Whodunits and alien abductions: How one agency relied on its strengths to cope with the pandemic

Creativity? Yeah, we’ve got it. Our staff is filled with musicians, artists, technologists and diverse personalities. Faced with the circumstances of a global pandemic, we tapped into that energy for humorous distraction and, ultimately, emotional strength. Of course, getting together in the same room hasn’t been a reality for months, but that hasn’t stopped us from keeping our employee-focused culture.

Soon after work-from-home began, Zehnder held weekly staff meetings via Google Meet. We could see and interact with each other, which was crucial for a company with offices in three different cities. With all the uncertainty posed by the coronavirus, we also wanted to inject some smiles into at least one afternoon each week.

Each meeting, one of our internal teams chose a theme and incorporated it into an original game or activity. The result was a creative and, sometimes, bizarre escape into scavenger hunts, game shows, alien abductions, a whodunit mystery video series, even our own mockumentary, and all sorts of fun weirdness.

We also used a variety of innovative technology in the process:

•   Amazon Polly text-to-speech personalization database
•   Custom Keynote programmed Family Feud 
•   Kahoot trivia games
•   TikTok videos
•   Slack channel photo challenges and teams
•   Zoom virtual cooking classes

For our ’80s-themed week, each employee was grafted into an 80’s album cover with a fun original song and video. Learn more about Zehnder’s agency band and what went into the making of the content here.

We’re still maintaining our distance, but our teams have stayed close as ever. We found a new definition of integration that kept our staff fresh, relevant and working seamlessly.

Want to know more about how we work together? Shoot an email to beyond@z-comm.com.