How JustWatch is Managing the WFH Life

COVID-19 has impacted businesses everywhere. Individuals are being told to work from home, so their day-to-day has been changed dramatically. These are the changes Karolin Himmel of JustWatch has seen and adapted to, along with her coworkers.

The following factors have allowed Karolin and her coworkers to manage the new normal since March 11, all while continuing to get their work done.

Changes in Business Communication
“For our daily communication, we use Slack, but also had a lot of personal in-between chats,” Himmel says. “You could just go over to a colleague and talk about certain topics or hear interesting topics other people were discussing, which were also relevant for you. That is now completely missing. As a solution, we use Slack-Channels way more often and try to ‘over-communicate’ in these. Other than that, we’ve created daily stand up meetings in each team, so everyone is always up to date and knows what’s going on. So, we have a lot of video calls nowadays, probably five-to-10 every day, and we have a video-on policy so everyone has to get ready for the day – which also helps to keep up the routine.”

Changes in Social Interactions
“All the social interactions and ‘kitchen talks’ were missing. To find a solution for that, we’ve created digital company events like a Pub Quiz via video conference or video conference breakfasts and lunch meetings. Some colleagues also just call others in Slack to have some non-work-related talk.”

Tech Changes
“Because not everybody has a good and equipped home office, we could take monitors, chairs, or other things we needed to work from the office to our home office. In case there were special needs, JustWatch took over the expenses. In a nutshell, we are a younger company that is very digital, so there weren’t any major challenges to solve these kinds of problems.”

Behavioral Changes

“It’s hard to separate private time and working time for a lot of people. So, they developed different routines like putting on their watch, ‘going’ to work by having a short walk around the corner and coming back to their flat or dressing properly as they would do to go to the office.”