Team Building in the Post-Covid Era

Remote work has finally arrived (or not)! Not so long ago, having a friend who worked from home was like meeting an alien, and suggesting back in 2000 that remote work would one day be normal sounded as crazy as saying you wouldn’t be allowed to smoke in bars, or that programmers would earn decent salaries.

Well, after that whirlwind of emotions that was covid, when we learned to know ourselves better, our partners too, and how to cook exotic dishes, remote work said hello and decided to stay, bringing an avalanche of changes to the working world.

The debate about the pros and cons of remote work is wide: does it increase or decrease efficiency? How do you run trainings, especially for new employees? How does it affect costs? And on and on, endless questions about that old acquaintance, or so we thought, who showed us its true face when it burst into our society.

Focusing on personal interactions and team dynamics, we can find companies where, only a few years ago, lunch or the coffee break was that little gem that brightened the day, where relationships were built and activities were organized outside work, like dinners, outings and so on. Yet that same company, with those same employees, can today be socially barren land, and going to the office can feel like an expedition into the desert.

These days we can find real hermits, with hardly any social interaction in their daily lives, and teams with members who have never met in person. Obviously, all these new dynamics have many effects, and we still don’t really know where they’ll take us in areas like mental health, productivity, screen addiction, collaboration and others. Where there does seem to be consensus is that in many of those areas, the impact is negative.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against remote work. It brings many benefits, some of them even long term, such as easing the population load on cities. But the points we’ve already identified as negative need to be worked on, doing whatever is possible to mitigate the adverse effects. Classic team building has to be stepped up and reinvented, offering employees something that makes them see it as a benefit and not a burden. That inevitably comes at a cost. Whether it’s because these activities have to happen more often, lunches or dinners have to be held at more expensive restaurants, they have to take place during working hours, or the company has to pay for more exceptional experiences that an employee wouldn’t normally pay for out of their own pocket.

The price of not looking after personal interactions among staff can be dozens of workers wasting their time browsing the internet at home, young talent leaving the company, poor collaboration and uncoordinated teams, or even sick leave for depression.

Please, don’t underestimate the damage and the influence that low social interaction can have on your team. Mood, mental health and commitment to the company will all be directly affected.