Mondays are hard. Having to get your gears going after a weekend that you didn’t even know was a weekend, getting coffee that you stood in line for with other glazed over faces. The first sip reminds you that there will be many more sips, many more dollars spent on overpriced flavoured water.

The morning commute, exhaust fumes sweeping around tires, brake lights flashing on and off. Imagine if you didn’t need to sit in your car for hours on end, imagine being able to make your coffee at home, imagine working in your pajamas…

At Kuvio Creative, we prioritise human comforts. Being a remote company, we’re dotted all over the globe, sitting in the comfort of our homes, probably in our pajamas. But what this means is that we get to do the work we love in familiar surroundings. We can be more productive, do it our way and the only commute is to the kitchen.

Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re lazy and never leave the house, it means that our creativity and ideas flow due to the fact we are in a comfortable, familiar space. Research shows that employees who work from home have a better life to work balance, are less stressed and eat healthier.

Getting used to working remotely is an adjustment, but an adjustment for the better. Introducing Jess...

Jess is new to the whole working remotely thing. She joined Kuvio Creative back in September last year, after working at a small business in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her current role is a marketing associate and project manager. She runs our social media accounts and engages with people in our target audience. Since moving to Kuvio Creative, she has found working from home has drastically improved her work life balance.

“I get so much more done since I don’t waste time travelling to and from work. Also, I can plan my work schedule around my life, which gives me more opportunities to see my friends and family.”

For us, as a company having a great understanding of what a work to life balance should be, means that we get to love our work and still have time to do other things that we are passionate about. Jess loves to dance and has been dancing since she was five, she’s currently the captain of her dance group - the Minutemen Dancers. She also loves running and finds it to be a great stress reliever.

The amalgamation of cultures at Kuvio Creative means that we have a lot to learn about each other; how we spell some words differently, our beliefs, our accents, where each other lives…Jess enjoys being able to indulge in the different cultures while also working.

“I have always wanted to travel, but have not had the time or money to, so working with people from various parts of the world fascinates me, and it’s incredible to see how well we work together despite the distance.”

Working remotely allows us as a team to connect in different ways. To communicate we use apps like Slack and Google Hangouts to talk to each other and sometimes via email when we have something more substantial to say. The benefit of using Slack is that it's as simple as texting each other but it’s even more productive as we can share Google docs, upload files and create channels for each department so that everything stays in the right place. Slack also makes it easy to refer back to conversations in the future.

Jess feels that Slack and Google hangouts make communicating simple but sometimes she wishes she were  able to physically see and talk to someone. This would be one of the drawbacks of working remotely, as well as all the different time zones, but it means that someone from the team is always working - constantly getting stuff done.

If you feel your team is lacking productivity, you may want to try working remotely, to see how it changes your work dynamic and to see if it makes you and your colleagues healthier. We’re definitely benefiting from doing so.