At Notion, we’ve just hit a month of working from home and adapting to the current climate. As with the first fortnight, we’ve learned a lot over the past few weeks from a range of excellent external speakers and the incredible leaders within our portfolio. People from our portfolio that have run some of those sessions this fortnight include:

• Leah Anathan, CMO at Mews Systems on marketing leadership in a crisis
• Michael Hübl, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of BRYTER on building trust in remote teams
• Daniela Kurrer, VP People at HeyJobs on motivating remote teams

Here are my three quick takeaways from those sessions.

Communicate Regularly

It sounds glaringly obvious, but internal communication is pivotal during this time, especially as most people haven’t chosen to work from home and may not have been totally prepared for the differences from office life. In an office, we’re constantly interacting with our peers and teams and that casual type of communication can be difficult to maintain remotely and it can be a big part of team morale. Keep regular weekly meetings, regular catch up and also implement team lunches and coffee hours, to keep that sense of normalcy when it comes to inter-company communication.

Team members will have different energy levels

The crisis will be affecting everyone in a completely different way. That could depend on a number of factors such as the nature of the work being done, the set-up at home and the physical space that people are able to occupy at this time. For example, one of our companies has noticed a difference in the energy and well-being of those based in areas where there’s a lot of outdoor space, in comparison to those living in central London. But there’s also a lot of commonality in the struggles we are facing, so being mindful of those energy levels and those ups and downs, depending on circumstance, could make for a more cohesive team.

Remote working offers a limitless talent pool

While remote working may not be for everyone and for many of us will take some getting used to, it does of course offer some positives. One of those is an essentially ‘limitless’ talent pool. When a company is based in a particular location, it may limit the talent pool to that area, or mean a future employee may have to uproot to move to that location. With remote working, you can open up a global talent pool and find the best talent for the role, regardless of the location.