Given the current state of things, Bluebird is currently and until further notice quarantined and working from home, not only to protect ourselves but also to protect people at risk. Following the government’s advice, we’ve been working from home ever since the first confirmed cases in the Netherlands were reported.
Remote work is in Bluebird’s DNA, it’s a core value of our business (that’s why we chose the name of a migrant bird as our company name, because it really resonated with us, as we love spending periods of time in Spain, our homeland, as long as we adhere to just one golden rule: making sure there is always one bluebird working from the office in Amsterdam) and now, more than ever, we are seeing how our digital corporate culture has become crucial for tackling an uncertain future.
This, which has been our way to do things since Bluebird started, is the present and will probably be the future for other “more traditional” companies, which due to this situation have had no other choice but to reinvent themselves and find a way for their employees to work remotely without this affecting they way they conduct their day-to-day activities. Our two pieces of advice for (translation) teams that suddenly find themselves obliged to work remotely are these two programs: Slack (an instant messaging platform with different channels to bring order to team communication) and Trello (a visual board that helps you to organize translation projects). We will explain how we use them in our day-to-day in a future dedicated blog entry.
The potential impact that this crisis will have on the translation industry is still unknown, but rest assured that we continue to work just as hard as always and are making the most of our quarantine, as now we have plenty of time to pursue further training in our fields of specialization thanks to the online resources available. We have already enrolled in a couple of online courses, such as this interesting management practicum on Trados Studio, and we’re also planning to expand our knowledge on medical translation, which seems a good option for post-corona times.
Should the workload become lighter, we will have precious time at home to spend it with our loved ones, chat and talk to those far from us, to reconnect with friends, to tackle those items on our to-do lists that we never have time for and to explore new (at-home) hobbies. May all humanity become more united after all this crisis is over and more conscious about the reasons we might be here on earth. We have no doubts that better and sunnier days will come.
Stay healthy and stay home!
