Red Light! Green Light! was one of my favorite games as a kid. Well, life has thrown us a lot of roadblocks these days. Seems the whole world has come to a stop.
Red Light!
Friday, March 13th, the owners of RITTA gathered us all together and announced we’d be working from home starting the following Monday. Afterwards, they met with each of us one-on-one to make sure our families were ok, and to see if we needed any help with the transition. At the end of the day, we left in unison and headed home to our families. It’s been a strange time for all of us, no doubt. Green Light!
Like many other businesses, RITTA has been working remotely for the last month or so. We’ve always had solid “snow day” procedures in place to get us through a storm and continue to deliver for our clients. But working from home for months? We work with global and iconic brands who we would never leave waiting for snow to melt. We weren’t going to let them down now.
Green Light!
Here is a snapshot of a typical remote workday:
8:30 am: Check texts and emails from overnight and early morning from clients and Account Execs.
9:00 am: RITTA Roll Call
9:10 am: Zoom with Account Execs
9:40 am: Assign work to designers, proofreaders and writers
11:00 am: Connect with Production to get approved work out the door, order media, arrange retouching, confirm changes, etc.
11:30 am: More client feedback, more scheduling, more everything. New project – need to set up another Zoom link for the kickoff meeting.
12:30 pm: LUNCH! (Red Light!)
1:30 pm: Back to the inbox, new work to assign, follow-up with the teams.
2:00 pm: Changes needed per client on several projects, reorganize schedules to accommodate afternoon deadlines.
3:15 pm: Jump on a call with various Account Execs to make sure we are “on target” for the day. Begin planning tomorrow’s schedule.
4:00 pm: Check in on various teams to make sure proofreading is returned early enough to make updates by EOD.
5:00 pm: Crunch time, final reviews and approvals coming in fast.
5:30 pm: It’s a wrap!
As the Traffic Manager, I align great talent and resources within a budgeted time frame to meet ever-changing deadlines. Under normal circumstances, I would have daily rounds where I would meet with each of the Account Execs to get the day moving. Then assign these assignments to creative and production teams. But these are not normal circumstances and we needed to adapt.
We immediately adopted new procedures and protocols to connect, collaborate and as always, deliver!
Green Light!
