I'm a few days away from vacation and I started to think that this year is being a strange time, unlike other times of the year. Nothing can fail and I want to keep everything organized because rest is essential, but I have felt that this “holiday” theme has been a great challenge in the uncertain times in which we live today, a fact that I have never felt before.
I work in the digital marketing sector, which, unlike other sectors, has happily registered an increase in demand for new websites and new online stores, in our case. But this year, and after almost 5 months of working remotely, always online, always on call, it is being harder to go on vacation. I have been feeling the same with the other people on the team. It has been more difficult to “turn off the button”. There is always a call or a whatsapp from someone on vacation asking about the “A” or “B” projects, or if we need any help. This availability has become expected. And this year, more than ever, it is essential to recharge our batteries. It has been very intense at all levels for everyone.
Of course, working in our segment, we never shut down 100%, that's for sure. We must have a maintenance team and developers always operational, and the projects do not stop because we are going on vacation. Anyway, I feel that, in addition to the technical team, it is also difficult for the creatives to leave the projects they were so involved in, and even for us, project managers, we are also having a hard time hand over the new developments we have.
The relationship with our customers is strong, it always has been, but I feel that they need us more than ever... we want to continue to meet this commitment that we give them, even while on vacation, and to ensure that everything goes as expected. It seems to me that this is the year in which this “wearing a sweater” is even more evident for each one of us. We are all more sensitive to each need, more involved with each client... it seems that we have their projects as if they were our own personal projects too.
Expectations are high for September… month of new beginnings, month of renewed energy. And we will have strong launches this year. Customers go on vacation, but projects remain ongoing. We trust each other a lot, we are a strong and close-knit team, but in fact it is being a strange and more difficult year to “hand over.”
Happy holidays to those who are already enjoying and reading us.
Happy holidays to those who, like me, are still going!