The word current no longer applies right now; our entire world is changing on an hourly basis. Just one week ago I shared the proactive steps we took to keep our Hunt A Killer team and community safe. This week we updated our policies, made an extremely difficult decision, and reinforced our mission. Let’s start with the tough stuff.
We made the decision to shut down our sister brand, Team Building Kits. Over the past year, we proved the model for in-office activities that strengthened team dynamics through communication, trust, leadership, and goal-orientation. We had a talented TBK team making progress through testing and iteration—until the virus froze businesses in the United States— and most companies, like us, went partially or fully remote. We believed in the Team Building Kits mission, but with so many unknowns we made the difficult decision to wind it down so we could focus our resources on our core brand: Hunt A Killer.
While we know difficult decisions will continue to arise, there’s a silver lining: we’re operating on a full sense of purpose. As a company, we may be apart, but we still feel a sense of togetherness in every sense of the word and we want our Members to feel the same.
We’re spending more time engaging with our Members as the situation continues to evolve, and we are doing our best to deliver on every ask (i.e. full season box sets they can binge play while staying indoors). Despite working remotely, we pooled our resources and were able to make it happen in a span of four days. One of our core values is Customer Obsession, and that remains our top priority.
Now for policy updates: Last week we authorized and encouraged a majority of our team to work from home—this week we made it a requirement. After five days of practicing semi-remote-based work, we took it a step further to continue to mitigate the potential transmission of COVID-19 in the workplace.
During that week of practice, I learned that making it optional to work from home meant that a handful of teammates continued to arrive physically because they enjoy working in group settings and prefer to be at the office. I also learned that half-assing my personal work from home strategy meant I had two locations with some of my equipment in each—leaving me lacking a fully functional workstation. We kept offices unlocked through Wednesday so everyone had a chance to grab belongings and equipment they needed for their home office. If you saw me leaving this week, you’d think we were moving out. And for all intents and purposes, we are.
In addition to the mandatory work from home policy, we expanded our company-sponsored business travel suspension to include local activities. Client and vendor site visits, business meetings, and gameplay testing needed to be done remotely—hopefully with minimal degradation in effectiveness. We’re adapting to our new reality and are evolving quickly to minimize any disruptions.
Certain functional areas that are critical to our core business require a physical presence—mainly manufacturing and fulfillment. We don’t have any confirmed cases of the virus at Hunt A Killer and we won’t be allowing teammates who feel ill to enter the building. Additionally, we’re requiring our fulfillment team to wash their hands upon entering and exiting the building, we’ve increased the frequency of sterilization and general cleaning of the entire fulfillment center, and have installed hand sanitizer at workstations. We’re also adhering to strict social distancing policies during the product handling phases.
We believe Hunt A Killer provides an outlet, brings families and loved ones closer together in the comfort and security of their own homes, and connects strangers seeking community all across the world. We want to continue to foster a sense of community through these uncertain times of self-quarantine and social distancing because in times like these, we need hope and connection more than ever—even if it’s from six feet apart or through a computer monitor.
Internal email distributed on March 16th:
Team,
With the rapid spread of COVID-19, we are taking further measures to ensure the safety of you, your family and our community.
At this time, we continue to have no internal cases of COVID-19. From Seattle, we are seeing first-hand the societal and economic impacts of the virus about two weeks ahead of the rest of the country. While local agencies are rightfully making decisions earlier, the full impacts nationwide are yet to be known.
As citizens, it is our responsibility to not wait to be told, but to be proactive in our efforts to flatten the curve. As a company, we must continue to evaluate our policies and respond as new information and data become available.
Effective immediately, Work From Home is mandatory for Fort Avenue and Seattle offices until further notice. We will officially shut down these offices at close of business tomorrow, March 17th to allow teammates to gather their personal belongings and all necessary work items (CPUs, Monitors, stands, etc) to set up your home office.
In addition to suspending travel, all local company-sponsored in-person events are cancelled until further notice. This includes any off-site meetings and game testing events. Because the timeline is unknown, it is critical that we find alternative methods to accomplish the underlying goals of these events remotely. We have tools available for video conferencing via Google Hangouts, and we are in the process of acquiring Zoom licenses — please inquire if you prefer Zoom to Hangout.
For those on accrual PTO policies, we will work with you during these uncertain times. It is critical that if you are feeling ill, you remain home in self-quarantine for 2 weeks. Please raise PTO concerns to your manager if leave in excess of availability is needed.
For our Desoto warehouse, we increased the cleanings and sterilization of the facilities and workstations to five times per week. It is imperative that our fulfillment teammates practice social distancing during the product handling phases, and wash hands upon entering and exiting the fulfillment center. Hand sanitizer is on-station and should be used frequently throughout the day.
We will have an All Hands call via Zoom tomorrow where I will discuss our updated policies, redundancies, path forward, and field any questions you may have.
Thank you
Best,
Ryan Hogan
CEO
Hunt A Killer
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