By Theyo Team
#1 Motivate colleagues in the home office
Are you also overwhelmed and looking for solutions? No panic! Over the past two years, we have sweetened the everyday working life of companies and organizations withchocolate tastings and have gained exciting insights into their home office practices! In addition to great impressions, we learned above all that unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all here either! Nevertheless, we have put together the (apparently) most effective ideas for you, which you can try out with your teams and colleagues and optimize as you wish and fit. Good luck!
#2 Virtual Office
Most of you will know this practice from your school or university days: instead of staring out the window alone at home or cleaning procrastinatingly, you sit down together to learn together. This idea is also the basis of "virtual co-working". Instead of offline in the office, you sit together digitally in the virtual office. In other words, you make an appointment at a certain time and length of digital co-working in order to then work together in the virtual presence of the other. Anything from 30 minutes to half a day makes sense. In particular, to increase motivation in the home office. Because most people can just concentrate better when they know there are others around. Fixed rules are also important here: when is the call switched to 'mute', how do you deal with pauses? If there are several participants in the digital office, several rooms should be created if necessary. There can be a quiet workroom, a break room and a virtual office, where questions and comments are welcome. The aim is that the virtual co-working does not distract, but contributes to an uncomplicated exchange, allows spontaneous creative storms and reduces being alone in the home office.
#4 Fair meeting times
The problem is not new, but the extent is: with the new possibilities of working from home, people are working scattered all over the world. It is therefore all the more important to keep an eye on the time zones and contexts of the employees. Fair meeting times are those where all team members equally have meetings at convenient and less than convenient times. Especially in companies where the head office is in one place and only a few employees are distributed globally, the business hours of the head office should not (only) be taken into account. All team members should have the same feeling that their needs are being heard and met as best they can. So it's a great sign from the team when most of them work a night shift so that a few can get a good night's sleep.
#5 Buffer Times, Rituals & the Choco'clock
When do colleagues have the opportunity to exchange ideas informally? At company celebrations, events and just before the next meeting. At least that's how it was in the past. Instead of accepting the lack of these possibilities, you should try to create digital versions. Especially with larger teams, it often makes sense if you open the digital meeting room a few moments earlier. So everyone trundles in at a leisurely pace and still has some time for small talk, to maintain old contacts or make new ones. You can proceed in a similar way at the end of the meeting: it is best to plan in such a way that there is still some time to say goodbye after the meeting has ended. Maybe one or the other wants to stay a little longer until the next meeting starts.
Rituals are just as effective as buffer times. Both at the beginning or at the end of a meeting, as well as via Slack (or other chat programs). You can and should definitely create small, fine team rituals. How about a 'Thank God It's Monday meme' that all team members share in the chat on Mondays? A 'Fuck-Up Friday' is also exciting, where all employees can share something that went really wrong during the week. Or a short anecdote as a check-in before each meeting? Does your team have many new team members? Maybe you can use these games to build an introductory routine into your meetings. Every action, no matter how small, helps create shared experiences, involves everyone, and strengthens the bond between the team.
Many of our chocolate customers use our tastings as a tool to enjoy a nice Choc'o'clock together. Whether guided by one of our chocolate experts or as a "self-guided" chocolate journey - a chocolate team event is always a good idea! By the way: our boxes contain complete chocolates. You could either taste them together in a kind of tasting or, for example, come together as a team every day for a week for a chocolate! In both cases, we can also recommend incorporating a chocolate meditation. There are no limits to your creativity when it comes to designing a successful Choc'o'clock. For more ideas , please contact us !
Practices such as the virtual office, motivational kicks for meetings or adjusting working hours are simply ways to bring your employees closer together despite geographical distance. With working from home now becoming a permanent part of the “new normal”, these types of virtual interactions are becoming an increasingly important part of the daily routine for many companies. Experiment until you find a mode that everyone on the team feels comfortable with. The more you face the challenges, the faster you will find suitable solutions. And if nothing works anymore? Chocolate always works :-D
