It’s been months our paths didn’t cross. I haven’t spilled my coffee on you, by accident, or intentionally because of the tough atmosphere. I lie in my bed, reminiscing about these good old days. I miss you, my office!

COVID-19 has changed our daily routine. We no longer go to the gym, we no longer meet up for lunch with friends, we no longer attend schools and other places, we no longer work! Well, in its traditional meaning. Our working style has transformed to another level – remote, which means we can work from home or any other location as long as we have access to the Internet.

My friend Toma was a sommelier and a wine advisor before Coronavirus, now she is a virtual wine-related event manager. She organizes online wine tastings for wine-lovers and big companies.

My friend Astgh was a Yoga teacher who used to practice different Yoga techniques from her own studio. After the Coronavirus breakout, her studio closed down and she turned into being an online Yoga teacher & healthy lifestyle advisor.

As for me, paradoxically, I have never worked before Coronavirus, then I got a cool job offer and started off cheerfully. So now I do SMM for a platform called Kolba Jobs. Basically it is a platform for local freelancers, job seekers, and hiring companies. Kolba Jobs connects the job seeker to a hiring company and vice versa. It is an initiative led by UNDP’s Kolba Lab, which started as part of “Future Skills and Jobs for Armenia’s Rural youth project.” It started off as a Facebook page with several cool campaigns for freelancers, and now we are launching the website too. Besides job opportunities, Kolba Jobs will also offer free translated and original courses on different topics; from information technologies to business administration and content writing. Additionally, it will run a blog with useful articles, the latest news on remote jobs, and a built-in skill hub for up-skilling and re-skilling.

Talking about Kolba Jobs social campaigns, I can’t help mentioning Kolba Masterclass, which is a series of webinars, organized free of charge. The webinars take place online every week, on different remote job-related topics, with an invited speaker and a dedicated HR specialist in that specific sphere. The first webinar covered the topic of Digital Artists. We had a professional speaker from the field and the webinar was followed with a Q&A session with the participants.

Currently, we also run another cool campaign, called #MyHomeOffice. We invite freelancers and remote workers to share their home office photos. Later we’ll choose the winning photo, as we have prepared a prize for this contest. The winner will get one paid online course in their preferred field as a prize. And guess what? People are sending their home office photos like crazy! SPOILER ALERT! There are diapers and peeing dogs.

Anyway, my favorite campaign is the Freelancer’s Campaign, because here I do what I love the most. I find successful local freelancers and interview them online, then I ask them for tips and tricks for our followers and soon-to-be freelancers. We feature a freelancer story per week and we get really nice feedback from our followers. In the future, the featured freelancers will guide our followers individually through the process of freelancing and job orientation.

So, I love my first job which is remote and deals with remote job seekers and freelancers. Here at Kolba, we do many researches regarding the pandemic and work experiences in different countries, and we pay attention to people’s reactions to the new work order. Studies show that working remotely is much more effective than office work, it is explained with the lack of space sharing with other workers, coffee chats, and other bothering conditions. Working from home is much calmer and it is easier to concentrate, plus you spend more time with your family. On the other hand, there is always the factor of family members: a crying baby, different work calls at the same time, poor time management, etc.

Considering the pandemic and all these changes and transformations, I’d still like to make a statement that our planet Earth still rotates around the Sun and the Moon rises at nights, urging us to sleep. In other words, it’s challenging to transform yourself and your lifestyle because of certain conditions, but if it’s for the common good, then it’s worth it. Working remotely has benefited our work style, has armed us with a bunch of new skills like attention to detail, time management, better concentration, and listening skills, and these skills will stay with us forever.

Written by Zhanna Barseghyan