The company works hybrid - a few days per week in the office are mandatory - so it is easy for me to work with them remotely from Hamburg. The tools and practices of remote work are in place.
Nevertheless, for remote work to succeed, I think it’s vital to meet each other intentionally onsite from time to time.
A few days onsite pass by too quickly if there no blockers to work and meet with each other. Mentoring two teams, I organised a retrospective and a team lunch with both of them as well as optional after work activities.
The retros onsite - with sticky notes - were especially valuable as the team members had never experienced this methodology before.
Online retros can work well if there’s a common understanding of the goal and great teamwork. For difficult team dynamics or to introduce this methodology, onsite creates more commitment and lets me as a moderator observe how they interact with each other more intensely.
The often overestimated „talk at the coffee machine“ shouldn’t be the only reason to meet onsite but leaving time for spontaneous conversations supports the emergence of new ideas and topics.
Following up a spontaneous conversation, I was introduced to someone from a different department of the company who turned out to be helpful for one of my tasks.
With more time to plan ahead I would’ve opted for a typical team event. But organising these events can be tedious: you need a budget and align everyone on the time and activity. The alternative is not doing nothing. Instead, I aligned with two colleagues on two activities and invited the others as optional. This way, no one needed to spend their free time on the after work activities - which is totally fine - and some used the opportunity. We went sightseeing in Luzern (see photos) and bouldering. Not only could I get to know the people I work with better in a relaxed atmosphere, I also wasn’t stuck in my hotel room for the evenings.
While all of the above worked well, I took away some learnings about giving space for unforeseen problems:
My night train on my way to Switzerland got cancelled last minute so I needed to take another train during the day and arrived in the afternoon instead of the morning. This used up my buffer (good that I had one) and meant I needed to shorten one of the retros. Might need a bigger buffer next time.
Unfortunately I caught a cold and needed to cancel another appointment in Berlin that I had at the end of the week. While the onsite trip to my client was fun and useful, I was too optimistic about my energy and will factor in a day off after the next onsite trip.