6 April 2022
Remember the start of the pandemic, when the first Lockdown happened?
It was a novelty. Zooming from our living rooms and kitchens, with kids, animals, you name it – we saw it. Whether or not you were willing to admit it, meetings were joined with much anticipation to gain an insight into our co-worker’s lives. Where were they working from? Who was in the background? Was that a Bromley piece or perhaps a Margaret Olley piece of art on the walls?
But now 2 years on, Zooming has become a part of our vernacular. We are logging in, we have the meeting, we log out. We repeat. But are we engaging like we first were when the pandemic started? And have we become so accustomed to this new way of working that the thought of travelling to attend an in-person meeting is simply too hard?
At the start of the pandemic, we were also trying to engage our teams with Zoom drinks, team games and likes, but what are we doing now?
How do you build engagement and culture when people are burnt out and Zoom is the new norm?
A lot of the things we were doing at the start of the pandemic to keep our team engaged have gone by the wayside. It’s meeting after meeting, it might be a hybrid model, it might be disruptions with people having COVID or being close contacts or they might even be lucky enough to be on holidays.
Irrespective of the reason it’s still really important that you are engaging with your teams during this transition period. It might be that on a day that everyone is “on”, you have an informal coffee/water cooler chat that isn’t work related. You could have a weekly meeting where each team member has to share a “admin” hack or teach the group something new. It might even be that you engage in one of the many free online games that you can use for teams online. Dare we say it, but it might be that we share our favourite cocktails!
The new sensations of Wordle and Heardle have sparked many debates amongst individuals. As a natural discussion starter, perhaps that’s the new weekly way of getting people to talk. With talking comes collaboration – we’ve adapted to new working styles once; we can do it again. But this time we can use everything we learnt last time and we know that people need to be at the forefront of any decision making.
Can you afford to get it wrong? Now is the time to refocus on your people. We know you’ve had a people-centric approach for the last two years, so why would you take your foot off the accelerator now? Afterall, your people are your greatest asset, can you afford to lose them because you didn’t get today’s Wordle in less than 4 attempts?
