I started my internship before the outbreak of the coronavirus in the Netherlands, in February 2020. When I started, my daily routine started in the morning by getting the train from Amsterdam, where I live, to Utrecht, where IDH’s headquarters are based. Arriving at IDH, I would start checking my calendar, looking at my emails, responding and normally doing small required adjustments to the website. After that I would go to the coffee machine to grab a coffee and chat with a colleague or two. On Mondays there are two important follow up meetings: the Monday Minutes Meetings (MMMs) and the Communications weekly internal meeting. The MMMs start before lunch, and is hosted either by the CEO or the COO at the kitchen, so it is more Utrecht focused, and there we have updates of the organization globally. After the MMM we all go to have lunch at the canteen and have a nice time together. After lunch, we have the communications internal meeting, where we discuss the projects and tasks of the week, and have updates of ongoing projects. In the afternoon, I focus on my projects and work closely with my supervisor, by going to her desk, or sometimes having a small chat at the kitchen.
After a month of this process, corona came. The office was closed and everybody was requested to work from home, specially me that had to commute by train. At the beginning, I thought my internship experience would be ruined. No more chats with colleagues, meetings or working closely to my supervisor. But I was positively surprised.
IDH rapidly set up a crisis management team that promptly started working on solutions to keep the team together. The internal communication started to improve from then on. The MMMs started to be accessible to all employees worldwide by changing the time slot from time to times (sometimes in the morning for Asian colleagues and sometimes in the afternoon for South American colleagues). They implemented the Microsoft Teams chat function, which facilitated the connection with my supervisor and other team members, as well as with colleagues from other teams. There, we created groups for international employees, for employees that were homeschooling at the same time, and so on, where we can have interesting conversations. The communication director started to create songs related to the crisis that were presented on the MMMs every week, to motivate us all. The corona café meeting was created. During this meeting, every Tuesday, we can have a nice chat, play games, etc, as if we were at the office’s kitchen. In the end, my internship was not ruined and I could still interact with colleagues and learn a lot.
With the crises, I have learned about internal communication and how it is important to be able to establish the organization’s culture. During this period, we were able to maintain a feeling of belonging and to still be connected to our colleagues, by online channels that reproduce face-to-face functions with features such as video, voice and chat. We were all part of a team, and working together to overcome obstacles. This has motivated and satisfied me and my colleagues. The new learning improved our internal communications, and will, now, still be used to connect and interact with our colleagues from abroad and keep the feeling of a whole.