We know a lot of businesses across Manchester have had to adapt to this strange and uncertain time we’re currently living in.
No matter what sector they find themselves in the Coronavirus pandemic has radically altered our way of life, from shops and retail stores like the Arndale to bars, restaurants and marketing agencies.
As a writer in the content marketing division of Manchester-based SEO agency, Embryo, it has been a wild few months and so I thought I’d let you behind the curtain to see how we’ve been getting on.
The team here at Embryo Digital aren’t used to working from home so it was quite the shock to wake up one morning, ditch the commute and instead convert our kitchens, spare rooms and living rooms into makeshift offices. And, if that wasn’t enough we’d only been in our fantastic new office for a matter of weeks and we were just getting settled.
From a personal point of view I started my role here a week before we had to lockdown so have only spent 5 days with the rest of the amazing team in the office which is a bit gutting!
Anyway, I ‘sat down’ (DM’d him on Slack) Ross, our Managing Director, to ask him what it has been like managing a business through this murky time.
“It has been a really interesting experience, we’re lucky that we have a very diverse range of clients which allowed us to mitigate the effects of Coronavirus somewhat.
“The welfare of the team here at Embryo is of paramount importance and the decision to work remotely was an easy one once it was clear this awful virus was growing.
“We’re all in a very privileged position to be able to operate entirely from a laptop and in the grand scheme of things, a remote working situation isn’t the end of the world”
He added: “The team we have here has been fantastic these last few months, there have of course been bumps in the road, there is a lot of adjustments after all, but they have retained a level of quality and client satisfaction that has made me really proud to manage them.”
Ensuring people still felt connected as a company was important to everyone so very quickly we decided that daily AM and PM Google Hangouts as a company was one of the best, and easiest to implement, things we could to make sure people touched base. These meetings have been a great bookend to each day and it has helped us, myself in particular, to switch on and switch off. It’s been really important for everyone here to have structure and retain some sense of downtime. That’s hard sometimes when your office is where you live and where you live is your office but those meetings have been a welcome addition to this weird time.
As well as Ross I also managed to speak to Kara, a fellow content writer and all-round good egg who has never really worked remotely until this year. She said: “It’s certainly been a weird few months for myself, it all happened so quickly too!
“One minute I was living my daily life, working in our awesome office, then the next I’m walking 10 steps to my kitchen table to work.
“The fast based nature of our work has been magnified during this time and it has been stressful at times but it’s nice to know that there is a team member on the other side of a Slack message who will be there to help me.
“I feel very lucky to be a part of this team and this company which has continued to grow, be successful and provide our clients with great work throughout this difficult time.
She added: “My heart goes out to all the businesses in Manchester who are struggling during this time, I can’t imagine how difficult it has been. I can’t wait for relative normality to resume so I can get back out and support Manchester’s awesome businesses.”
With no set date for a return to the office insight we’re going to continue to plough on, provide a great service to our clients and hopefully have a laugh or two along the way remotely for a little while longer. We’re very conscious that we can continue to do this well and that there are people who need the things we might have used like the trains and trams more than us, we’d rather free up all that for people that need it most. We just want to ensure that everyone here at Embryo is safe and well, even if this current situation isn’t an ideal one.
We hope this blog was an interesting peek behind the curtain at how an SEO marketing agency has coped during the lockdown. We’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone connected with Manchester Young Professional happiness, safety and security during this lockdown. At time of writing it looks like things are starting to ease up so let’s cross our fingers and hope that we can all get back working in Manchester, the city we all love so, so much.
Written by Charlie Meyler, content executive of Embryo.
