By Rachel Davies, Account Manager, Corporate
As offices across the globe close their doors in light of tightening social distancing measures, many of us are leaving behind more than just a computer monitor built sometime this side of the millennium and a sad looking office plant.
In fact, we are leaving behind a place where we often receive our daily dose of news, political updates, and gossip from those that, over the months and years of working together, have become our friends. Ultimately, we are leaving behind the social interaction that we all thrive off.
This level of connectivity has become an integral part of the teams we are part of and working remotely is already starting to impact this. The usual in-person catch ups are now being conducted over video call, which makes me feel like my colleagues have been replaced by giant thumb versions of themselves.
The decline of in-person interaction makes being connected tricky, and with so much doom and gloom projected across much of our media and social media sources, keeping it light with your teams is a must.
Here in the London corporate team, we have now entered week two of working remotely and have rolled out a number of initiatives that we hope you can take inspiration from:
- The Desert Island Disc quiz: Taking inspiration from the dulcet tones of Lauren Laverne, the corporate team were quizzed on which discs, books and luxury item they would want to take with them to a desert island. These answers were then collated into a quiz which was circulated to the team. The competitive streak really came through, with three members of the team gaining full marks. The winner, of course, was determined by a nail-biting dead heat round over Microsoft Teams.
- The Bake Off: Get your team to submit their baking escapades, and then circulate these to the team for a public vote (I’ve found an online app website called poll-maker that makes this incredibly easy to pull together). As you can imagine, submissions have been full of banana breads and cookies aplenty, alongside one submission of some Cool Original Doritos and a can of Neck Oil…. we’re all hoping that team member is holding up okay.
- Still taking the moment to switch off: We held our Friday drinks and snacks on Microsoft teams, which, despite being an incredible example of organised chaos, was a great moment to see the team and catch up informally. And, there is definitely something to be said for not paying eight pounds for a lukewarm glass of white wine from the office local.
- Sharing the good news: Next week marks week three, and with that we are going to commence a new initiative of the happy team newsletter, which will include submissions from the team of uplifting news stories that have caught their eye, acts of kindness, or simply funny stories from people’s weeks.
Right now, many employees are looking to employers to provide a level of normality amidst this developing situation and providing some light-hearted initiatives can certainly offer some relief. I know that at best it feels unnatural and at worst it makes you physically cringe, but staying connected with your team has never been more important.
Every team is unique and finding out what works for you and your team is an important step in maintaining your team’s culture and morale during this period. At FHF, we are supporting our clients and their diverse teams create their own ways of keeping their teams connected.
One thing is for certain, we definitely won’t be getting our monitor back anytime soon.
