Our colleague Elina has been working as a Junior Consultant at DONE!Berlin since September 2021, focusing on larger clients such as Knauf Digital and H&M but also startups like Just Spices. She is mainly taking care of the background communication with candidates, direct searching profiles, interviewing, and social media – all fields that she is passionate about and give her a sense of purpose at work.
In addition to her passion for working with people in HR, Elina enjoys traveling. The ability to work remotely is a big advantage at DONE!Berlin:
"As a New Work company, we know that remote work works for our employees. We also allow our team members to combine work and travel under certain circumstances," says Marie Kanellopulos, Managing Partner of DONE!
Over the years, DONE! has created a dynamic and empowering remote work environment. From the beginning of her career at D!B, Elina has traveled to several places while working for her clients at the same time. In the following, Elina shares advice on how remote work can be successful and what it takes to make it happen:
One of the biggest challenges of working from abroad is undoubtedly to keep up effective cooperation with the team and clients. Today there are many digital communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet to secure efficient and productive communication with all parties involved. In addition, shared calendars and documents, regular one-to-one meetings and internal social networks (e.g. Slack) also helps to accommodate a smooth workflow. It is all about an excellent self-organisation to overcome different time zones in order to successfully manage complex projects with others.
If you promote “work from anywhere”, you should be prepared in case one of your employees requests a month of remote work from a Caribbean island. Like DONE! you should set parameters and ask yourself: Should these employees work within specific time zones depending on their roles or where their team is located? How many days can an employee spend in a different country? What about insurance? Who is covering medical care during the remote work holidays? What about a remote work visa?
Remote work is a success, but not everyone is suited to work remotely and travel at the same time. To allow employees such benefits, HR managers or team leads need to look beyond technical skills and the individual performance, and check the so-called remote work skills. Those work skills are a set of soft skills that allow people to be productive in a remote work environment. For that, employees need (1) the ability to work independently, (2) self-discipline, (3) effective communication, and (4) self-awareness. These traits are significant for the right attitude for remote work and the skills to self-manage.
Elina has grown up bilingually speaking Swiss-German/German and Finnish. Languages have always intrigued her, and she loves learning them. Today, she is fluent in English, Spanish and French, too. Besides the passion for languages, she is a travel enthusiast and loves that working with D!B gives her the chance to travel and explore new places while still being able to do her work as a Junior Consultant. One of her biggest strengths is adapting with ease to a variety of projects, but also to various environments. Further qualities are her communication and “people” skills, as well as her confident and positive attitude.
