Employee Engagement = Connectedness: 8 Ways to Create Connectedness in a Distributed Workforce
Article 7 of 10
Connectedness → Human to human, spontaneous collisions
Quick Recap: You cannot ignore remote work. You know you need to figure out distributed work. You understand the value. You are aware of the risks. You’ve written your mission statement. You’ve deployed your mission statement. Now you have to bind your team together in pursuit of that mission.
You can’t pretend that being distributed is the same as being together physically.
If you are a knowledge worker, you likely work on a screen most of the day. You can work on your laptop from home, from Starbucks, or from a shared workspace. You can take calls anywhere you want. None of those places is the same as doing it in the office. I can watch the Texas vs. OU football game from a seat in the Cotton Bowl or from my couch on TV. It is not the same. It feels different. The experience is different. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise.
The office experience is an important part of work. It has a lot of value that your employees enjoy and will miss. Paul Ford captured the sentiment well:
“But the office doesn’t so much give meaning to my work as it is the meaning of my work. It’d be hard to give that up.” Paul Ford in Wired
The meaning he is talking about and the value it produces comes as a result of a shared space. It is literally the product of close physical proximity to other humans. The late (and brilliant) Tony Hsieh designed the entire Zappos culture around the idea, and later his local community:
“Culture is to a company as community is to a city, . . . the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing ideas. At Zappos, we do a lot to get people running into each other. At our office, for example, there are exits on all four sides of the building. We’ve locked them all except one. It’s more inconvenient, but we prioritize collisions over convenience.” — Tony Hsieh, Zappos
What are Paul and Tony driving at? Why do we have to be near each other to give work meaning? Why are organic collisions so important?
They are talking about the human need for connectedness.
Previously we talked about the desire we all share to be connected to something bigger than ourselves. This is different. This is a connection to each other. This is a human-to-human connection, . . . and it is a lot more difficult with physical separation.
Why do we need human connectedness? Well, Simon Sinek would tell us it is because of our innate desire to feel safe. To trust the people you work with and depend upon. This isn’t just motherhood and apple pie feel-good stuff, it’s critical for the organization to survive and thrive.
“When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside.” — Simon Sinek on LinkedIn
We need our employees to feel connected to the mission AND each other. True connectedness between two humans generally happens in person. Sorry, but you know it’s true. You have experienced it. Bummer for this whole distributed workforce idea, huh? Yes. It is. Accept it and start figuring out how to overcome it.
Know what you’ve lost and try to manufacture it.
We know we need human-to-human connections, but our distributed work arrangement makes forming those connections organically nearly impossible. This is a problem worth solving! Remote is not the same as in-person, but different doesn’t have to mean inferior. We need to create opportunities for our employees to connect. We have to force collisions to happen that would not otherwise. This is solvable.
Here are some methods I have used successfully:
Friday Wraps: Friday is the best day in the office. There is a lightness in the air and excitement about the upcoming weekend that makes work more fun. It’s contagious. Except when you are sitting alone in your home office. Let’s bring some of that Friday office fun into the home. You have interesting employees, let them show it. Designate 30 minutes on Friday afternoon for two employees to deliver a 12-minute presentation to their coworkers via video conference (cameras on everyone!). Give general guidelines or suggestions on presentation topics or formats, but keep them loose. Maximize the creative freedom your employees have. It’s great practice for telling an interesting story, creating an effective presentation, and delivering it in front of a live audience. Afterward, have the presenters post a quick summary of what they were trying to convey and soliciting feedback. It’s a great way for employees to encourage each other and feel connected.
Happy Hours: Well, yeah. Friday Happy Hours are a thing. Like them or not (I do!), many of your employees love them. They are a great way to get to know each other in a casual and fun environment. Tough to do remotely, but not impossible. Encourage and even instigate video happy hours. The key is to keep them small and keep them fun. Avoid having more than six people, because someone won’t get enough airtime. Don’t let people sit at their desks without a drink. Encourage them to relocate somewhere fun and relaxing. Back yard, park, restaurant patio, etc . . . Encourage them to bring a fun drink, alcoholic or not, and explain their inspiration to the group. Dogs are also welcome. Most of all, encourage people to cut up and be real. The only metric of success is participation.
Book Clubs: I love me some book clubs. I got to know people from every department much more deeply than I ever would have otherwise by doing a book club with them. The key to a good book club is organization and moderating. Pick a great book that challenges the reader to think. Assign a reasonable amount of reading (under an hour) each week to finish the book in under two months. Open sign-ups for anyone in the company. Break up into groups if necessary to assign everyone a chapter. The person assigned the week’s chapter is responsible for reading and posting two thoughtful questions to the group at least 24 hours prior to the meeting. Meet each week over lunch to discuss the questions. Avoid recapping the chapters, just let the assigned party give a quick “My biggest takeaway” and then ask their questions. It’s the moderator’s job to keep time, ensure everyone gets a chance to share, prevent time hogs, and give positive encouragement to people being brave and vulnerable in their responses. Book clubs are awesome for developing meaningful connections.
Lunsh — The misspelling is on purpose (credit Sam Smith the creator). This one is easy. You hire talented and interesting people. As such, they likely enjoy meeting other talented and interesting people. Make it happen for them. Get people to throw their name in a hat to have lunch with a couple of coworkers. Randomly assign groups together. Get on a video call and eat lunch and talk about your week. The key here is to get enough participation across departments and groups that people are regularly meeting new and interesting people.
Ketchups — Informal team meetings are usually a complete waste of time. Fix that. Commit to allowing 30 minutes a week when people aren’t doing work. Get everyone on a video call with cameras on to do two things: share wins and have fun. Have a host who moderates the session. Pick someone fun and outgoing. Tell them to get some music going in the background. Tell them to solicit people to share a win they have had in the last week. If they can’t get any takers, they should have one or two in their back pocket to call on someone. Wins should take ten minutes or less. Then just have fun. Trivia is great. Revealing the answers to survey questions (favorite Disney movies) is perfect. Hold contests. Let people be funny. Let them cut up. Be ok with the measure of success being the number of people who get off the call and say “That was fun.”
Get together when you can — Duh. I almost didn’t include this one because it is so obvious. If you can afford it, bring everyone together twice a year. A Christmas Party and annual summit are great reasons to put people on a plane if necessary to get everyone in the same room for a couple of days. If you are a fully remote company, you probably need a quarterly get-together.
When you can’t be together, talk — Avoid becoming a company that only communicates in email. Slack is great, but not when it’s all there is. If you need to talk to someone prioritize the phone over email. Pick video conference over the phone. Video on, always. (Experiment and invest in a good video solution.) Just embrace the awkwardness and lean in.
Own it!
You have to lead on this. You have to model it. Your employees need to see you out in front in every area. Be the first to give a wrap, and the fourth, and the seventh. Whatever it takes. Invite a different group of people to a happy hour every week. Lead a book club (or better yet just sign up and be a regular participant). Sign up for Lunshes. Do it all. Get to know your people deeply. The more they are connected to you, the more they will feel safe to connect to each other.
