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The coronavirus pandemic is shaping a new world. A recent HR survey from Gartner claims that 88% of surveyed companies have encouraged or required their employees to work from home. We were no exception, and this crisis impacted us at Moka as well.
Transitioning into an entirely virtual work environment has been challenging, but we adapted very quickly. What really hit us was THE MEETINGS.
We are a close-knit team, and we were very used to working together in an open space office that fostered lots of verbal communication. Brainstorming, syncing, and planning projects was quite easy in this environment. When moving into remote, we felt we needed to keep the same amount of verbal communication we used to have in the office, leading to having more meetings. A few of 15 min syncs here, a couple of 1 hour all-hands sessions there, and we were suddenly using a significant portion of our days in videoconferences. We had to do something about it.
While researching ways to better our time management, I realized: what if we could show everybody how much each meeting costs our company? Maybe it can make everybody think twice before calling in for ad hoc and unstructured videocalls.
To get the organization more conscious about our time hogs, we had to speak a language everyone would understand: we had to stop talking about time and start talking about money. And so, Retimer was born.
Retimer is an app that shows teams how much their meetings cost. It allows users to add how much each participant’s time is worth, and then it tracks and displays the accumulated total.
We built it internally as a side project, and in the last couple of weeks, we have been using it to track our meetings. We already see great results! We are becoming more conscious about the time we spend discussing things, and even though we don’t rush anything, we are getting better at being assertive and sticking to the main topic.
We are currently working on polishing and improving core features. But functionality like monthly budgets, previewing meeting costs, meeting templates, and more are already on our roadmap and coming soon.
And today, we want to share Retimer with all of you and invite you to test it.
The app is now available as an open beta on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moka.retimer (The iOS version is just a few weeks away, so send me your email via DM, and I’ll let you know with you once it is released.)
Please download it, use it, break it, and try it with your colleagues. Show your boss how much your organization pays for those ad hoc meetings he loves so much ;) Or go crazy and compete with other managers in your company to see who leads the most time-saving team. Why not? ;)
You can’t manage what you can’t measure, right? So give it a try and tell us what you think. We are craving to learn about your experience and improve the app!
Cheers,
Fernando Ferrari
