Thanks to the increasing number of vaccinations, the pandemic is slowly giving back the freedom we were used to from year 2019 (at least in rich countries). The easing of pandemic-related restrictions and the decreasing risk of getting awfully sick, let companies to begin to also gradually take back their remote work policies. Of course, most of what has been established over the course of the last 14 months was necessary in the light of the pandemic. It seems, companies didn't gather very good experiences with it, did they?
In Germany, the allover rate of working from home is dangling at about 30% over the last months, with tech companies still leading this trend at about 80%. Compared to other sectors, tech companies had rather low barriers with switching work to a distributed remote model very quickly. Already in 2020, many firms such as Shopify or Twitter, announced to not work exclusively from offices ever again and others like Spotify followed this route in early 2021. I assume this is not something only Big Tech is capable of and smaller (tech) companies started remote work successfully as well, without telling everyone on the interwebs. With the hypothesis of around 80% of tech teams smoothly and productively working from home for over 12 months, why would one to completely reverse this to the way it was in January 2020? For example, Netflix's CEO is planning to get everyone back into the offices as soon as the majority is vaccinated. Similar plans has Goldman Sachs' CEO, who thinks working remotely is an anomaly which has to be corrected as soon as possible. Both claim something along the line of: "collaboration and innovation is not possible if people cannot touch each other" (exaggeration by the author).
Reactions of employees are not long in coming. Some rather choose to quit, than get back to do useless meetings in the office. In Cupertino, a small group at Apple contradicts Tim Cook's plans to go back to work in the offices and stresses the fact, that they managed to deliver the same quality as everyone was used to pre-pandemic.
What makes a good team?
Let's look at what makes a good team from an objective point of view.
A study by Google surfaced five factors of what effective teams have in common. In short, it's mainly communication and how people treat each other (and a bit of purpose). Having teams 100% co-located is not mentioned. Not at all.
Sure, most of the research happened without any pandemic outbreaks involved and probably with the majority of teams working co-located. Yet, this aspect was apparently not considered relevant enough to be included, although it may have had an impact.
Innovation builds upon good collaboration and additionally needs curiosity and willingness to learn.
So, to make a good team, team members need to have good communication, trust each other and have the ability to learn together. A comfortable office might be nice to have, but apparently is not the decisive factor. It seems to be more important, that a team is allowed to figure out what they need to be successful, in an autonomous and responsible way.
Fostering productivity and positive team vibes
Having worked in two teams in full remote mode during the pandemic, I noticed one thing that both had in common. The teams were completely separate and no connections to each other. The change from working mainly in the office to everyone being distributed in their homes, didn't feel anything strange. Neither did it had impact on the productivity of the teams. In hindsight, both teams did something that supported productivity and positive vibes, without doing it consciously at the time.
From day one of working in remote mode, both teams chose to have the video chat open all day. This was certainly an unconscious decision. Probably, because we were used to see each other when we were in the office. Being able the see your team mates, talk to one, ask a question right away or even just have a chat allowed both teams to work very productively and with a constant positive mindset.
Since we didn't choose this way of working intentionally, we also had no name for it. It is actually known as Silent Zoom and is practised not only by co-workers but also in book clubs. People meet in a Zoom conference with the goal of reading a book, silently on their own. The presence of other people reading a book, seems to support the own reading. This is much like what students do when they work in a library. Silent co-working is what students have been doing for centuries.
Silent Zooms for Silent Co-Working
The following aspects helped us to be productive with ease over several months working from home. We used Zoom, but this should work with any other video conferencing tool that allows stable video and audio streams for several hours.
Virtual team room open all day
A dedicated virtual room for all team members is available all day. When you start your day, you can join the room in the morning. This is also the place for silent co-working and general discussions. Everyone can join and leave as they please. No one should feel obliged to be present in the virtual room all day.
You could also do this not all day but only three hours in the mornings. It's rather important that there should not be the feeling of monitoring others or being monitored.
Break out for one-on-ones
For all topics that concern not the whole team, you break out into a temporary private room. This is good for special topics two or three team members need to work on or want to talk about. Pair-programming works great this way.
Active video signals availability
Show that you are available to talk by activating your video. If someone wants to talk to you, they can raise your attention. A stopped video shows you are currently away or just don't want to be disturbed. You can still hear everybody talking and pop back in if there is something that catches your attention.
Mute yourself when you don't talk
Mute your microphone if you don't currently talk. The better your audio setup is, the less sensitive you have to be about muting yourself. With a good microphone that mainly records your voice and very little of your surroundings, you usually don't disturb your team mates when it's open for longer period of time. Nevertheless, to reduce white noise and annoying sounds (e.g. your neighbour's barking dog, sounds of you eating or drinking something, you angry-typing on your mechanical keyboard) you should mute yourself not too late.
Regular daily recurring coffee breaks
Have regular coffee breaks. Create one or two daily calendar appointments, 15 to 30 minutes long. Use this time not just to take a break, but also to give everyone a chance to come together and have a chat. Maybe there is someone in the team who doesn't like being around all day, so they can use those opportunities to reconnect to the rest of the team.
(Btw: you don't actually need to drink coffee.)
Show yourself
Even though, the virtual team room is meant to be an offer and not an obligation, you should try to join and show yourself when ever possible. Being around helps a lot to bond with the team. If you need some focus time, you can turn down the volume and when you hear your name (or someone tries to get your attention by other means) turn it up again to respond. Especially when your tasks currently don't need much collaboration from your team, join anyway − it supports team jelling.
Reading Tip
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