💼 Remote work: any place for corporate culture and sense of community?

Collective and social dimensions in the 21st Century

The digital revolution of the beginning of the 21st Century has triggered one main train: the atomization of work. 💼

It spreads workers who are seduced by the idea of flexibility at work, a kind of “à la carte” and commitment-free employment. Autonomy, independence, and the explosion of remote workers are key trends. And this is what workers actually want. But isn’t this coming alongside a threat to the social link 🔗  between co-workers? What about the feeling of a sense of belonging and the survival of a common and united world? Needless to say, that “the” workplace (or the different kinds of workplaces available today) bring collective achievement, mutual recognition and social integration.

The digital revolution keeps changing workplaces, work methods and worker needs. Traditional offices are challenged while an increasing number of employees are questioning 🧐 the meaning and purpose of their profession. The economic crisis caused by the pandemic calls into question companies’ habits.

It has contributed to the emergence of new daily words: 🗣 remote work, hybrid team, flex office, virtual office, phygital, atawad, virtual workspace… Whether it is the fusion of the words “physical” and “digital” (namely phygital), or a sort of acronym that is used to talk about the opportunity to work 🕞 “any time”, from 🌎  “anywhere” and with 💾  “any device” (namely atawad), it looks like we are back in a state of uprooting. And this could hang over all of us the threat of isolation, loneliness, and social disconnection.

Reinventing social interactions in revolution times

In the digital revolution area, written conversations are replacing oral ones, and virtual offices are replacing physical ones. At work, videoconferences are mainly used for formal meetings, partner collaborations and client sales. 🙋‍♂️ We all use a chat platform differently today. You will probably have a dedicated channel to talk about kitchen recipes, or sport gambles, or another random channel where pictures of cute cats are sent all day long. Or even funny jokes and memes that make Margaret from accountability laugh 🤣. We all know these kinds of conversations, the ones that we have used to mainly have at the cafeteria or in our office’s chill out zone.

While being remote, are those new ways of communicating enough for workers to feel part of a community🪐? Are these new channels of informal conversations enough to transmit the corporate culture of a company, to give a sense of purpose and reconnect with the common world? Apparently, something is missing 🤷‍♀️. And having mostly written conversations as a way of socializing between co-workers is not enough. Here is what Dr. Michael Craig Miller, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School statues:

                    
                        
“Humans are social creatures by nature, so you should use the tools you have to see a loved one’s face, to share stories, to let them know you’re thinking of them”.

                    
                

That’s a fact. Virtual activities and informal video interactions are key to improve emotional health 🧘 and well-being. But will we have to schedule an “informal” videoconference for having a quick chat? What about spontaneity and serendipity then?

Virtual workplace, and the re-establishment of a sense of community

The global virtual work ecosystem is persistently evolving under the effect of 3️⃣   converging phenomena:

💡 The exponential technological innovation and the artificial intelligence.

🧑‍✈️ A new model for the creation of value, or what we commonly call platform capitalism.

🙌  New methods of management based on performance, autonomy, and adaptation.

👋  Welcome to a world where remote work and virtual offices are in fine the most accurate solution to ensure the transmission of corporate cultures and to create a solid sense of community. A virtual office is a space where spontaneity is possible. It goes without saying that co-workers need to have a space where they can share core values, a space where they feel solidarity and togetherness with other workers. At these spaces, we highly value the sense of community.  The virtual office is basically the online version of your on-site workplace. 🏣

WorkAdventure was built in this digital revolution and is part of this global virtual work ecosystem. It has been thought in a specific way so that everyone can create its own virtual workspace from scratch and customize it with endless possibilities. By offering a virtual office, your company is deciding to put an end to impersonal and informal chat channels and is encouraging spontaneous social interactions in a remote work environment. Basically, it makes available what we thought was only possible in on-site offices. Let’s bring back serendipity 🥳  to our daily virtual interactions! 🤝