Suddenly Separate? B Corps Find New Methods for Professional Conversations, Resilience and Safety
The coronavirus produced a sudden workplace shift for many of us. As stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines have most people working from home, in-person gatherings are replaced by online meetings, emails and text chats.
While remote work has been around for a while, it is the new normal for some of these workers, who also are adjusting to different family routines and other challenges during the coronavirus pandemic.
For Certified B Corporations, keeping workers informed amid constant change and engaged with their purpose-driven mission is another challenge. We reached out to B Corps via the B Hive, an online communications space, to learn the tools and practices they are using to keep workers and clients connected and mission-driven while they are apart.
Professional Conversations
Career connections are the base of business for e180, a Montreal-based B Corp that created its Braindate platform to help workers meet and learn from each other. Initially offered at in-person events and in communities around the world, Braindate is now offering a virtual meeting tool for event planners and organizers — and others looking to connect for topic-specific conversations.
When Christine Renaud launched the initial Braindate platform in 2011, it helped people meet for conversations in coffee shops. She saw its potential for Braindate and the event industry — where people are eager to learn from others — and shifted toward that emphasis a couple years later.
Now, Renaud says, Braindate is evolving again to serve the market’s shifting needs. She adds that the move to use Braindate as a virtual tool actually was in her company’s plans for this year so it could provide services throughout the year rather than at occasional events.
“The theme for us for the year internally was how to bring collaborative learning yearlong to our clients’ communities. So we had been thinking about virtual Braindates for a long time,” she says. “As soon as we think about yearlong engagement, you have to go virtual. Even when people gather for an event, they go home. This year the big quest is how can we help people support each other in their learning quests — cheering each other, keeping each other accountable.”
But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the Virtual Braindate timeline, and on April 2 e180 offered its first Virtual Braindate for event professionals — to introduce the tool and demonstrate its value as people seek connections while apart.
“We position Braindate as a tool for people to have meaningful conversations,” Renaud says. “Our ‘secret sauce’ is we encourage people to set an intention for their conversation and help so they really contribute to the conversation and get a lot of value in meeting a stranger for 30 minutes.”
That meaningful connection is what separates Braindate from other virtual meeting tools, she says, especially when colleagues and people who work in similar fields are separated physically but still need to collaborate.
“In this new work reality, we still have things we want to accomplish, and we still want to have those meaningful conversations that are valuable and relevant,” she says. “Now that we’re probably in this for the long haul, Braindate can bring that intentionality, that relevancy, so people can have great conversations that can push them further.”
Community Connections
The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on business and people prompted Eric Brown and his colleagues at B Corp Whiteboard to action. Brown and others at the creative agency used their professional skills to launch a community website for the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area that answers the question many people have right now: How can I help my neighbors?
“It’s a response to many of us feeling the same things,” Brown says. “We’re overwhelmed with news headlines, and it’s hard to find encouragement. Friends are worried about their businesses. Many families need the essentials.”
Building on the B Corp value of supporting the community, the website offers resources for those seeking help and those offering help with relevant links to local organizations that provide mental health services, food assistance, business and job support, and more.
“We did our best to create a resource that is easy-to-navigate, curates voices of encouragement from our own community, and points people in the right direction,” Brown says.
Around the globe in Milano, Italy, Alice Siracusano and her colleagues at B Corp LUZ are providing a platform so its community of artists can share stories on the pandemic from their perspectives — and connecting people who are following stay-at-home orders.
As a communications agency with a large network of photographers, LUZ asked six of its collaborators around the world how the pandemic is affecting their work as freelance creatives. Their stories are shared on SPNS, the B Corp’s online social magazine.
“We also invited several artists to create artwork expressing their feelings toward the quarantine, to encourage positivity and highlight the importance of art,” Siracusano says. “Once a day we post the work of a new artist on our Instagram magazine K of Kulture, targeted to Generation Z.”
For more on how to stay connected while working separately, see a longer version of this article posted by B Lab.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
How to Keep Your Team Connected and Mission-Driven While Apart was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
