Modern Corporate Culture While Keeping the Team Spirit

A lot of things we didn't think were possible to change were changed when COVID-19 demanded it. Now that we've come out on the other side, extensive thought is being devoted to the simultaneously simple and hypercomplex question: what happens next?

Among several interesting questions, perhaps the one about working at the office versus from home is the most pressing. How should you think as an employer? Should the social advantages of physical presence trump the simplification of employees' everyday lives, or the sustainability gains that remote work leads to? Doubtful.

When Swedish Business Travel Association surveyed their LinkedIn followers' preferences on the matter, they summarized the results with the word "ambivalence." Presumably, many of us recognize ourselves in this description. We want to work both on-site and remotely. For now, the question remains open for speculation. But everything suggests that employers who want to be attractive, today as well as tomorrow, need to meet their employees' ambivalence and offer the possibility of remote work going forward. Something that not only makes employees' daily lives easier but also makes it possible to attract talent from every corner of the world. By all indications, this arrangement also brings challenges, and such things are solved, as we know, by seeing, accepting, and dealing with them.

How Does Remote Work Affect Team Spirit?

The fact that companies can find competence in new places naturally has a downside. Employees who have started eyeing a new challenge no longer consider only other employers in the local area. Suddenly, your developer, finance director, or Customer Success employee can get a job in Enkoping, Skovde, Stockholm, Malmo, Oslo, or Brighton. Moreover, when motivation is low for the moment, what often keeps us going a little longer? It's of course individual, but usually it's about the people we work with. The idea that we, together, have decided to accomplish something. Not uncommonly, these feelings provide a necessary energy boost during periods when things feel a bit heavy. So what happens when that necessary push by the coffee machine is absent? What happens to team spirit when all or part of the working week takes place remotely?

The Monthly After-Work as a Substitute for the Coffee Machine?

Despite the risk that team spirit may weaken, despite the fact that your staff may attract interest from many more players than before: the solution is not to resist development. Instead, it's about taking team spirit very seriously. Perhaps you free up resources through lower office costs when fewer employees are on-site? Excellent, make sure to invest them in doubling the number of kick-offs and conferences each year. Book recurring after-works, gather the team in padel halls, on ski slopes, at go-kart tracks, in lecture halls, at restaurants, organize cook-alongs and make it a habit to turn activities into hybrid events, so that colleagues who live in other cities can also join in. Organize activities that suit your company. Perhaps it doesn't matter exactly what you choose to do -- but the employer who doesn't want the characteristics of the modern job market to affect team spirit is wise to gather the team around energizing activities regularly.

And when it's time to book: then of course you use the market's simplest, most cost-effective and best self-booking tool!