Immersive Learning
Why Being in the Office is Important for Innovation
Simple tweaks for a healthy and productive business culture
With the UK Government’s Work From Home Order coming to a ‘gradual’ end, it seems pertinent to reflect on this recent period.
The global pandemic has been the biggest disrupter we have had to our collective way of working, forcing so many to shift to working from home almost overnight with little or no warning. But what happens now? Do we just return to the office as if nothing has happened? Or can we learn from this time and use it as a golden opportunity to introduce some more productive practices?
Although it could be argued that working practices were heading to a more remote approach, it was likely to be a more gradual and thought-out process than the global pandemic allowed for.
Despite some initial perks (goodbye commute, hello pyjamas!), shifting to this new way of working with little or no warning provided a whole new set of challenges for many. From the logistics of actually being able to work from home (converting the kitchen table into a home office, juggling homeschooling and navigating Zoom) to the mental challenges associated with the blurred work/home-life boundaries.
Aside from the tricky logistics and inconvenience, there are other reasons why teams should consider heading back to the office environment, even if it’s just on a part-time basis.
Where many people and organisations successfully transitioned to remote working for day-to-day business as usual tasks, some of the more innovative elements may have suffered.
In addition to the obvious benefits of working in an office (the social interactions, distinct boundaries and easier collaboration), there are many other less-obvious benefits that we may not even realise the importance of.
Understanding the business outside of your role
When you work in the same physical space as others, there is a huge amount of learning by osmosis that goes on without you even noticing. For example, when you catch a snippet of a conversation across the office or catch up with a co-worker from a different department and they give you a run-down of a project they’re working on.
Having the opportunity to ask informal questions. Questions you’d never dream of putting in an email, but questions that show your co-workers you’re interested in them and their projects and give you a more rounded understanding of your organisation as a whole. This can often make you feel more connected and more purposeful within your own role.
This is like peripheral learning, as opposed to the core learning and training you are given that directly relates to the job role you are employed to do. But having that exposure gives you a more holistic view of your organisation and can be hugely beneficial to the business.
But what if we don’t want to go back to the way it was before?
Rather than just returning to the office with the expectation that things will return to ‘normal’, organisations should be using this as a golden opportunity. Instead of just writing the last 16 months off as a blip, a bad year, what if we could learn from it. Take the positives out of the old ‘new normal’ to form a brand new ‘new normal’.
An important challenge will be taking lessons learned from working as a remote team and building on these as we move back into an office or hybrid environment. Teams that are successful in doing this will certainly give themselves the edge as we move forward.
Organisations should use this situation to reassess their priorities when it comes to skills development. If the overnight nature of the pandemic has demonstrated anything, it’s that businesses, teams and individuals must be resilient and adaptable in order to deal with the unexpected.
Working remotely is not just doing the same thing somewhere different
So now things are opening up again, we can all just bounce back to how things were before and get on with our jobs. Well….not really.
You see, working remotely is a skill. We might have been forced into it, but over this past year, we have been learning to work in a very specific way.
Communicating online, whether via Instant Messenger, Teams or Slack, or even in a video conference, is very different to communicating effectively in person.
Even with fantastic tools that aim to create a remote experience that more closely resembles the physical office experience, such as Gather Town, behaviours are still modified from being physically present.
Add to that the fact that most of us have been somewhat isolated for over a year, do we even remember how to talk to people face-to-face? To read those subtle physical body and language cues like we used to? To have the confidence to just ask a simple question to a co-worker?
Just like we had to learn how to adapt to working remotely, we now need to relearn how to work effectively face-to-face. Thankfully, for most of us, there will be an element of muscle memory, we’re not starting from scratch this time. And, if done right, we can actually improve on the skills we had before.
Resilience, adaptability, innovation
These are skills we’ve all been exposed to over lockdown, perhaps without even realising it. Skills we’ve developed out of necessity and under pressure. Skills that allowed us to survive the situation.
Now is not the time to cast these skills aside, as these skills are highly prized in the modern workplace. If we can continue to develop these skills, we’ll all see the benefits.
Organisations should consider this a golden opportunity for a hard reset of their office culture. By nurturing innovative behaviours and by encouraging thinking outside the box and exploring creative solutions to problems they will foster a culture of innovation and problem-solving.
Prioritising and streamlining tasks has become second nature to many of us. Being forced to juggle has made many of us (particularly those with caring responsibilities) experts in managing our time. As Zoom fatigue set in we began limiting long meetings and instead focused on more efficient and productive short sessions — or simply recognising when a meeting should actually be an email.
As we return to the workplace, we should all be mindful not to slip back into old habits — where the day is so packed full of meetings about meetings that there is no time for any actual productivity. Instead, if we maintain our focus and prioritise things that directly impact the outcomes then time gained can be channelled into more beneficial endeavours, like skills development and allowing space for creative thinking and innovation to grow.
The pandemic forced many of us to develop these skills without even realising it. Resilience, adaptability, innovation. Coming up with creative solutions to problems we face. We’ve been doing it this whole time, let’s not give it up now. Let’s continue to nurture these skills, and bring them back to the workplace.
How to nurture a more productive office culture
Start with the individual. Get an understanding of what every person learned about themselves and the way they work, both alone, as part of their team and as part of the wider organisation. What motivates them, what struggles they had and what they would like to see changed. This will inform the skills that need to be encouraged because to really see the benefits of these skills, they must first be encouraged. Then, like any skill, they must be continually practised and flexed. If you can do this, they soon become second nature in the individual and the collective benefits will be felt throughout the entire organisation.
Thankfully, nurturing these skills needn’t be complex.
It can be as simple as playing a game with your colleagues (strategy games are excellent for this). Escape rooms are brilliant for exercising creative thinking and problem-solving. Team-building (when done well) can really boost communication skills (and morale). My preferred method is immersive learning — all the fun of a game but designed to specifically focus on achieving identified learning goals or skills that form the basis of company culture be it communication, problem-solving, leadership or innovation.
What better way to welcome everyone back after a year of disruption! Kick-off with an activity that will set the tone going forward and show people how much stronger they have become through the adaptive changes over the last year. You can even use L&D learning reflections to reinforce how they can map these skills to their role and discuss the benefits they bring for themselves and their teams.
But whatever you do, it’s important to do something. Use this challenging time to bring about something positive and we’ll all see the benefits in the future.
Kerrie Fraser is part of the chronyko team who have over 10 years experience in designing, building and delivering Immersive Learning experiences for skills development. If you are interested in learning more about Immersive Learning check out Immersive Learning or sign up to the chronyko newsletter.
