r10 hosted a well-received webinar on “How organisations are using an Agile Mindset to stay ahead in the changing world of work”.
The attendees submitted questions during the webinar around cultural changes, remote working challenges and lessons learnt. In a series of blogs, we are sharing the answers by r10’s People Advisory experts and presenters, Beth Cooper and Jo Flint. You can watch the webinar here.
Webinar Question #4: Do you have suggestions for appropriate, inclusive team building and social events? What can be done to give that sense of team bonding using virtual tools and beyond?
With many employees working from home due to the pandemic, it important to boost virtual colleague relations.
One of the initiatives that I recently heard about was an organisation that has a implemented a randomised virtual seating plan.
Every fortnight they have a new ‘virtual seat’ and new virtual neighbours. You are encouraged to have a 15 minute call / zoom or teams coffee catch up with your new virtual neighbours. It is to promote wider team connections with people that you might have not been in touch with during lockdown but could have had interactions with in the office such as in meetings.
Aside from the typical team and organisation events that most people have hosted such as quizzes etc, I have heard of people hosting other activities such as virtual book clubs, recipe sharing chats, team work outs / yoga or maybe at the end of the week replicating virtual drinks.
But ultimately speak to your people what they would like to see. It shows you are engaged and care about their wellbeing and what they think.
At r10, immediately we enhanced our internal communications to share interesting reads, wellbeing tips and any other celebrations. Everyone is able to contribute to this newsletter, which makes it fun and engaging. We have organised several virtual drink meetings, cocktail classes, and team quizzes. There was not a strict structure around our catch ups – some were company-wide, other were amongst teams, and other one-to-ones. When the lockdown restrictions were lifted we formed different r10 bubbles, based on our home location, to meet with each other in outdoor spaces that allow social distance. It was fantastic seeing each face-to-face after so long, just to socialise without any work chats. We left those conversations for the zoom calls!
Do you have a question? Get in touch!