Connection Not Perfection

How to keep remote teams connected whilst working from home, as we continue to navigate what remains of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Source:The Tech Headaches of Working From Home and How to Remedy Them

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world of work by proving that remote working is a model that can be adopted successfully from a technical and a team perspective. Organisations made the infrastructure available in record time, to enable all who can to do their jobs remotely, to work from home.

UK's Office for National Statistics released figures in April 2020 showing 49.2 percent of adults in employment were working from home.

(Source:https://www.ons.gov.uk/)

Although remote working and having to work from home was thrust upon those who were based out of an office, it has provided flexibility and allowed households to juggle team meetings to stay on top of work, home-schooling, checking in with the neighbours, family and long queues at the supermarket.

As we enter a summer of ‘staycations’ how do you keep the camaraderie and team spirit going for established teams? For those starting new jobs and working with new teams, how do you build connections that you would normally foster during your social interactions at work, without adding additional time onto meetings?

Read on for some tips and suggestions I’ve seen working well over the past few months, specifically in these 3 areas:

Managing meetings when you’re working from home

Ideas for building better relationships with remote team members

Tips for managing our mental health and well being during these unusual times

For Work…Have Focused Online Meetings

“Britain is in the midst of a meetings epidemic with the average worker now spending 213 hours a year — or 26 working days — stuck in them.”

Source: The Times. Article: Sorry I’m in a meeting…for half of every working week. August 19 2019

It looks like remote working is here to stay with many organisations now offering the option as a more flexible arrangement. However, this may mean that meeting time and the number of conference or video calls we find ourselves on, could increase from the 26 working days we were spending in meetings last year, pre - pandemic.

Over the past few months, I’ve seen focused online meetings work really well. The meetings are usually no longer than 30 minutes. I know, in an article about connection, the first thing I’m suggesting is to cut down the amount of time for online meetings. Do bear with me, there is a good reason for this!

To hold these focused meetings, the host sends the points they want to cover beforehand, so all in the team are aware of the purpose and can take some time to think about their responses. This takes away the guesswork on the agenda, helps the team to drive each point to a conclusion and also avoids the need to have multiple follow up meetings.

The team gets thirty minutes of their time back from what would have been an hour-long meeting, to progress their own work or to deal with family or household responsibilities, during these unusual times. It’s a win-win and creates a feeling of empathy, understanding and builds a sense of trust across the team.

Source:How Much Time Do We Spend in Meetings? (Hint: It's Scary)

Some useful feedback I’ve had recently from team members is that this habit of focused meetings also plays to the strengths of the introverts in my team, as it allows them critical thinking time to put forward well thought out responses.

Whether you’re a Team Lead that has new team members, or are part of a team that has been working together for a while, you’ll want to work with as much engagement and passion as you did before the pandemic. However, if you’ve not had the opportunity to connect with your remote team, it’s easy to feel out of the loop.

To help with this, you can have one to one calls with your Team Leads and use one of the many collaboration tools and online chat apps available, such as Slack, MS Teams, Skype for Business, Google Chat, Sharepoint etc. Using these tools helps to answer quick questions, create awareness across the team on decisions that have been made at meetings, as well as communicate FAQs and essential reading to new and existing team members. Do remember to speak with your security team on the tools they recommend.

Source: https://www.kayako.com/blog/virtual-team-building-activities/

Having worked with many remote teams over the years, I’ve had practice trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t with different teams, so be prepared to experiment until you find the groove that works for your team.

It’s important that the team agrees on these experiments. They may also have their own suggestions to throw into the mix. For certain types of meetings, where you are generating creative ideas as a collective, your team may need a longer meeting. I’m not suggesting a mass culling. Though I do have to share, that when I’ve suggested this particular experiment to my remote teams, for our regular meetings, I’ve not had a single disagreement yet!

For Play…

“Work is important, but people connect when they're not working and the discussion isn't focused on work. On each call, if you have five minutes to ask, 'Hey, how are you doing?' you can build a relationship with someone. This can be a game-changer in knowing your team better and creating a good culture for your company."
- Goncalo Hall, Remote Work Consultant

Source: https://www.owllabs.com/

When you’ve been working remotely for some time, it’s the easiest thing to fall into the habit of attending your regular calls, discuss the top priority items, hang up and not really feel like you’ve connected with your colleagues on a human level at all.

Recently, after an intense period of juggling work and family responsibilities as well as job searching, the FurLearn team decided to kick back on a Friday afternoon and have a call just to relax together, with a drink and talk about the week. No agenda, no topics, not a pub quiz in sight and no pressure for all to attend. Just a fun little challenge set by me to the team to wear a mask of some description. The specifics were left to their artistic flair and imagination. Here are some of the FurLearn crew just before the call....

I’ve found that this is one of the real benefits of having an online space where you can set aside time to meet as a team and have those relaxed coffee break conversations. These are great for connecting, getting to know each other’s hobbies, the TV you watched over the weekend, Netflix recommendations, pet peeves and celebrate your achievements and adaptability as a team.

If you’re working in a relatively new team, ice breakers are a useful way to energise your team, connect them socially, and get them talking about non-work topics that matter to them.

There are an abundance of ideas available online, here are a few suggestions to get you going (37 Best Remote Team Building Games (Tried & Tested). You may want to test out a couple of these to see how they land with an audience before you use them with your team.

(Source: https://snacknation.com/blog/virtual-team-building/)

If you’re looking to try out your online facilitation ideas with a very receptive and open audience, in a virtual setting and receive feedback and suggestions to improve your ideas, check out The Facilitator Lab. If I was going to list one of my Top 5 discoveries during lockdown, this would be on my list! The sessions have given me more confidence to try out my ideas and pick up tips from my fellow facilitators for all types of online group activities from ice breakers to problem solving, to creative ideas for holding lessons learned/debrief sessions virtually. To find out more about the labs contact noel@humble.associates or you can just sign up for the next one here: https://noelwarnell.uk/facilitator-labs/

For Your Mental Well-Being…

"Part of the beauty of remote work is being able to work on a schedule that works best for you, but if you're online and working at all hours, you'll start burning out quickly. We'll need to build clear rules around how technology can be used to help us maintain those boundaries for work-life balance."
- Ryan Bonnici, G2 (formerly G2 Crowd)

Source: https://www.owllabs.com/

In these uncertain times, stress and anxiety can manifest due to a number of reasons, whether you are a seasoned remote worker, or have been forced to work from home due to Covid-19.

At FurLearn, we host regular webinars with some great speakers, to empower, inspire, and uplift furloughed and job-searching UK talent. Take a look at our events calendar here and sign up.

For quick access, these are some past recordings of webinars focused on mental health and well-being, take a look:

Here are a few reminders for our mental well-being that we all need from time to time to bring more balance into our lives, whilst we juggle multiple responsibilities.

Keeping Connected

Source:The best virtual team building activities, according to full-time remote workers

Stay connected to your team through video calls or through one to one catch ups on an informal basis.

Managers and Team leads, step up your inclusion efforts for all remote workers. When you encourage teams to get to know each other better and create opportunities to talk freely, you are showing that you care about their welfare, it also makes a big difference to their level of engagement and productivity.

Exercise

Find an enjoyable pastime that lets you exercise, leave your home office for regular intervals and gets you feeling energised and more productive. I’ve found exercise to be a useful coping strategy for anxiety and love running outside to get some fresh air into my lungs.

Source: Do's and Don'ts of Exercising Outdoors with Diabetes During COVID-19 Distancing Measures | Lark

Whether you enjoy running, walking, high intensity interval training, or are missing your regular Yoga or dance classes, there are many online platforms offering exercise, you’ll be spoilt for choice.

Sleep

Source:News - Covid-19 Series. How to sleep well- Written by WWTW Clinical Lead, Carolyn Brown.

“It is common for managers and colleagues to look at a lack of focus or motivation, irritability, and bad decision making as being caused by poor training, organizational politics, or the work environment. The answer could be much simpler – a lack of sleep.”
- Vicki Culpin The Wake Up Call: The Importance of Sleep in Organizational Life

Lack of sleep can impact the quality of work we produce, how we perform during interviews and our interactions with our friends and family. Here are some important changes I’ve made recently that have helped me fall asleep faster and experience better quality of sleep:

I created a space dedicated to work, away from my bed and my much-loved sofa!
Taken up Yoga and meditation before bed. Just 15 minutes of stretching, sitting quietly and observing my thoughts had made such a difference.
My biggest challenge has been to avoid drinking caffeine after 3pm. Even the smell of coffee at the office was enough to tempt me to make another brew to get me through the afternoon.
Started using the ‘Do not Disturb’ feature on my phone so I’m not woken up by message notifications or news alerts whilst sleeping.

Meditation

During this time, not only are many of us balancing a lot of responsibilities, we’re also concerned about the potential impact COVID-19 could have on our families, the cancellation of holidays and our job searching efforts.

Source: How to Boost Your Immune System in the Time of COVID-19

Dealing with these concerns without giving yourself a space to reset can cause anxiety and stress. Meditation can help you to:

Tune in with yourself, feel less distracted, more focused, grounded and can help with your emotional health. Personally, I’ve noticed a marked difference in ways that I’ve handled daily challenges, when I’ve meditated versus those days when I haven’t.

You can download the Headspace app for some great guided meditations. Headspace are also offering a full year for free, for those that have been unemployed. Bonus!

Spending time in Nature

Source:Student mental health: 10 minutes a day in nature could reduce stress and anxiety – expert explains

After spending so much time indoors, in front of screens and artificial light, the effect of fresh air, sun on our backs and being outdoors can promote our mental well-being as well as provide other benefits such as boosting our immune system, and even improve our short-term memory. The University of Michigan conducted a study which found that students who regularly went for a walk-in nature, improved their memory by 20 percent.
Get your regular hit of green space, even if it’s for a short daily walk in your local park, and reap the benefits that mother nature has to offer.

Healthy Boundaries

Being connected by technology when you’re remote working is a necessity. However, when we’re working towards our deadlines and trying to show up daily to support our colleagues, we can tend to de-prioritise our own needs and hence our boundaries between work and personal lives become blurred. We also fall prey to the ‘always on’ culture and feel pressure to respond to every email and instant messages on a plethora of platforms.

Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/parenting/coronavirus-work-family-balance.html

When we log off work for the day, we’re scrolling feeds on social media and so the length of time we are unplugging from technology and truly being present with our friends or loved ones, becomes limited and work-life balance is eroded.

To counter this, we need to:

Ensure we make the time for our personal activities that nourish and energise us. Giving equal importance to ‘me’ time, means that we can use the time to reset and be a more present, motivated and productive member for our teams.
As we block out time in our diaries for regular meetings, we can also block out time for our personal activities such as daily walks, home schooling, mealtimes with our families or learning and personal development.

“Downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life … moments of respite may even be necessary to keep one’s moral compass in working order and maintain a sense of self.”
- Ferris Sabr – Scientific American Article

Remote working has given us the opportunity to escape the daily commute and manage our time so we can foster a more meaningful relationship with our colleagues, whilst also making time for our own personal development and passions.

Calling all fellow remote workers! We’d like to hear from you.

What changes have you implemented in your daily routines that have allowed you to be more productive and form better relationships with your colleagues, friends and family?

Connection not perfection

What happened to our health plans during lockdown?