How we’re keeping the MOIA spirit alive while we’re isolated by physical distancing — and what we’ve learned from it
by Anne Herwanger & Gabi Wegner
A couple of weeks ago our working lives were suddenly and unceremoniously turned upside down when we transitioned to working fully remote in light of the physical distancing recommendations. Luckily, as a tech company, we’re used to working remotely and the change wasn’t technically challenging — but at the People & Relations and Agilist teams, we were more concerned about the other aspects. What would an extended period of remote work do to the MOIA spirit? Without our colleagues around, there are no more chats at the coffee machine, lunch breaks together, yoga sessions, board game evenings, free hugs, office dogs, or spontaneous drinks together.
At first, it was hard to imagine keeping this spirit alive without the natural interactions that happen during a normal day in our office. But after a couple of weeks of remote work, we’re proud to say that we’ve found many ways to bridge the physical (not social!) distance and keep the MOIA spirit alive.
Since we’re all in the same boat for the near future, we’d like to share some of the ideas we’ve come up with and what we’ve learnt so far.
Laughing together in a virtual meeting can be more important than strict moderation.
We’ve read all the articles on remote work and how to make virtual meetings as effective as possible. Don’t get us wrong — a prepared agenda and a moderator for each meeting is always helpful, remote work or not — but especially during times like these, a silly joke at the beginning of a meeting helped us much more to adapt to the unfamiliar situation. Some of the ways our colleagues got creative with keeping the spirit up were funny, decorated backdrops, and new costumes every day in video calls.
The mix of business life and private space is already happening — embrace it!
Have you ever wondered how your colleagues live? Whether we like it or not — we are now familiar with the (untidy) flats of each colleague with whom we’ve had a video call with. For now, our working lives and private space are inexplicably mixed, and we recommend dealing with it in an open and creative way.
A few enterprising Slack-thread-starters created a #HomeOfficeChallenge to motivate people to share their home office setup and their best home office outfit. Apart from the obvious win of the obligatory adorable photos of cats and dogs, it felt like a fun way to make the most of being forced to stay at home -– and probably motivated people to clean their rooms and get out of their pyjamas! Well, probably not the last part:
Emotions are a part of our working life
The daily ritual at the office always informally included talking to your colleagues about how they are feeling (or asking them how their weekend was), but this doesn’t automatically translate to remote work. The “Daily” calendar appointment doesn’t feel like the time to chit-chat, so some teams extended their daily meeting by a bit and temporarily renamed them to an appointment called “Coffee time & Daily”. Others added an optional “How do you feel?” in addition to the usual questions.
We’ve also noticed that we’re all more open to sharing feelings in a working context right now, since everyone is in a similar situation. Work has always included dealing with people, and individual energy levels and feelings always will have an influence on how well we collaborate. It has been great getting to know how our colleagues cope with hard situations, and helping each other out. It helps build empathy, especially with international colleagues with families all over the world who are now experiencing the pain of social isolation even more.
Some colleagues also mentioned that they feel more connected than ever before, since the challenge of being remote has resulted in many creative ways of staying in touch, and has brought us closer to each other. We hope to carry on the positive aspects such as these even when life slowly goes back to normal and we aren’t fully remote anymore.
Maintaining informal social interactions is crucial, not inefficient — especially when working from home
Studies show that one of the most important motivators for employees is good relationships with colleagues and superiors (here is just one example). At MOIA, our colleagues have come up with various ideas to build and maintain such relationships through common interests — including board game evenings, LAN parties, cycling groups, yoga classes, and a Slack bot that lets you opt-in to being pooled into a random lunch group. Here are some examples of formats we’ve managed to translate to remote versions:
- Remote Lunches: We often spent lunch breaks together going out around the office, but we’ve never before had the chance to find out our colleagues’ culinary skills (or the lack thereof!). We’ve kept our Slack bot and instead chat over a Google Meet session.
- Remote Coffees: Your barista skills may finally pay off! Impress each other with your latte art skills over 1:1 coffees or in groups. So far we’ve chatted about how we’re feeling, how we handle cabin fever and sharing a home office (or converted dining table) with partners or housemates, and balancing family time and taking care of kids with your personal and work commitments.
- Remote MOIA Recharges: We usually meet as a whole company every month for drinks, to hangout, get to know newbies, and exchange ideas. We transitioned this to a remote version as well. Last week we had a hangout with 30 people and everyone presented their cocktail creations.
- Remote Walk & Talks: A walk and talk is a great way to see things from a different perspective — so why not do it remotely and show your colleagues around your neighbourhood?
- Gaming: Gamers have been self-isolating forever! A few colleagues started a Discord server and have been playing Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Counter-Strike and other games together in the evenings. It’s a fantastic way to be social while being physically distant.
How different will our working lives at MOIA be when we can go back to the office again? We don’t know yet — but what we do know for sure is that some initial challenges have turned out to be chances, and have changed our culture for the better. We’re already thinking about how to integrate some of the brilliant initiatives and ideas that popped up in this time of crisis in our “normal” working culture. In just a few weeks we’ve learned that our spirit can deal with way more than a virus!
