We moved to our new place 2 years ago from a college style – small rooms everywhere – office. Two years into the pandemic due to changes in work-style, smaller rooms became necessary. These changes will accommodate the combination of remote and office working.
But how?
After the first shock of moving to full-remote working, we started to realize, there are certain meetings and occasions which work better this way. So it was clear that fully returning to traditional ways of working was not an option for us. What took time was finding the delicate balance of remote working and working together in the office.
For example, remote does boost the efficiency of status meetings, in that it allows more freedom, from simultaneously doing the dishes to having two status meetings with different clients one minute apart. The downside with remote is the loss of energy that comes from being together in one office. This was a crucial factor, since team spirit is what we at Mito are most proud of.
And it’s not just about finding somebody to grab a beer with, that vibe is the foundation of our culture of collaboration. This is partly why we deliver amazing projects together.
How to get it back?
Although we are capable of delivering on some really complex projects, from go-to-market strategies to shooting commercials a continent away, stopping a worldwide pandemic is not in our skill set. What we do have control over is our working environment. Our office has always been our hive where magic happens. How can we redesign it to fit our new ways of working?
The hybrid and the vibe
Infinite open office spaces aren’t the best environment to create team spirit, or to participate in several virtual meetings simultaneously. But smaller rooms, tailor made for specific teams can be. So we transformed most of our larger meeting rooms into smaller spaces to accommodate the growing demand for undisturbed Zoom meetings and the basic need to hang out together. Sounds like a lot of work? It is. So we did it together.
Can construction be fun?
Sure, if you don’t have to do the heavy lifting yourself 😀 We believed in this new concept, and wanted to start ASAP. But we had a bitter pill to swallow: just as every company was re-opening its offices, we had to close ours for renovation.
So we encouraged everyone to still work together, just not at our HQ. To motivate team members to meet in person, we even organized a competition, where the brief was pretty simple: find the coolest temporary office ever.
As usual amazing things happened:
Shortlisting them was difficult. So difficult, the result was a tie. But the real winner was everybody coming together and motivating each other – while the office was being remodeled to fit our new way of working.
But progress doesn’t stop here. Since reopening, we’ve already organized an Office Hack Day for the teams to personalize their new quarters, and the guys at Mito Digital, two floors down, have also done some amazing things to reflect their own projects and needs. Be sure to check out our next post on how they did it.
The author(s)
VP of Mito Creative
