For many workers, the informality of the ‘watercooler’ chat was the common connection point for the office environment – but as more companies adopt hybridwork, how do we make meaningful connections when our colleagues are just images on a screen?
“We have to ask what happens when a good chunk of the workforce isn’t anywhere near a watercooler or a break room,” said Linda Trim, Director at Giant Leap, one of South Africa’s largest workplace design consultancies.
“What happens to laughs, gossip, innovation, and creativity in the absence of a workplace?”
“Think about all the relationships in your life that stemmed from work. Now think about how many of those relationships formed in person. It underlines the importance of developing relationships at work and just how much we lose when we try to do that without sharing the same physical space.”
Trim said companies now need to take particular care in fostering employee relationships when everyone is scattered to the four winds.
“The assumption is that proximity equals connection. But it really doesn’t. You can be in an office next to someone and really have zero relationships with them or only interact on messaging services anyway.
“When you make a connection a priority, you really have to create space for people to show up in an authentic and vulnerable way. And that really starts at the top. For effective managers, that means letting people know when they have had a hard day and talking about their lives outside of work.”
Trim added this gives permission to everyone in the offices – and particularly in teams – for managers to show up in a way that’s the basis for true connection at work, whether in an office or on a video call.