In times of remote work, caring for the well-being of the team is essential

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been working away from the offices. A year ago, OLX Brasil decided to adopt a regime of work 100% from home for all employees and today we continue without any face-to-face meetings. During this period, our attention turned to the well-being of our employees, who needed to adapt quickly to the new routine. We seek, more than preventing contagion by Covid-19, to maintain healthy management and leadership.

Since then, communication has been more assertive, structured, engaged and interactive. Some actions have become essential to contribute to this new dynamic: an online video meeting every week to create spontaneous conversations, in addition to allowing relaxation and interaction between leaders and teams.

Keeping an eye on the uncertainties in the midst of the pandemic and the impossibility of leaving home beyond basic tasks, leaders needed to learn a new type of management to meet the new needs.

Each manager makes a daily check of the physical and mental health of all members of their teams as part of the routine. We make simple measures mandatory - for example, knowing how everyone is dealing with the new scenario. The new type of leadership also involves seeing if someone is tired and, if necessary, adapting our strategy so that the combination of home and work is done in the best way, since both are important. And we have successfully achieved this balance, since at OLX Brasil we are very flexible.

Some companies have adopted tools for tracking hours worked, but we don't do that. An essential point for us is the alignment of goals so that everyone can work together. This has a lot to do with trust - the person needs to want to contribute and do their best. If we don't trust our employees, something bigger and wrong is going on and a control system is not the solution.

To assist managers and teams to face daily challenges, we have created virtual spaces for the promotion of well-being, where we offer meditation and yoga practices and psychological support. We believe that all emotional support is essential in this period that we are living.

Faced with so many challenges, we are in a better place than we could imagine. We didn't interrupt hiring and those who start a position at the company are directly referred to an immersion in the culture of OLX Brasil. We do an extensive work on our values and the behaviors we desire within the company. Culture surpasses the evaluations of new hires and, therefore, it is very important for us to incorporate it into daily life from the beginning.

When everyone was sent to work at home, there was a conversation between leaders and teams, explaining the new context and routine. And for the moment, we are going further: we are creating a remote work policy, in which we create the possibility for employees to work 100% from home in the future. In this way, it is possible to hire specialists from all over Brazil - which for us is very attractive, as we find many talents beyond the Rio-S?o Paulo axis.

The conclusion of the acquisition of Grupo ZAP, at the end of last year, tested us amid the movement of the teams. Despite the difficulties inherent in this kind of process, the result was better than we expected: we listened to people to serve them in the best way within our strategic pillars. With empathy and culture, we were able to promote integration and a fast and fluid development for newcomers.

Both for new hires and for change management, our Education Team has built a method for conducting training with extensive use of video, which is applied to all areas of the company. In this way, we overcome many challenges, always focused on the quality of materials and the development of people.

One thing addressed not only to us, but to all companies that decided to implement their processes remotely, is the need for meetings for interaction, motivation and recognition of the teams. At the end of 2020, we organized a large virtual party, and we observed a strong engagement in the activities promoted.

The future of work, in my view, is a hybrid model, combining the possibility of being anywhere in the world. We don't need office desks to create real connections. Today, we are designing how to make face-to-face meetings a reality once the situation improves, similarly to what we have done virtually.

The world will never be as it was before and we begin to adapt to this new reality. We implement, with the best of technology, new ways of working and connecting. We will live the next chapters, one at a time, to unify the teams and make sure that everyone is given a humanized treatment so together we take the steps for OLX Brasil to keep developing and grow more and more.