Five tips to keep cooperation good while working from home

We hear it more and more often from acquaintances and friends: I really liked working at home at first, but now I really miss the contact with my colleagues. You probably also hear this now and then, or perhaps you experience it yourself in your work at the moment. From a research by Linkedin shows that 40% of home workers fear social isolation. There are obviously advantages to working from home (less travel time, fewer distractions from colleagues, arranging time yourself (more efficiently), and so on), but also the necessary disadvantages. In this article, you will find an analysis and, finally, five tips to keep cooperation in order, even in times of frequent homeworking.

The chat over coffee
What we mainly see happening in the teams we interact with is that people are slowly starting to avoid each other more. Which is quite understandable because you are literally working more 'on your own' when you are sitting at home most of the time. The contact moments that are still there are then generally only about the task at hand: an online meeting with the team, one-to-one contact with a colleague about a joint project, contact with customers and any suppliers. And this affects cooperation.

What happens much less is the chat at the coffee machine, asking a colleague a quick check question, discussing the weekend before or after, conversations about personal development, a chance caught conversation between colleagues to which you can contribute. And that very lack makes it increasingly difficult for cooperation to grow. Standing still thus becomes going backwards. Because the trust and connection that are so necessary to achieve good feedback, shared goals, responsibility and flow are not invested in, or invested little in, when you work at home a lot.

Lots of WHAT, little WHY
If we place the iceberg next to this as a metaphor, we see that most of the work that can be done perfectly well online and remotely is at the 'WHAT' level: above water. And online meetings are often about the WHAT and the HOW. But precisely under water, where it is about mission, motivation, personal development, beliefs, in short the WHY, that is where real connection between people takes place.

Teams that were already well into working together before corona and lots of working from home started will generally have an easier time because there was already more connection between them. Those still need to maintain the connection afterwards, of course. But if your team is still fairly new, or was for some other reason already a bit more distant from each other, then it is extra difficult to seek that connection just now. And how do you make a new colleague feel part of the team when you may never have seen each other in real life? Not to mention teams in which there is a certain distrust. Because much of the 'what' at the iceberg is something we no longer see at home. What is that colleague actually doing at home, now that you can no longer see it at work? Is he really that busy?

The risks of shirking
So it is quite understandable that in this period we regularly lapse into avoidance or feel a slight irritation rising, but hold back. There are several risks here: it easily leads to less job satisfaction and motivation, it can get in the way of personal and professional development, and feedback (the rapid growth machine) is too often omitted. You don't want to be a burden to anyone and yes, how will your colleague take your feedback online? As feedback or criticism? Besides, if I hold back any longer, will I still be able to give the feedback without being irritated? Will my colleague soon still be able to receive my feedback positively if it is given out of irritation?

Personal leadership
It therefore requires an extra effort to (continue to) achieve good cooperation at a distance from each other. This requires personal leadership from all team members. You have to seek depth in contact (especially when you don't see each other) and keep expressing yourself in a positive way.

• Spontaneous: keep doing spontaneous things, especially when so many contact moments are deliberately planned.
• Humour: stay in perspective, make it fun, challenge each other.
• Personal: make sure you don't just have business contact moments but keep connecting 'underwater'.

Five concrete actions you can take

1. If allowed by the national corona guidelines, organise a (corona-proof) team day as soon as possible. With a particular focus on catching up, getting to know each other (again) better, sharing concerns and frustrations and hearing from each other how you have experienced the past few months (both work and private). And when you feel you have spent enough time on that, you can of course look ahead to what you need from each other as a team in the coming months. Above all, don't talk too much about the content!
2. At least once a week, call a colleague to just catch up, not on work-related matters, but on everything else. To replace the moments at work at the coffee machine or in the lunch break.
3. Keep celebrating successes, surprise your team with a small gift, bought online and delivered to your home.
4. Keep giving each other appreciation (as personal as possible), even for small things.
5. Backing up tips 2, 3 and 4: keep investing in giving feedback! When you keep opportunities for improvement or irritations to yourself, you deny yourself and the team the opportunity to grow. And chances are your frustration and distrust will then only increase. Share it with each other, with the common goal in mind, because you wish each other well. Getting better is something you do together.