Annette Muller
Remote Working

The first thing is to put a remote working policy together. If you're looking at remote working beyond just this crisis time, it's very important to potentially look at a co-working allowance. The list of all those typical employment contract terms and conditions have now completely changed for this new way of working.

Knowing that I'm a knowledge worker, I was really attracted to this concept of remote working because I wanted a more balanced life to feed my adventurous spirit, to be able to be more flexible, to see friends and family when I wanted. 

On this remote journey, what I realised is that there're going to be challenges around things that you can't do out of the office. One of the things that I've always been interested in is administration.

I would definitely not put myself on the top-performing list of a remote manager. The reason why I feel like I'm potentially not the best at it is that I can run at like 2000 miles per hour and be incredibly focused and productive and sometimes lose touch on of the more important human elements that we need to take into consideration, especially in the absence of physical contact.

People still like a good speech. It doesn't have to be a fancy speech, but it is very important to jump on that group Zoom call and really just lead people. 

You get a range of tools and you compromise on different features or automation based on the price, so the price is obviously important. The tools that solve the problem and add the most value will stick.

I'm quite a big fan of Slack. I feel like Slack is the centre point, it's the DNA, it's everything that integrates. Between Slack and Google Suite, I feel like you cover the most important parts.

In what, previously, would have potentially taken months of software development, we could put it up in a matter of hours. The reason for that was all these software tools that work together, that can be integrated. 

When you come into our world as a new employee, whether you work in the support team, whether you're a freelancer, whether you're a new manager, even though we still have a very small team, we give you the factory tour. In the olden days, let's take the apple farm where I grew up as an example, when you start working in the packing house, you would be taken through all the different machinery, the process, the different boxes, the sizes, the backing material. 

There's so much going on right now, and there's so much data and tips to share, but I think I'm going to hone it in on more of a mindset. I feel the most important thing when you take the step into the remote working world is to be open to new things and to encourage everyone to bring ideas and new ways of working to the table.