her favorite food and what she is proud of. The live heart emojis are exploding and the team is full of excited questions and kind comments.
13:00 Yes! I have managed to clear my schedule for 1.5 hours to get things done today! I enter the deep focus area to signal that this is a time when I will most likely not respond on Slack. And given our team rules, everyone knows that it is not allowed to invite people out of that room unless really really urgent. Focus time!
15:00 Yay, customer setup time! Rafal and I onboard a new team to Teemyco and help them get settled in. They are a growing 8 people startup across 3 countries, some co-located. We show them functionalities such as pinning documents onto a room wall and pinpoint features which can help them operate efficiently. We help them personalise their space, have their company colors and logo. We love that they give their meeting rooms “Star Wars” names!
15:40 Boom, we broke a new monthly active user record today vs prior month! I create a desk labelled “Celebration Time”, and let those online know that I will be hosting a mini-party if anyone is feeling social. Within 1 minute we are 8 people listening to celebration music. I make a silly dance move to make the others laugh and am delighted about our virtual high fiving.
16:00 It’s time for two 1–2–1s in a row. Each time we lock the room so that people understand that it’s not a good time to join us (although they can knock if it’s important).
The last 2 hours Kim, who is one hour behind me time zone wise and I, co-work side by side by the marketing desk. We work on different things. Designer-Eli comes by so we can resolve that quick question from earlier; Kim overhears our conversation. We work quietly in between the occasional chuckling as someone makes a funny comment. Time passes comfortably.
It’s 19:17 when I realize I am the only one left in the physical co-working space. Later, working from home, after dinner, Oleg and I will probably just sit in the same virtual room with the little floating window available and sound and video off. We like to have the opportunity to work alongside each other, chatting without time pressure. Although we’re both at home separately, we’re building this company together. And we have re-defined virtual presence.
It’s been another good day in our office. I go to bed feeling love for all these amazing people, whom I have never met physically. Our dev team fixed a bug in no time. I saw a Slack message and that some people gathered in the afternoon in a dev room and I knew everything was under control. Daniel made fun of my ugly celebratory dance moves. Whilst wrapping up for the day at the end of his first week at Teemyco, Rafal told me that he has never felt so close to a work-team in such a short amount of time. Hearing that is worth every single late night of work, and I cannot wait to help even more hybrid teams to create a strong virtual office culture.
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