While lockdown is the rule, PrestaShop teams are are still at your service. Even if tele-work leads to physical distance from the employees, many measures have been taken in face of this exceptional situation to ensure that we all remain in the best conditions. Whether it's new routines, adapting how you communicate with others, or personal changes, our teams are working hard to experience confinement in the most positive way possible.
Keeping a daily routine
For most people, there is a need to keep some kind of daily routine, making it easier to adapt the lockdown rules to their everyday life. From waking up to your home work-station, many people have kept the same routine as before the lockdown. The same is true for lunch breaks, which give us a moment to disconnect and structure the schedule to make it seem as if, even for a moment, the home has become an office like any other.
One point that also stands out, and seems to be mentioned a lot more, is doing sport. For many people, physical activity has become a real necessity: a result of more free time, or simply the need to exercise after spending a day behind the computer.
Enhance your working conditions
While part of the PrestaShop teams are more familiar with the rules of telework, this modus operandi has become mandatory, due to the current health crisis.
In order to succeed with this professional adaptation, new habits have been created. There are team meetings at fixed times, at the beginning of the day, systematic discussions via videoconference, not only that, but rules to disconnect from work, in order to keep the personal and professional aspects separate. The aim is to maintain real proximity within the teams while favouring a lasting balance between private and professional life. Rules that, even in normal situations, are at the heart of PrestaShop's values.
To bring more fun to the daily routine, the teams participate in a weekly challenge. Whether it's the best lockdown picture, looking like you're travelling without leaving home, or even the best fancy dress costume for a videoconference, our teams have no lack of imagination when it comes to cultivating a spirit of conviviality.
Adapting contact with your family and friends
Exit the professional aspect, the confinement is for the great majority the occasion to take more news of its close relations. Many papers on the subject have focused on videoconferencing between friends, and other ways to keep in touch easily when distance is the order of the day. In addition to new digital techniques, there is also a need for more frequent contact with one's family nucleus.
Objectively, the current context induces for many people a greater fear for the health of their family and loved ones, thereby establishing a regular communication rhythm.
Knowing how to have a good time
Cooking, tinkering, (re)discovering the great classics of the cinema, organising aperitifs with friends, finding forgotten games or picking up that book that has been abandoned for months. The time released, usually occupied by outdoor activities or time spent commuting to and from work, has become conducive to a return to activities to be done at home.
While confinement is seen by society as an obligation, having a good time outside working hours is nowadays characterised by simple things that bring real satisfaction to everyday life.
We also note that habits outside of confinement have a hard skin: despite the forced distancing, aperitifs with friends are always appropriate, even if it requires toasting by webcam interposed. Many also find ways to play online with their loved ones.
Developing knowledge
Once out of confinement, it would be a good bet that an edition of "PrestaShop has incredible talent" would make sense. Indeed, for many people, confinement has become an opportunity to rediscover educational pleasures, such as learning a new language, developing skills and maintaining certain hobbies, for example.
Clearly, many online course platforms and other MOOCs now offer preferential rates (or even a free one), and therefore allow you to take advantage of this exceptional period to learn new things.
In order to better understand the needs of our merchants, some employees take the opportunity to go back to basics and get training through PrestaShop.
We might see the lockdown period as a difficult but necessary interlude. However, many of our employees' testimonials prove that by maintaining a certain daily routine, finding creative ways to have fun and encouraging better communication, it is certainly possible to get through this period with flying colours.
We would like to thank Marilou, Pierre-Alexandre, Antoine, Simon, Julien, Thomas, Célia, Manon, Alexandre, Assmahane, Nicolas and Aurélien for their testimonies.
