Article
| Eleanor Dubédat 
Barns Bulletin #15: December
Welcome to our monthly roundup of all things Freestyle: highlights of people, whereabouts and work happening at our Warwickshire HQ, the Barns.
Despite going through such unprecedented times, March was business as usual here at Freestyle and we’ve enjoyed adapting our work processes and culture into a working from home routine. Read on to find out more…
Adapting to COVID-19
You may have already received a dozen emails from brands you didn’t even know existed, explaining how they’re adapting to the current situation amidst COVID-19. Which ones have truly stood out to you? If the answer is none, then you've probably witnessed a perfect example of how not to approach comms in a crisis.
We've created a bank of free resources, where we shared or best approach to dealing with a crisis, key information and ways we can help during these unpredictable times.
Here's why your customer experience matters most right now.
Read our checklist for communication in a crisis.
And if employee engagement is one thing you're keen to do better when remote, here's how we run our own virual pub quiz, and how you could do the same for your team at work!
Working From Home Diaries
Keeping momentum, maintaining a sense of normality and sometimes just feeling like sharing, are all reasons why we've started a new initiative via our Instagram channel. The 'Working From Home Diaries' is our newest highlight, and in there you'll see how our Freestylers work from home, the challenges they have in doing so and what the behind the scenes really looks like.
Digital Spotlight: Nisbets 👩🍳
For our 6th Digital Spotlight interview, we sat down with Lynn King, Marketing and Digital Director at Nisbets, the leading catering equipment provider. We discussed customer expectations, evolving channels and customer-centric attitudes, all of which are deeply rooted into Nisbets’ culture.
Watch or read the full interview here!
People First Conference
Disclaimer: This event took place before the country was on official lockdown.
Our MD, Suzanne, sat on a panel discussing working cultures and the vast importance of investing in our people. The panel shared their visions of culture-centric business landscapes and the consensus was... low and behold... that company culture is just as important as the work itself.
Refining the Design Sprint process
Earlier this month (prior to #lockdown), a few Freestylers headed down to London for the Campus Design Sprints workshop! As digital experts, we’re always looking for ways to implement new learnings and finesse our processes, and the workshop was a great opportunity for us to do so. We flexed our creative muscles and came away refreshed and full of new ideas to share with the team 🧠
The Pod - Freestyle’s new hobbit house
Space for meetings, thinking and getting our heads down has been increasingly in need at The Barns, for the last year or so. At the beginning of March, we made a bit more room with a new pod that reminds us of Bilbo’s home. Very serene. Except that ours arrived on top of a 40ft trailer! Sadly, we didn't get much use out of it in March but we can't wait to see it again in the brighter summery days!
Working from Home 🏡
Our new best friends? Slack & Zoom.
It’s safe to say that we’ve settled nicely into transitioning our whole studio to work from home, for the time being. This isn't something new for us as we've always offered flexible working as one of our company perks, but having the whole team working remotely full-time was definitely a first!
So far it's been a blast - as well as increasing productivity, we’ve enhanced our company culture with additional, self-isolation appropriate activities. Name it and we've done it: from virtual beers on Friday to mid-week pub quizzes, wheel-of-fortune coffee catchups and online Pilates classes at lunchtime, adapting to this challenging period has proven a success for us, and we’re grateful to be part of such a reactive and adaptive industry.
