Fostering remote culture can be challenging, especially when employees are entering a third calendar year of a pandemic and feeling some measure of Zoom fatigue.
Eden’s People Team loves to find new and creative ways to keep our remote-first employees engaged with their work and connected to one another.
One of their secrets? Turning a single calendar holiday into an anchor for an entire week’s worth of celebratory activity. Here’s how the Eden people team turned Valentine’s Day into a five-day culture activity known among Edenites as Love Week.
We’re sharing our Love Week programming below so that you can borrow elements (or replicate the whole schedule!) for your own team:
Day One: Love each other.
Share a Google form link so that employees can offer up completely anonymous compliments to one another, then set up breakout rooms where they can share.
Some thought starters: “You have the best Zoom background” or “You always have the best TV recommendations.”
Day Two: Share the love.
Encourage employees to both share and receive skills from their coworkers. Create a spreadsheet with two lists — one that people can fill out for sharing a skill (like cross-stitching, for example) with others and one that includes skills someone might be looking for (needing help perfecting a certain stitch pattern). This creates an opportunity for potential matches between the lists and, more simply, helps employees get to know one another outside of work and build community.
Day Three: Love the next generation.
Raise awareness for organizations that are focused on enriching the lives of young people. Once you’ve found an organization whose mission resonates with your company values, send a company-wide communication highlighting what they do and encouraging employees to donate to their cause if they feel moved to.
Day Four: Love yourself.
Host an external guest who can lead your team in an act of self-care, like meditation. Block off time on employee calendars so everyone can have the time available if they choose to participate.
Day One: Spread the love. Since Love Week coincides with Black History Month, Eden has made it a point to send each employee a gift from a Black-owned business. You can do your own research to select a gift that aligns with your company values and will have a high product utilization across the company or have employees nominate a business they know and would like to support.
