Living The New Normal?!

Not a blogger and not a writer by all means! I just felt i want to document my personal experience during COVID-19 challenging times and its impact on my life personally and professionally.

From a very routinely normal morning ( PLZ! bring it back and ill never complain again), driving kids to school, heading to your office, meeting 100s of people and shaking hands and socializing over lunch and holding your menu and cutleries without spraying it with alcohol, coughing without freaking out an entire block around you; back home to resume your mommy duties and later have some social time with friends or head to your favorite gym! A normal day, this is what we used to call it before. To a one morning with two kids who must be home-schooled ( WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!!!), reallocate your desk and entire workplace to your dinning room, social distancing from everyone, lock-down, virtual high fives, virtual meetings, virtual boxing classes, sanitizer, Vitamin C and plastic gloves on your top of your ONLINE grocery list! YEP! Welcome to our 2020- Living The New Normal

Living the New Normal at work:

First! What a great feeling to be part of an organization that cares about their employees and their clients. I am sure a lot of companies out there showed compassion and care for their staff and clients more than ever before; At Refintiv, after monitoring COVID-19 and in order to keep both employees and clients safe! decisions were made & even before some countries went on complete lock-down; we were asked to postpone our flagship events and client gatherings and monitor the situation closely and in order to keep us and our families safe! We've been asked to be transitioned to virtual office environments (VOE) AKA Work from home (WFH) to limit the spread of the virus.

I wont lie and say this was a piece of cake cause honestly! i panicked, and not little! BIG TIME panic attacks & i still get them and get frightened from the unknown... Imagine this for an events manager! WTH will i do & work on!!! and for those who know me, they know i breathe events! My EMEA series is now postponed! a client engagement series has to be cancelled! 2 large summits and a decent number of third party events across the region are on hold and a travel ban!!

Calls were done, decisions were made; venues were either cancelled or put on hold, and i need to stop here and thank all the hotels and venues we work with for their flexibility and corporation and acting as one during this crisis even though this industry has been hit so hard but they remained to put their clients relationship their first priority and i believe that this is the way to keep your clients loyal and have a strong comeback and a busy pipeline for H2.. Thank You!

VOE - How fast was the process! This was very impressive! In no time, all office managers were working so hard to facilitate the move, easy process to move our equipment home and setting up our new work space. Picture attached is from my new desk i setup at home, i had to occupy half of our dinning table and set my two gigantic screens, docking station, my JBL ( cant work without music) and my Costa coffee :)

Dis-CONNECTED!

The first thing you'd think is how would you stay CONNECTED with your colleagues! your team, your managers! Guess what!! I have never felt CONNECTED in my 13 years working in the company like this before. And this is why;

1. EMEA Marketing & Events Whatsapp group: YES!!! An EMEA group. It's a 24hr active group! imagine a whatsapp group that has people from ( UK, Germany, Russia, UAE, USA, South Africa, France, Singapore, Spain) would be! basically when one side of the world is asleep, the other is awake chatting, sharing funny posts, pictures, jokes, checking on each other. LOVE IT!
2. Daily EMEA Marketing/ Events Huddle call on TEAMS: an optional attendance to a daily team call,( Honestly! even when i had some days off! i'd just join this call to talk to the team and have a good laugh and check on everyone). It wasn't set to make sure we are working from 8 to 5 or 9 to 6! it was created to keep us connected with a structure to how we discuss our activities, raise any concerns, challenges and our plans. We also get to invite our pets to the call- hahahahah YES! PETS, and kids and partners and anything that keeps us smiling and enjoying our new normal; we even had a brilliant idea of a virtual happy hour :D ( soft drinks, tea and coffee also counted :D )
3. Constant updates from our Leadership team: Communication is very essential in times like this; no one appreciates to be excluded or unaware of what the company is doing, or work in silos or how they are managing such crises. From day one, the channels of communication between the leadership team and the employees were and still very active and transparent to reassure us all that we are CONNECTED and our concerns are heard and addressed.

A shift in focus and expanding your role! is it even possible now! Yes, its possible and its called being flexible and open to change when its needed and required. I started exploring virtual events solutions, training on On24 to help setup webinars for our clients, registered myself to a couple of Podcasts and Webinars on running virtual events, and already putting some action points to work on in the coming weeks.

Some of those actions points includes; going through all our previous summits and challenges and obstacles we faced and search for Tech solutions to help us manage our upcoming summits better, plan H2 calendar, reviewing our RFPs, etc. Also, focus more on digital campaigns and SEO and not a bad time at all to make friends again with Eloqua Meh! The world should be ready for our vigorous comeback.

On a Personal level! Cancelling my birthday plans which once included a week trip to my favorite city (London), cancelling plan B ( a simple weekend on one of the islands in UAE), to cancelling plan C ( a simple dinner out with friends) to cancelling plan D ( a home gathering at one of my close friends) and stick to plan Z... a homemade cake, a candle with my two little girls, dancing on Birthday-by Anne-Marie.. in addition to plan Z! our Virtual Happy hour for all our EMEA marketing team ( picture below) and this is how i celebrated my 35th birthday. Very Thankful to be with my two angels and celebrate it as long as we are healthy, safe and together during this time.

Day one after setting up my new office desk; Jameela( 8yrs): "MAMA! i am so jealous, i wanna set my work/study space like yours!". Picture below, she wanted to add plants, have her decaf Chai and snack to start working on her first project... and guess what was her first writing project ! COVID-19 and she used our Refinitiv Coronavirus APP- Very important to have and its live on Eikon and Workplace- just log in using your Eikon Web. I think we just got our first youngest client on board :)

**Leading By Example**

I personally choose to stay positive no matter how hard this will be, how much effort and sacrifices it'll take from me and my family but i will not surrender to all the negativity the media specially some social media channels are pushing on us. I will cherish every moment i am healthy and breathing and spending it with my kids, i'll call my family more, put a healthy routine for myself and my kids and exercise every morning, read more, engage my two daughters in my work and let them see how challenging yet achievable to be a successful working mom no matter the circumstances around you is, and what it literally means when life gives you lemon! squeeze them and make the best refreshing lemonade out of it.

"& this shall pass". Yes! its very VERY VERY hard times and the unknown is scary and worrying specially when it comes to the health and safety of our loved ones! but all we can do now is to Stay Safe, Self Isolated to keep our elder safe, keep all the virtual channels available with our family and loved ones, boost our immune system( We took our health and bodies for granted lately), spread positive vibes, check on your friends ( close or not) with a message ( even a simple hi, hang in there, stay safe, we are in it together, cheer up...) and keep our mental health safe, clear and away from all the negativity. Don't forget that COVID-19 will not be our only fear! Depression, mental distancing, and anxiety attacks for some will be much harder to overcome than any virus.

Finally to look back one day to what we have gone through, the lessons we've learnt, the connections we created from the disconnection we were forced to go through, the virtual bridges we built around the world, and how we united as human beings with love and compassion. "Nothing will stop us" will be an understatement to what we can actually achieve and face in the future for us and the younger generation who had to witness and overcome all the challenges they've gone through.

I couldn't find a better message to end this article like the one we received from our Chief Marketing Office, Eileen Lynch.