The new paradigm of face to face collaboration

A year and a half ago, the first signs appeared, that the world was about to change. The initial amplification of these signs came from the other side of the world, then it stretched closer to our borders, and finally the news came through our alarmed leaders: we are to stay put at home, not to move around anymore except for absolute necessities. To avoid the complete halt of all economic activities, we were ordered to work remotely as much as was viable. Even though the last sixteen months have seen sanitary regulations evolved alongside the waves of contamination and the ease from confinement approved by authority, the injunction and privilege for remote work has remained.

Today marks the beginning of summer, with the vaccination campaigns underway and the curve of the pandemic significantly flattened, we can envisage “going back to the office”. Of course, it won’t be “as it was” because the world in which we live today has changed. Everyone is aware of this fact, but the prospect of physically crossing paths with colleagues at the office is once again possible. The only problem is that for many employees, the working days have been — and still is — punctuated by a succession of video meetings. This has changed working habits, if not the entire relationship with work.

The transformation of this relationship, which was first attributed to generational change with the arrival of Generation Y (Millennials) and then Generation Z, has taken on a completely different dimension today. The director of a large service company with whom I have worked, recently said that a survey of their employees showed interesting findings. About 20% of them wanted to keep the remote work arrangement and were unlikely to go back to the office. Only 5% wanted to return to the office full time. With the remaining 75% positioned themselves between these two extremes. This result coupled with management’s desire to leave the choice to each individual, whether to return or not, the focal question here then became: “How to reinvent face-to-face exchanges so that they are meaningful and useful for all?” Beyond the fact that one person in five will not be present at any given time, how can we make concessions for times when interactions generate value?

Based on my experience in supporting organisations in integrating collaboration into their practices, I have identified three areas in which to address these questions:

• Rethinking collective time so that it has a maximum impact : with lockdowns, collaborative practices have had to evolve as well. From the very first few weeks, the facilitators thought about and proposed new approaches in order to be able to conduct workshops remotely, and to allow collaborative work to continue to exist within the organisations. Today, the return of face-to-face meetings means that the positioning of collaborative work must be re-evaluated. It is crucial to pinpoint precisely what these workshops should allow and what purpose they serve. Because times spent together in a single location have become rare and will not become the norm again for quite some time. It is essential to determine precisely when it is important to meet in order to address complex issues, and to ascertain the value that these times should bring to the organisation. We need to ensure that the outputs developed in session and the experience offered, address a need that could not be met through remote interactions. It is also about carefully designing these sessions.
• Recreate physical spaces as meeting hubs : With employees who are much less present and in different temporalities, it is necessary to rethink spaces. Indeed, the first employees to return to the offices saw large, deserted spaces where they did not meet anyone. It is therefore difficult to see the point of being there: “What is the point of coming if I am alone all day in my space and don’t see anyone?” So, we need to reinvent workspaces to maximise the opportunities to interact with those who are physically present and make the most out of it. This is one of the keys components that I put into consideration when deploying collaborative hubs within organisations: they have to be open and inviting, to invite employees to come and discover this new space, to feel welcoming and welcomed to share, to get information about what’s going on there and to feed their curiosity. In these spaces we place emphasis on visual management to communicate information in a stimulating format. These places are dedicated for vis-à-vis interactions which allow for a beneficial experience that employees would not have at home.
• Re-generate the common history : As teleworking is now a permanent fixture of practices, whatever the degree, we will have to get used to interacting with people we only see from a distance and only exchange information during a video meeting. As a result, the fabric of the project stories that make up the history of the organisation is likely to be impoverished as it will be much less nourished by personal interactions. In my job as a consultant before Covid, the coffee machine area was always an important place for exchanging ideas, learning heaps about the organisation and ‘feeling its pulse’ thanks to exchanges of a different nature outside of regular work agenda. This contributes to the culture of the organisation, which needs to be maintained. With the scarcity or even disappearance of these informal times, it is now a question of finding other ways for employees to share these little stories and weave together the common one that shapes their organisation. In addition to relearning how to work together in these new ways, we need to maintain our common history and build a narrative, in the words of Anne Badillo, Tim Donovan and Tobin Trevarthen in their book “Narrative Generation”.

This post-lockdown time opens exciting perspectives for transformation, by putting the focus on people and seeking to recreate spaces for interaction. How do you approach this new paradigm?