Our Culture in the Age of COVID-19

It’s always about the bottom line, regardless of other factors, is conventional wisdom, and considered an appropriate measuring stick for the overall health of a company. While it is certainly an important factor, financial health is only part of the equation. At VectorX, we believe it’s critical to create a sense of family and approach every situation with empathy and understanding.

What does this approach look like during the current pandemic? While we continue to serve our clients remotely, we understand this unprecedented situation calls for something extra to boost morale and help preserve the sanity of our work family. So far, we have developed several ideas that are working well:

Virtual Happy Hours

Our company is 100% remote with employees spread across the United States and working from home offices. So, face-to-face gatherings with everyone, even under normal circumstances, is a rare luxury. To ensure we have opportunities to enjoy each other’s company in a casual setting, we started having monthly, afternoon happy hours via Zoom conference calls. We have found this time valuable to the building and maintaining of empathic connections between our employees. More importantly, it’s relaxing fun!

Trivia Competitions

Nothing brings people together like good-natured competition. We have been leveraging the trivia application Crowdpurr to host online trivia sessions through Zoom with our employees in conjunction with happy hours. It’s a great way to get everyone involved and generate fun, interesting conversations. These trivia events have been so well received, that we expanded our use to include a four-week contest for employees, several kid-friendly sessions for our employees’ children, and a session for employees and their significant other or a friend. These occasions have been great for socializing without thinking about the distancing part.

Favorite Recipes Swaps with Beverage Pairings

With everyone spending the majority of their time at home, keeping meals and snacks interesting has become a challenge. We just launched an initiative to collect favorite employee recipes with each being shared back out to the company at large. Should they have a favorite beverage to enjoy with the recipe, each employee is encouraged to share that as well. This should provide everyone with great new ideas to spice up mealtime for each of their families and help take some pressure off their home life.

While these activities don’t directly go towards the bottom line, each has helped us maintain and build a sense of family for the company. It’s a simple way to remind us we can depend on each other and make it through any situation together. At  VectorX, that’s what we value every day.