Dealing with Crises in New Work Companies

How do New Work companies deal with crisis situations? With solidarity, decentralization and distributed decisions. Even during the Corona pandemic, we can act quickly and flexibly and learn a lot that will still be useful after the crisis.

What exactly is New Work?

Admittedly, New Work is a rather vague term that is currently being bandied about a lot on the Internet. In general, it describes a way of working that focuses on independence, freedom and participation. For us, this means in concrete terms : We are a purpose-driven company that belongs to its own employees. We use the form of holacracy - that is, we do not have managers or bosses who tell us what to do, but work in a self-organized manner. Decisions are made together using an integrative method. Through non-violent communication , we learn to address tensions directly and grow from them.

Our friends from einhorn not only produce fair and sustainable condoms and period products , but also work like us as a purpose-driven company with holacracy and non-violent communication. Elena Weidemann from einhorn, who promotes the einhorn.period account and political petitions, and Patrick Boadu, lead link of the communications, marketing and sales team and managing director of soulbottles, discussed this. Here is the summary of the Instagram live video:

The Corona Moment

At some point it was there: the Corona moment. The point at which it became clear: now things are getting serious . For einhorn, that was at the beginning of March, when the workshop for people with disabilities , which normally packs and sends packages for retailers, stopped its work for safety reasons.

There were two such moments for soulbottles: In January, the Chinese producer of our stainless steel drinking bottles stopped production at short notice, which forced us to adjust our annual planning . The second moment came in Berlin at the beginning of March, a few days before the official government measures. In order to protect society and meet our responsibility as a company , we have been working from home since March 13th - as far as possible.

First Aid: Rapid Crisis Management

As a social business, we take responsibility beyond our own economic interests . In order to continue to act fairly towards people, the environment and employees, we quickly took the following measures:

• Social distancing through home office: Employees work from home to minimize infection risks.
• Corona Task Force: A multidisciplinary group takes over analysis and decision-making in real time.
• Securing the supply chain: Close contacts with partners have helped us to maintain operations.
• Provide empathy: With formats such as video meetings, we create space for uncertainty and exchange.

Has New Work helped us?

Yes. Our way of working has proven to be helpful. Values ​​such as self-management, decentralization and solidarity make crisis management easier for us. They were promoted through self-ownership, holacracy and non-violent communication and can be applied particularly well now.

What do we want to keep after the crisis?

We would like to preserve some positive developments from this time, including:

• Communicate even more openly: address tensions more quickly, even after the crisis.
• Closer contacts: Intensify friendly relationships with partners.
• Email instead of meeting: More efficient communication through written votes.
• Productive meetings: Clear structures for more focus and results.

In this sense: Together we will find solutions to fears and worries.