Coffee corners ftw

Since 2020 the world has changed a lot at offices. Corona brought homeoffice and remote work to nearly each knowledge worker department and to each company. It was a shock for many of us. Totally different work styles, just remote calls, no one around to have a quick chit-chat, etc.

Now, five years later, we still face these topics. It is ridiculous to think that this change to remote work will end anytime in the future. The employees got used to schedule things around work and they for sure don’t miss the commute.

In my opinion this change was good. Of course there are some flaws especially if you want to be recognized or like the quick coffee breaks with colleagues or if you are an extrovert who needs to have that surrounding noise of an office to be productive. But there are also good things, especially the productivity and deep and focused work really improved.

However something is missing to bring the team culture and boundaries together. Same happened to me and my team. Even though we were already used to work remotely before, especially with US colleagues, we still had these quick get togethers when everyone was in the office. Nowadays my team is mostly remote somewhere in Germany and it still works well. This is what my team needs and wants.

Coffee corners - virtually - weekly

Coffee first. Schemes later.

Leanna Renee Hieber

We restructured our team meetings and our meeting culture. Instead of having a weekly team meeting to dicuss any kind of topics around work, what we have achieved, what we struggle with or what we want to do in the future, we now have a coffee corner meeting. This is really what the name says. Every team member brings their coffee or any other drink (imagine there is something better than coffee in the office) and we start chatting about any topic that comes to our mind, ideally nothing related to work.

This can be discussions about our favorite coffees or what we have experienced this week outside of work or what we plan to do on the weekends or whatever. The topics are open to the team and usually someone just asks a question and the team jumps onto it in an exchange. What we mostly try to avoid in these sessions is to do anything on the side in this meeting, we try to stay in the meeting even if it is not about work. And guess what, this is a good motivation to anyone in the team because there is more to life then work! Sharing the experiences or plans is really inspiring and a nice start in the rest of the day.

You might argue that this is now a waste of time at work, non-productive, etc. I got you but having a laughter, learning how your colleagues think and what they do in their private life is so helpful to build relationships that improve productivity in the long run. Compare it to earlier times where everyone was in the office. Did you chat only about work when you had a coffee with your team mates? Be honest!

Besides the coffee corner we have also two short meetings during the week where we just block our calenders. These should be focused around work activities but sometimes we also change them to a coffee corner in case we feel that the team has a need for that kind of exchange.

How do you deal with the missing coffee in office sessions? Do you have similar experiences or setups?