inStreamly’s Company Life and Remote Work
Remote work has many advantages. For example, you don’t waste time driving to work, spend money eating out, and you can basically work from any place in the world. However, there is one big downside – you don’t get to see your colleagues in person. So what inStreamly’s company life looks like?
Team building is very important in every company. People who like and know each other tend to work better, delegate responsibilities more effectively, and feel much more comfortable.
Fortunately, there are also many solutions to this conundrum. You just have to consider the implications and choose which method will suit your company best. Over a year and a half of remote work has shown what works best for us!
Online Activities
Because of the remote work and so many of our employees live far away from each other, meeting offline is not always possible. So we came up with some things that help us bond without having to move from our favourite chair!
Among Us
Yes! We joined the hype train and started playing Among Us as a company! Once a week we meet on Discord and have fun!
Remote Work Instalentine
Instalentine is derived from valentine + inStreamly. In February, we launched a Valentine’s Day online card exchange. We came up with this idea because of the sentimental memories from school, and everyone loved it!
The point was to write something nice to our coworkers, as not everyone may have had the opportunity or was too shy to do it face to face. There was a full variety of Instalentines, from “I appreciate you for embracing the subject X” and “You are cool, keep it up!” to “You are an oasis of peace” etc. Best part? Everybody got one!
Other Games
We organise some short game sessions regularly. We play games like Taboo, Keyboard Type Challenge, or (our favourite one) Meme Maker. The goal of Meme Maker is to create the best meme on the pre-drawn graphics and add the funniest description.
From time to time, we also have short quizzes at our meetings with questions like: “What do you know about inStreamly?”, or “How many employees do we have right now?”, etc. We always change up the games so we don’t get bored!
Last Meme Maker winner 😉
Offline Fun
Every quarter we also have time to have fun in real life!
Remote work challenges
Ok, so maybe this is exactly meeting in person, but we really care about our employees’ psychophysical condition and work-life balance. That’s why we promote any related activities, including sports challenges. We are currently doing our third Strava challenge this year. The first one was in May and our goal was to walk, run or bike 50 kilometers together. In the end, the result exceeded all expectations – we did 935.41 kilometers together!
June’s goal was 1,500 kilometers, of which we managed 865.33 kilometers. And, surprise! In the second challenge the person with the highest score could choose a charity to which a sum of money was donated! So the winner chose to support a charity which helps children suffering from Cerebral Palsy, SMA, autism, as well as other genetic syndromes and struggling with multiple disabilities.
Right now we are in the third edition of the challenge, in which we share with each other how much time we spent on physical activity this month. You can choose the activity you like best! You can walk, run, or roller skate – we leave that up to you!
Photo Contest
Best adventure of the weekend! It was a spontaneous competition involving taking a photo of ourselves, in which we show how we spent the weekend. The photos were shared and everyone voted for the best one. As part of the award, the winners received tickets from our partners to see the film Free Guy. Cool, right?
Remote Work vs. Offline Events!
And finally, our offline team-building events! This is the time we actually spend together as a team! This year, we had our first meeting in June which saw a summary of the quarter combined with a workshop (6 hats of de Bono) and food and drinks afterward so everyone could chill together.
The second event was a two-day trip in September to Krzyczki Szumne. The meeting was divided into two parts: official and unofficial.
The official part was a quarter summary, combined with a workshop during which let our imagination run wild with creativity about how we can contribute to achieving our company’s goals.
The unofficial part was all about team building. During the day, we played “Escape Hotel”, which is a game about unraveling a mystery while doing certain tasks, collecting money, improvising and negotiating. As a reward, the winning team received a bottle of amber liquor that started the whole evening! Later we enjoyed a barbecue, board games, dancing and “serious” conversations about life.
The next morning, those willing to devote themselves to sports activities, played football, disc-golf and pseudo-yoga. And those who preferred more calm entertainment went picking mushrooms, dying on the grass in the sun’s rays, or visiting llamas, donkeys and goats! Cutest animals ever!
This is only a small part of all the fun things we do at inStreamly, and we come up with new activities every day! We believe that you can’t run a good business focused on remote work without a group of friends who care about you and who are always there to support you! (Especially when you want to go on vacation – their help is invaluable ;))
