Further Apart but Closer
Overview
The IK team, given our modest size, has always been a close-knit group. We share a commonality of interests and of our approach to work. It was an easy assumption that our closeness was fostered, at least in part, by the forty-plus hours we would spend with each other in our office. Like many companies have over the last year, we realized that our physical proximity was hardly correlated to our productivity, and from what I’ve observed during this time period, neither was our fondness for each other.
Before we decided to go fully remote for the foreseeable future, we worked within the confines of our cozy office building just outside of uptown Charlotte, and more often than not you would find each of us with our heads down buried in the task at hand. If you popped in as a visitor, you might think it was a library, not a technology company busy developing products for such clients as the Smithsonian, Organic Valley and Clemson University. With such dedication to our work at times the vibe seemed to be, as the adage goes, “all work, all the time.” Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed each other’s company and always made sure to carve out time for fun, like our monthly Thirsty Thursday outings and semi-annual solstice parties. But the office, on a day-to-day basis, was very quiet.
Fast forward to the early months of our fully remote arrangement – society was being gripped by the teeth of the pandemic and the melding of our collective work and home lives began to set in. Our team agreed to a meeting cadence that would have us huddle for status updates three times a week - once on Monday for a long-form staff meeting and two shorter huddles on Wednesday and Friday.
On the days we didn’t see each other, aside from project-specific meetings, something seemed off. The isolation we felt from our friends and family seemed now to apply to our workmates. We pretty quickly adjusted our meeting schedule to check in briefly, each workday morning. This decision, in my opinion, was transformative and fostered a closeness among us.
On top of our daily huddles, the volume of team communication throughout the day rose vastly. We employed the use of Slack channels, dedicating one for each of our projects to discuss details or to decide on courses of action. Aside from this newfound method of virtual collaboration, with messages whizzing back and forth in Slack, our remote arrangement has fostered a new openness that was not as regularly a part of office life. Seeing teammates on video calls, each in their own element and with occasional on-camera appearances by family members, pets, or whatever else is background somehow makes us more like friends than forced coworkers.
This is further exemplified in our Slack “#random” channel, where quips, interesting news stories, memes, and the like are regularly added to share that thing that you’ve just got to tell someone else. In the office, we wouldn’t dare interrupt everyone with a “hey, check out this hilarious meme!” announcement email.
Aside from Slack randomness, there are real-life and, sometimes real-time, stories about what’s happening across the room. “Sorry, I have to hop on mute the kids are singing along to Paw Patrol.” Or, like Katy’s most recent meeting exit to save a lizard hanging by its tail from a spider’s web outside her window.
I have a phrase for these candid moments. I call it “Zoom Life,” which has now given us a window into the totality of other’s lives, not just the hours we spent in the office or stories we chose to tell sitting around the conference table. Whether we have to hop on mute because there’s a dog wrestling match behind us, or your family member also has a virtual huddle or class at the same time we all seem more, dare I say, human. This humanness is what makes me feel closer to my coworkers.
The genuine connection among my teammates has been galvanized in this “new normal” and continues to manifest itself in our work and in our interactions with each other and our clients. I feel, now, that I know my teammates much better than I did when we shared physical space 40 hours a week.
It’s clear there is a common thread that ties us together that enables us to collectively reach those “eureka moments” when brainstorming a concept or solving a complex problem. But now it’s OK if the dog is snoring underneath Erika’s desk. We all just laugh it off and keep doing what we do best — creating high-quality and impactful digital experiences for our clients.