Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

A Ritual That Works — bringing remote teams closer together

WAYWO –What Are You Working On?

448 days ago we left the office. We thought it would be just for a week or two, but the weeks turned into months, and now it’s been more than a year! It’s been a big change for everyone. Productivity has never been higher — we’re delivering a lot of high-quality work. People are more or less comfortable with WFH now. Quality of life is improved by removing the daily commute.

But something is missing: the casual, light touch chat — the ‘getting a cuppa’ social banter that helps us remember that the people we work with aren’t just email-writing, meeting attending, work robots. We’re all working towards the same goals, but we’re all increasingly more isolated in our homes.

In order to get closer to people, prevailing wisdom dictates that you need regular, unplanned interactions — and in the world of video calls and tightly packed calendars, we found it really hard to do.

So feeling that something was lacking, about 3 months ago, we started a new ritual in the Digital Experience team here at Vodafone — WAYWO!

We use wheelofnames.com to pick someone each day. I can suggest shuffling the names occasionally!

So how does it work?

Originally started by Rob Hunt at Deliveroo, and then continued by Ben Brewer at Sainsbury's, the premise is simple:

1. At our morning standup, we spin the wheel, letting wheelofnames.com pick someone from the list of team members.
2. At a time of their choosing the nominated winner will ask ‘What are you working on?’ in the team group chat (Slack or Teams work well here)
3. Once the WAYWO call is out, everyone can tell the team what they’re working on, and post a pic or screenshot.

If your nominated person isn’t in the morning meeting, you can just tag them in the team chat.

The key thing we’ve found is to keep it lightweight, light-hearted, and communal. No one is under any obligation to respond, and no one should feel pressured to participate if they don’t want to.

A typical WAYWO response in our Teams Chat. Most of the posts show the detail of our projects, so can’t be shared in a public forum.

What we’ve learned

WAYWO has really turned around our team motivation and remote camaraderie. Because we couldn’t catch a glimpse of what our coworkers are doing, nor have a coffee in the kitchen with each other, it was hard to build a team spirit in the depths of lockdown.

Now, introducing WAYWO has allowed us to replicate some of the ‘before times’ stuff, see not only what we’re all up to, and if we can help, but pictures of each other's pets, lunches, or workspaces.

Another area that’s really helped has been in onboarding new starters to the team. When someone new is starting, this ritual gives them the chance to have a bit of personality (if they want to), and get to know the team members outside of meetings & emails.

It works well for us because we all work across many different touchpoints in a large company. It’s very low-effort, high engagement, and honestly … it’s fun! Why not try it on your own team?

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Want more? Here are some Top Tips for WAYWO Pros

• 🐕 Non-work pics are encouraged! If you took the dog for a nice walk on the weekend, share it!
• 📲 AirDrop is your friend — makes it very easy to get pics from phone to computer if you just HAVE to show everyone your new coffee cup.
• 🎵 Try musically themed WAYWO to mix things up. I’m trying to implement Fleetwood Mac Fridays (”You can go your own waywooooo…”)