How do you stay connected IRL when working remotely?

The Orchestras Live team has been working remotely since the pandemic. Even before COVID-19 shut down the world, we had members of the team who worked in a remote or hybrid way.

We’re currently a geographically dispersed team with staff based in Newcastle all the way down to Winchester and everywhere in between and last year the team grew to 14 members. We use tools such as Teams to ensure we stay as connected with each other throughout our working days and have built in moments such as our twice weekly social catchups to help replicate the informalities of office life.

How do we ensure we stay connected IRL, particularly when many team members are busy out on the road with projects?

Twice a month we have in-person team days; one in our main office in Leeds and one in London. Team members are welcome to attend whichever team day they prefer, but most of us gravitate towards a particular location due to where we live.

These days are invaluable and have a very different feel and energy to our normal weekly online Tuesday “team days”:

🕚 We start late and finish early

This gives everyone enough time to travel from wherever they are in the country, do school/dog/nursery drop-offs, catch a train outside of rush hour (aka get a seat), and arrive without the feeling of exhaustion that comes with having to battle through rush hour commuting. Ditto on the way home.

😊 Everyone arrives smiling

Everyone is happy to be there and looking forward to catching up. Those who aren’t there in person join us remotely for the team meeting and we make sure the tech works so they can fully participate in discussions.

🚀 It feels purposeful

The day can feel busy with meetings as we take advantage of being together and being able to discuss, brainstorm, and collaborate. The benefit of this is that we focus our time on what we can achieve while we are together, rather than coming to work on the day-to-day tasks we could do WFH.

⏳ We don’t waste time

We respect each other’s time. No one is expected to travel late or delay/miss evening events because we want the conversations to go on. The day has focus because we know we don’t have infinite amounts of everyone’s time, which definitely helps with getting things done!

Being together in person even for just a day a month is great for our collective wellbeing; being in a different working environment and having opportunities to socialise and be spontaneous with our communications. It also really helps us stay connected to our mission and to each other and what we are trying to achieve as a team.