How to share a common vision and unit all employees in a remote world?

In normal times, we would have invited our 150 people to our HQ in Munich (stop, this was last year – this year we are already 250 people in 8 countries), entertain them for two days and share our yearly goals in that offsite event.

2021, everything is different. But how can you unit a team and share a common vision if events are not possible? This was our plan:

1.      Set-up a digital Event via Zoom

• Consider your different time zones. We are also in the USA, thus we splitted the one day event into two virtual afternoon sessions that everyone - no matter which time zone - can easily join.
• Invite your new joiners who have already signed their contracts but will only start within the next months. It′s a great chance to create new fans of your company even before day one.

2.      Dare to be different

Don′t run through a eight hours slides show. Try to make it as interactive, funny and concrete as possible. This is what we did:

• Start with a review of last year. Produce a short video with High- and Lowlights. Produce it internally, no agency is needed for that if you have a strong internal Creative Team.

• Create a special motto for this year and explain you want to live that motto within the whole company.

• Start with you overall vision and the top priorities of this year. Dare to be different and don′t take it too seriously, e.g. our CEO was dressed in a Dollar suit while he presented the financial numbers -mostly very dry statistics in many companies - (check if this works with your culture, at New Flag humor and being different is an important part of it, here it works perfectly).

• Give the word to the project managers and involve employees who introduce the next projects. Use live votings, videos and the chat to involve your team.

• Include LIVE sessions. At New Flag, our Managing Partner Dani cut the hair of one of our employees, while the team introduced the product strategy of one of our hair products.

• Be creative! For example, if you have an amazing solid body and shampoo brand (like we have at New Flag with our FOAMIE products), you can also put your Managing Partner in a bath tub and let him present the strategy for that brand in the bath tub. PS: This really happened, however we keep all pictures from the bath room internally. You need to join our company if you want to see them :-).

• Produce videos internally. Ask you customers and partners to say some words about your company, how happy and proud they are to work with your company and then share it with everyone.

3.      Yes, Teambuilding can happen virtually!

Do you maybe also have 250 people within 8 countries, 6 different languages, 2 different time zones and everyone working remote in the Home Office? But is that a reason to skip the drinks and the funny parts of an event? The answer is definitely: No.

Better invite the whole team and do a remote “world tab tour”!

Divide the whole team in smaller groups by 5-6 people (choose people from different departments and teams), use Zoom break out rooms and give them challenges to solve.

That can be questions about your company, questions about the habits in a country or funny activities, such as “get the same thing out of your fridge and take a picture”, “Create a team name and take a picture” or “draw a picture about the company”.

At the end, it′s all about teamwork, getting to know other people, laughing a lot, creating a global team spirit and having a great time together!

You will see, it will be hilarious.

That was our Vision Conference 2021. Proud to be part of that amazing team.

As People team, we want to build the strongest team in the world! Events like this, a common vision and transparent communication are essential to achieve this goal.

Best and happy for your feedback,

Yvonne

Director People at New Flag