Virtuous Working While Working Virtually

What *feels* like years ago, creating a positive company culture and happy engaged employees was an aspiration of most companies. Most companies equated building culture to building “perks” at the office.

Take my company- we completed an 8-month gut rehab of a huge vintage office space in the trendy Fulton Market. All the employees lived through a terrible eight months of dust, noise, and distractions with the promise of an incredible new space. From the designer kitchen with plenty of room to eat together, to the private courtyard that was ready for cocktail parties, and cool new conference rooms, we are so proud of this new home (and can't wait to get back!)

Of course, we completed the renovation a week before the mandatory Chicago COVID shutdown.

What happens when your office shuts down? You can’t use that brand-new state of the art office...or the cafeteria that offers free snacks and luches...or cool little nooks to unwind...or that meditation room you used to decompress after a tense meeting....or the treadmill to help get that extra frustration??

I’ve learned it’s the exact opposite. It is the single most important thing a company can focus on right now; and leading this intentionality has been one of the toughest challenges I've had in my career.

In an overstimulated, over-scheduled world, during the pandemic, we have been forced to slow down and focus on the most basic human needs. How to keep employees happy, healthy, and productive? Investing in people is the highest return investment a company can make. It's also a lesson that I hope we remember when we eventually go back to whatever the new-new normal will be. A meditation room sounds nice, but does it give someone a chance to feel connection, pride, ownership, and purpose? Doubtful.

When quarantine first hit, every Friday we would have a virtual company happy hour. I worked hard to make those events engaging; coming up with different themes and games each week. One week I didn’t have a lot of extra time, so I decide to take a break from the games and give unstructured time for people to talk. Turns out, that was the best event. People craved the time to sit back and talk to one another without programming or feeling “on”.

Click and check out Chris Turner, a British Comedian and Rapper, entertain during a Virtual Happy Hour…

We’ve tried almost everything to be intentional in building culture and keeping our team mentally well. Among the list of our attempts, we've given employees virtual yoga + meditation classes, monthly gift baskets, daily check-ins, gift cards for virtual lunches, competitions, guest speakers, improv comedians, stipends to build out their home offices, chances for self-development, self-advancement and much more.

Like everything else in life, there's no one size fits all solution. The more varied opportunities we've given for our team to engage, the higher chance of success we will spark something in each employee.

Keeping your virtual workplace culture positive, people happy, and teams productive is an ever-changing and (usually) thankless endeavor. Keep the course, keep trying, innovating, and of course shrug off the failures. You may never hear it, but your team is counting on you more than they have ever before.

Keep evolving, keep changing, keep striving to create a positive virtual environment. It gets frustrating but that’s how I know it’s worth it.

Step up leaders, it's your time to shine.