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For our company, what happens in Vegas definitely won't stay in Vegas! After our recent leadership and development/product meet-up in sunny San Diego, everyone is buzzing with excitement about our January in-person shindig in Las Vegas. But here's the best part: The San Diego vibe is still alive and kicking, keeping our remote team's culture thriving even between these awesome get-togethers.
Why are these events exceptionally successful? Because their primary focus is on building relationships rather than just conducting meetings. It is imperative that leaders utilize in-person events to foster deep connections and harness the various facets of an in-person work experience that online communication tools often struggle to emulate.
After the San Diego event, people reported feeling energized by sharing time with their colleagues and were able to have longer and more strategic discussions without suffering from "Zoom fatigue." In a 2012 study, MIT's Human Dynamics Lab found that the number of times team members spoke face-to-face accounted for 35 percent of the variation in that team's performance. With 22 percent of the American workforce expected to be remote by 2025, setting the right cadence and structure of in-person events can give businesses the best of both worlds.
In-person events can break down many of the barriers promoted by distance and isolation. Among the biggest challenges of a fully remote team are the potential for miscommunication, lack of clarity, and diminished collaboration. Creating interactive forums, activities, and spaces where people share freely helps offset these potential issues. It also nurtures and maintains culture in an environment that works more for some than others: Working remotely may help one person find a work-life balance, but another might find it more difficult to maintain strict boundaries between the two; some find remote work makes them more productive, whereas others may struggle with loneliness and disconnection.
One of the most touching pieces of feedback I received about the San Diego event was from an employee who had some trepidation meeting people she had only previously known online. But after experiencing the warmth of face-to-face interactions, she was blown away. In fact, she said she developed a far deeper sense of trust and respect with her colleagues than would have been possible purely online.
The primary goal of in-person events should never be for company leaders to deliver one-way communication--a CEO droning on about KPIs will leave employees more bored and disengaged than ever. To obtain maximum value from bringing people together, we need the fundamental focus to be on relationship-building between leaders and employees, and between coworkers.
Just as no two people are the same, the right mix of structured and unstructured time during events is essential for maximizing success. Our San Diego event used structured sessions to build new connections, especially among those who rarely interact in their regular roles, setting the stage for future relationships. Ensuring that individuals from different departments, such as finance, feel connected to those in sales and development (and vice versa) is vital for the company's dynamics.
This method boosts job satisfaction and fosters a positive culture by making everyone feel part of the global team. A participant from San Diego expressed that their experience would enhance cross-departmental collaboration and facilitate company innovation and growth. Another remarked that departmental challenges became solvable when they found the right contacts across the organization.
In contrast, I have observed that individuals with pre-existing relationships benefit from unstructured social events, like visiting the San Diego Zoo or dining out in groups. Such informal settings encourage lively conversations and deeper personal revelations, which lead to improved collaboration. Leaders then need to take responsibility for figuring out how to sustain the impact of these experiences when resuming relationships online.
The optimal cadence for full-company events allows people to get excited about the next meeting just as the uplift from the previous one starts to wane. We are still in the experimental phase of establishing our cadence, which requires listening closely to employee feedback so we can chart that graph. For leaders embarking on their own experiment, I suggest making their first in-person event the biggest one.
An inaugural company-wide event will give everyone the opportunity to meet everyone else and have the greatest emotional impact, which leaders can then build upon in subsequent events. While our primary goal of in-person events will always be relationship-building, as companies hold more events, expectations should shift to incorporate work-product outcomes and meeting business goals. That may happen somewhat organically, but we still need to encourage "purposeful" connections on an ongoing basis to ensure that it does.
Leaders can find many valid business reasons for people who do not work together day-to-day to maintain a relationship. We created groups of six people in a cross-departmental initiative to plan virtual social events and send out birthday gifts. Whatever initiative a business chooses, its success will be measured by how well colleagues get to know each other across diverse teams.
As companies adapt to the dynamic world of online workplaces, leaders are finding an increasing need to supplement remote work with face-to-face collaboration. Done well, these interactions can range from the deeply personal to big-picture professional, all while reinforcing an event's real purpose of building and deepening relationships. Or, as one person put it in their feedback: It is easier to work through struggles with "real human beings."
The folks who formed deep bonds and made friendships in San Diego are now keeping the relationships growing with more personal and frequent communication. It is like they have captured that in-person magic and are holding onto the strong culture we built when we met face-to-face. Until we can reconnect for dune buggies in Vegas, we are still riding that San Diego wave!
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How to Rethink an In-Person Event for Remote Teams
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08.01.2024
Valentine's Day Off, Gender-Affirming Care, and a Free Lunch: The Top Benefits Employees Want in 2024
5 Documentaries for Business Owners at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
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Don't Count on a Venture Funding Rebound in 2024
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5 Ways New Tax Changes Could Affect Small-Business Owners in 2024
The Most Important Business Book of the Year: 'How Big Things Get Done'
For our company, what happens in Vegas definitely won't stay in Vegas! After our recent leadership and development/product meet-up in sunny San Diego, everyone is buzzing with excitement about our January in-person shindig in Las Vegas. But here's the best part: The San Diego vibe is still alive and kicking, keeping our remote team's culture thriving even between these awesome get-togethers.
Why are these events exceptionally successful? Because their primary focus is on building relationships rather than just conducting meetings. It is imperative that leaders utilize in-person events to foster deep connections and harness the various facets of an in-person work experience that online communication tools often struggle to emulate.
After the San Diego event, people reported feeling energized by sharing time with their colleagues and were able to have longer and more strategic discussions without suffering from "Zoom fatigue." In a 2012 study, MIT's Human Dynamics Lab found that the number of times team members spoke face-to-face accounted for 35 percent of the variation in that team's performance. With........
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