New Work Tricks in Home Office
If you still haven’t read our article New Work in times of Social Distancing now is the time for it, because in this second piece you can read what we have learned from one year in home office and which New Work tricks we have implemented.
The Home Office Challenge
The home office situation has deprived us of our senses. We can’t smell or touch each other, and especially if the camera is off or the connection is bad, we can’t see and evaluate the micromimics or hear all the voice variations of other people. This concerns not only our communication with our clients but also with our team, our leaders and our employees. As the world tries to adapt to the ‘new normal’ our work habits must change as well. Therefore we present you with some tricks from the New Work concept that will help you in this process.
Factors for Happiness
According to some happiness researchers, six factors are important for the “happiness” of people at work.
We are sure that you can recognize how these topics are related to your happiness at work. Test yourself with these little questions:
The Tricks
After you have assessed your situation and where you have weaknesses, you might jump to the right tricks to help you tackle the problem. At first these tricks might even seem too easy to actually work, but they are a powerful tool that you can implement in your daily work immediately.
1. Leadership positivity
What are Embodiment Exercises?
Embodiment exercises help you improve your stamina and mood. Here you can see how to execute them.
How do we use it?
We implement embodiment exercises as small breaks in our daily work routine to restore our energy.
What are Mindfulness Exercises?
Through mindfulness exercises the “conscious experience” is trained this helps reduce stress and promotes healthy lifestyle and empowers us to connect to our second brain, our gut.
How do we use it?
We start each morning with a gratitude exercise to release our affirmative and grateful feelings and be positive in our daily work life. We have more than 12 other exercises.
What is a Leadership Roundtable?
A format in which managers can openly and confidently exchange, advise and support each other.
How do we use it?
Our roundtables with our coaches take place at regular intervals to openly discuss new topics and challenges.
What is a Visioning Week?
Here we use the infamous Golden Circle of Simon Synek. Using the Golden Circle helps you to see the meaning in your work and to formulate it.
How do we use it?
We also define the Golden Circle for ourselves as a company and as individual employees in order to identify commonalities.
Another great topic from our Blog, that is strongly related to leaders’ happiness is Self-Leadership.
2. Fair Compensation
What are Kudo Cards?
A Kudo card allows employees to give each other small rewards.
How do we use it?
We actively give Kudo cards amongst the team. This serves as motivation and promotes mutual respect. Due to the home office situation, we now send Kudo cards to each other via LinkedIn.
What are Compliment Showers?
A compliment shower helps boost your employees’ self-esteem and strengthens the team.
How do we use it?
We give each other compliments on a regular basis, promoting positive interaction.
Ideas for Fun Events on Remote
- Photo Sharing with a story
- Bucket List
- 2 lies 1 truth
Part of the feeling of recognition at the workplace is related to your relationships with your team. The tools from our blog article Relationship building can be useful internally as well as for clients.
3. Good Atmosphere
What is Morning Check-in?
Morning check-in will help you get an overview of the tasks ahead.
How do we use it?
We have a check-in every morning with the entire team for task distribution and a short discussion. Also the perfect moment for the mindfulness exercise.
Desk Yoga The stresses of sitting in an office chair can lead to pain. Desk Yoga exercises, however, help to alleviate these tensions and daily stress.
We build Desk Yoga exercises into our daily work routine to do something good for our body. You can see some Yoga Poses here.
Beer at four
Having a beer together at four is a good opportunity to ring in the weekend together and discuss the successes of the week.
We use Friday afternoon to talk about our weekly successes, the highs and the lows. A beer or a glass of champagne should not be missing 😉
Buddies for Lunch
Finding lunch buddies helps you talk to other employees in the company and learn more about their jobs.
4. Work-Life Balance
What are Joint Walks?
Walking together helps to get the circulation going again and also strengthens the immune system. They also help to get intact with your partner.
How do we use it?
Through jointly planned walks, we can even walk “together” despite distance, communicating with each other by call along the way..
What is the Presentation of personal routines?
By presenting your personal routines, your team gets to know you from a more private side and possibly recognizes commonalities but also gains motivation and inspiration for their own routine.
How do we use it?
We tell each other about private routines and experiences on a daily basis. This strengthens our team feeling and relationship with each other enormously.
5. Co-creation
What is the Vision Exercise?
Having a clear vision of your business makes it easier to formulate and decide on goals and objectives.
How do we use it?
We regularly work out our vision at our Strategyzer.
What is a Hackathon on remote?
A hackathon is a collaborative event where ideas are conceived, developed and presented in a very short time.
How do we use it?
Whenever we are faced with a major challenge, we organize a hackathon to work together as a team to find a solution.
What is a Learning Day?
This would be a day in which the team books e.g. 4 hours in a Friday to research on a topic.
How do we use it?
We use this trick when we have to implement a new topic in our decks. It helps our team to get to the same page and is a perfect base for brainstorming sessions.
6. Responsibility
What is On remote team routine?
Team routines can look very different. They help you to implement a structure in the team. If colleagues show their routines others will get inspire to become more productive.
How do we use it?
We have integrated several team routines into our daily work and also perform them remotely.
Division of responsibilities
When each person is assigned responsibility for a project, they can keep track of it and take care of it. In our team, everyone has their own responsibilities and is responsible for ensuring that individual projects are completed as required.
What is a Wannabe Session?
It uncovers hidden dreams and wishes of your team. Your team can define for whom too work for one day and imagine what they would learn there.
How do we use it?
Helps you to get to know your colleagues better and to connect with them.
What is an All Hands meeting?
In All Hands Meetings, all employees are present to discuss important issues.
How do we use it?
At regular intervals, we hold a meeting with all our coaches to discuss all important content. At the same time, it can also be used as a team-building event.
The topics of Co-Creation and Responsibility need a level of restructuring. In our Blog article Tribe Organizations, you can learn more about delegating responsibilities and setting tribes.
If you want to get more inside on how we implement such tricks in our work you can follow our social media channels LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook.
If you still need more help with improving the happiness of your team, don’t hesitate to ask for it at hello@amazegrowth.com
Your Amaze Growth Team
