The masks are off. But have we forgotten how to talk IRL?

By Kate Bradbury, Managing Partner

As businesses are returning to the office once more – has the buzz of old agency life pre-Covid vanished and can businesses break the cycle of remote working behaviour to boost collaboration?

Kate Bradbury, Managing Partner at Wavemaker UK, is based at Wavemaker’s Manchester office. As the agency recently outlined its plans to move into an 82,000sq ft campus at Enterprise City, she explains why she set herself a 66 day challenge to embrace the benefits of face-to-face working once more.

On Tuesday 8th February 2022 there was an incredible buzz in Bass Warehouse – Wavemaker North HQ. All masks were off, the yellow tape and one way system had been removed and for the first time in almost two years the office was full. I could see from our desk booking app that 48 (out of our team of 70) Wavemakers were in the office and finally sitting next to each other.

The anti-bac gel was still around – after all, good hand hygiene remains important! Finally, we look and sound like a media agency again. Arguably agency productivity wasn’t at its highest however it was great to see colleagues talking, catching up, remembering they are part of a larger agency than the seven people on their Teams call. I was excited.

Productivity, collaboration and the constant Teams ringtone

Fast forward seven days and I was sat at the same desk (I’m trying to embrace hot-desking but I’m a creature of habit) and was still surrounded by my five pod pals, but there was definitely less of a buzz. I’ll have to admit, I was irritated by the constant Teams ringtone. What’s more, being able to hear those same pod pals through my headphones on my own Teams call in stereo started to grate.

Productivity wasn’t great for me on Wednesday 16th February either as I spent time pondering three things that I witnessed that day:

• A team meeting held on Teams while five out of the six of us were sat at our desks within 5m of each other. Not one of us thought to move away from our desks and use the fancy hybrid working technology Wavemaker has invested in.
• A Teams message from a colleague who was also sitting at a desk less than 5m away.
• That not one of our collaborative spaces or meeting rooms had been used that day. In fact, the lights remained off for the entirety of the day on that side of the office.

So we are back in the agency, but agency life wasn’t.

Glimmer of old agency life

I began to realise that we’d at best gotten out of the habit of collaborating in real life and at worst, simply forgotten how to do it. Research suggests it takes 66 days to form a new habit, so after 684 days (give or take a few weekends and the odd jaunt back to the office) of working remotely and on Teams this new habit had not only been formed, this behaviour has become ingrained.

There was a glimmer of old agency life on the afternoon of Wednesday 16th February. Our friends at Hearst hosted our client leadership and planning teams for an afternoon, talking about food, drink and innovation. It was a brilliant session – and not only because Hearst has moved into a new swanky office and pumped us full of great coffee. Could the content have been delivered on Teams? Yes.

Would the debate about changes in consumer behaviour post COVID have been as heated? No. Would the discussion around the Jubilee and diversity have opened a new client opportunity? No. Would we have had as much fun? Absolutely not!

We need to break our remote working behaviours and form new (re-form forgotten) collaborative working behaviours. Working together makes our work more fun. It improves the work we produce. And it’s better for our mental wellbeing.

The challenge

So, I have set myself a 66-day challenge – I do love a challenge. Over this time, during the working day I will get my face in front of other real life human faces as much as possible.

And in addition to that, I will:

• Make any all agency gathering “in-person” first. Yes, we’ll have to make it hybrid and yes, the potential tech issues already make me nervous but ultimately it will be a richer experience.
• Make sure I look up and across the office to see if I can see my work colleagues faces before “sending a Teams because it’s quicker”.
• Drag my team to a meeting room at 9am every day for our daily catch ups. Yes, it will mean I need to be ready 5 minutes early and again we’ll need the tech for those who are remote working. But we’ll annoy the rest of the office less and hopefully start to use that short walk back to our desks to bounce ideas off each other like we used to.
• Use our desk booking app not only to book “my desk” but also check which days other colleagues are in so I can arrange more of those face-to-face meetings.
• Change my habit of making all meetings a Teams meeting because it’s easier. I`ll assume face-to-face unless otherwise instructed. This goes for colleagues, media partner and clients. Hope you are all ready!

It’s simple stuff. Simply reminding myself to do the things that would have come naturally two years ago. Fingers crossed my colleagues remember they like my real-life face and fingers crossed that after 66 days of conscious effort this behaviour will become natural to me again. Because I want to be back in the office in mind-set as well as body!

Article originally published in Prolific North