214: How Can We Nurture In-Person Connection at Work?

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:07]:

Hello, and welcome to this week’s solo episode of the happier work podcast. I’m so thrilled you decided to tune in today. For those watching on video, you’ll notice the background. I am back in the office in Tenerife now. I flew in late last night into Tenerife. So after a lovely couple of months back home travelling, meeting people in person, client meetings, presentations, and also a lovely trip to London, I’m back in I’m back in sunny Tanner Reef now, so really looking forward to getting a bit more settled in here. And the reason I was in London, I was up for an award for the podcast. Now before you get too excited, I didn’t win the award and I didn’t even come runner-up, but it was such an amazing experience to be there.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:54]:

I used to live in London, so it was really nice to be back and I so enjoyed being back as a total and utter tourist and I geeked out on all the touristy things so it was absolutely incredible. Now a couple of things I wanted to update you on. I did post on LinkedIn a little while ago about doing a live recording of the podcast, and I think I was a little overambitious while I was home and trying to fit everything in. It was kind of, in the end, a choice between traveling to London and doing the live podcast recording. So I decided to postpone the live podcast recording until I’m home in September or October time or probably both actually. And I will be doing a live recording in Dublin and in London. So consider this fair warning. I will know more about the dates and the location and all of that good stuff closer to the time, but I will keep you posted.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:48]:

But there will be a live recording in both Dublin and London. And I’m not sure if I mentioned on my podcast, I’ve mentioned on other people’s podcasts when they’ve interviewed me, but I am in the process of writing a book. If you’re on my mailing list, then you will have seen that I, writing the book a little bit about what it’s what it’s about and who it’s for. So get on my mailing list and you can follow along that journey as I write my book. I’m so excited. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid so I’m so so excited to get that and start on that journey. But today’s episode sorry for the long intro. Today’s episode focuses on a listener question.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:27]:

And I had someone reach out to me, and we’ve seen all of this stuff with the back to back to office mandates and all of the news surrounding that, you know, and how ineffective it is and how it’s demotivating for people. And it was really not working. And I think people, if they’re mandated back to the office and they don’t really see why or they’re just there all day to be on Zoom calls anyway, then it’s really motivating and they end up leaving. So I had someone reach out to me saying, we don’t want to mandate people back to the office, but we would like to encourage a bit more teamwork, a bit more camaraderie, and get people in the office because we know that this stuff works. So the question was really, how do we get people back in the office more often without actually putting out a mandate? And I thought, isn’t that so interesting? Because if I worked in an office, I would probably want to be there a lot if there were other people there as well and interacting and working on projects together, the kinds of projects that can only really get done when you’re in person, when you’re bouncing ideas around rather than working separately or working over Zoom. So really, that is the question. And I want to kind of preface this by saying this is not about remote working, working really far away. This is for people who are kinda close enough to the office within an hour or a couple of hours of the office to get them in more regularly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:50]:

So rather than thinking about people who are working remote and bringing everyone together once a quarter, it’s more about encouraging people who are near enough to the office that they can come in. So a few pointers that I want to highlight and then maybe some some pitfalls or some watch outs as well. So really about the environment. So what is your office like? Is it a nice welcoming environment, something to to think about? And if I think about some of the offices I’ve worked in, some are really nice, some are really newly decorated, really high quality chairs, you know. So if you’re getting a bit older like I am, you know, know, it’s really important for your back and things like that. And being able to sit in a proper chair all day makes a huge difference. So what is the environment actually like physically? And then thinking about the environment from a cultural perspective. So is it an inclusive culture? Are there all the necessary things? Do people feel included? If people are going into the office, then are they invited to lunch? Are they collaborating with other people or they’re just kind of sitting there on their own? Do people go out of their way to actually actually make sure that other people do feel included? And think about the why as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:00]:

Why is it that you want to bring people back into the office? And I think, you know, if we go back to Simon Sinek and he’s talked about start with why, like, always think about why you want to do something in particular, and that will be different for every single organization. But really think about why is it that you want to do it. And then when you start doing it, you can start measuring how well it’s working. So, for example, if you want more people to collaborate, then you can have it. You can track the projects where people are coming in together necessarily coming together or compare across, you know, they’re not necessarily coming together or compare across, you know, previously when this team was working together remotely versus now they’re working in person together and here is the the difference in terms of the outcomes or the outputs that they’re getting from working together. The other thing to consider is the social aspect. So, again, people complain so much about going into the office and then they’re just sitting there and they’re on Zoom all day. They’re not really socializing with people or they go into the office and actually there’s hardly anyone there, so they can’t really interact.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:12]:

But is there a decent social scene that people can actually go and have a chat with someone? Like, that’s something I really miss working for myself and working so far away. It’s just going in and having a chat and catching up. You know, if I think back early days, it was you’re talking about TV, but now there’s Netflix, so not everyone’s watching the same show at the same time. But you can hear show recommendations. You can just talk about what’s going on at home. You can talk about whatever. But just having that social aspect as well, I think, is really important. So making sure that people are there at the same time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:44]:

It’s also so important to have flexible hours, to provide people with flexible hours so that if they are commuting into the office, they’re not all going all at the same time. And I have to give a shout out to the last company that I worked for. They were fantastic for having flexible hours. I used to start work super early, so I used to drive across the city, and I was able to, at that time of day, drive through the city center. I went out to a gym. I went for a swim before work, and I got into work at about half 7, had my breakfast, and I started work properly then at about 8 in the morning. And then there were other people who came in at about half 9 or 10. So that helped me to completely avoid the traffic in the morning, which is brilliant.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:27]:

And then for the other people, again, coming in that little bit later, they got whatever they needed to do done in the morning, and they were able to come in a little bit later and, again, avoid that rush hour traffic at that time as well. So it makes the commute so much better if you’re able to avoid that traffic. So can you provide people with those flexible hours so that they can start at a time that suits them and they’re not getting caught up in in all of the rush hour stuff? Another really great benefit is in person training and that’s not only like overhearing what people are doing and kind of learning almost by osmosis because you’re overhearing people on the phone or you hear people talk about specific projects and what’s happening, but actual in person training and delivering in person training. So that’s something I’ve been involved in. And 1 of the reasons I was back in Ireland as well was to deliver in person training. And I think it makes a huge difference when people are actually there and present and learning from someone in the room rather than Zoom. Because I have noticed when I’m delivering presentations, training, workshops on Zoom, it’s so easy for people to to get distracted because you’re on your laptop, an email pops up, or you start doing something else, whatever it might be. So I think providing that opportunity to have people in the room together to learn off each other, I think makes a huge, huge difference.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:49]:

And another thing I wanna talk about is sharing the success stories. So I mentioned earlier about specific projects and thinking about the why you want to bring people back into the office. But once you start measuring that, you can see, well, what success stories are there. I wanted to talk about some of the success stories that that are out there at the moment. So in, you know, 4 really well known, and can you compare your company to these? Maybe not, but something to aspire to at the very least. But the likes of Google, Salesforce, Spotify, and Apple all have these amazing policies in place. And 1 thing that I’ll say about Apple and, you know, slight little plug here that I I got into the Apple offices in London when I was over there because I was a finalist in this podcast awards. And not that I take any photos, so I have no photos of the inside of the office to share.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:44]:

But I just have say it’s absolutely stunning location. It’s in the old Battersea power station, which was abandoned and unused when I lived in London, but they’ve totally reformed it. They’ve refurbed it, and the Apple offices are all there. And previously, I think they said they were in 11 different offices all over London. They’ve brought them all together now, And this got ties in with this idea of the environment. Like, that was such an amazing environment, really accessible. And if you create that type of environment for people to go to the office, like, who’s not gonna want to go in and work there? But it was amazing to be, you know, to have a glimpse behind the scenes. And they are real people, the people who deal with the podcast in Apple because sometimes it feels like we’re talking to a machine, but it’s it was absolutely incredible opportunity.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:33]:

I know Spotify do their work from anywhere policy, so you’re able to work basically from anywhere, but they also entice people into the office to collaborate on very particular creative type of projects and have that environment where they have creative rooms and help people to do their best work that you wouldn’t necessarily get when you’re at home. And Salesforce, I know have a have a huge policy around this and really encouraging hybrid type of work. The people I’m connected with on LinkedIn who work at Salesforce, I see them travelling quite a lot to go to be in person and meet people in person in the offices where they work in. Again, if I cast my mind back to when I worked in corporate, when you’re dealing with someone just over the phone at that time, did we even I’m trying to think. Did we even have Skype when I was working there? I’m sure we had Skype. We did some sort of video thing or it was probably just phone call most of the time. But the difference that it makes to actually see someone and see the person behind it, when you get an email from that person, you’re like, oh, I know them. I know about their kids.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:39]:

I know about, you know, their life, all of this kind thing. It makes a huge, huge difference, I think, to be able to meet people in person. And your attitude sort of changes then when you see an an email pop up from them. That’s my own experience anyway. Now a couple of things that I wanted to share about, I did mention that this is not all about the you know, it’s not necessarily about remote teams and, bringing people from really far away. But I suppose some of the are the people who can’t necessarily make it into the office or not putting the huge focus on you can only be promoted or you’re more visible by being in the office, I I kind of want to avoid giving that type of advice because I think that’s not inclusive. I think we should make make it easier or educate people how to be more visible even if they’re working in a hybrid model, even if they’re not necessarily able to get into the office for things like career advancement, for things like being able to network with people that they need to be able to network with in order to learn, in order to progress their careers, in order to in order to grow in the organization. So who is it that they need to connect with? Now an an incentive to come into the office might be 1 of those things, but I don’t want to cause that sense of exclusion when it means that other people who can’t make it into the office aren’t able to take advantage of those types of opportunities.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:05]:

So over to you now, I would love to know if, you know, what has your experience been with in office, hybrid? Like, this is the new way of working. What kind of success stories have you seen? Have you been mandated back to the office maybe? Let me know. 2, feel free to get involved in the conversation. I always post on social media. LinkedIn is where I’m most active, and you’ll find all of my links on happier at work dot IE. I look forward to hearing your success stories, your challenges around whether it’s getting people back to the office, whatever it might be. Wanna hear more. I wanna open this discussion, and let’s make work better for everyone.