Many people today, working in the ‘work-from-home’ setup are still trying to adjust with the new normal’s changes. This ‘new normal’ has not only changed our workstations but in a way has affected team relations as well. Being completely engrossed in our daily activity plans, we don’t quite get the space and time where we can socialise with our colleagues while simultaneously working on a deliverable.
Our schedule still includes the usual tea breaks, but the ‘team members’ are missing. The ‘tea breaks’ are more so just the ‘tea’ minus the unofficial and random conversations on the latest series that the other person is binging on. Apart from the project updates, one team member does not or get a chance to interact with the new joiner in the team and might well be unaware of a significant event going on in his/her colleague’s life. All of this ‘virtual normal’ is leading to an environment that is greatly losing on human connections and interactions.
To help the team cope with the new normal’s changes and to de-stress and lighten everyone’s mood with the continuous working, we recently planned a Virtual Coffee Meet with the team. This team-building exercise was not only hilariously entertaining, but an excellent experience for the teammates to know each other and break the usual monotony of their daily schedule.
While few of the teams had the virtual meet, we missed the ones who couldn’t join and look forward to having everyone together in the next virtual session. Here is the summary of the fun that followed:
Team A – Virtual Meet
An hour’s break and we have Pranot and Shalini to be thanked for initiating and coming up with the brilliant idea of a ‘Chai pe Charcha’. With everyone’s busy schedule, we often forget to engage with our team members as friends.
The ‘Chai pe Charcha’ was the most engaging and fun-filled session that had the team members sipping their tea along with the ‘1 truth 1 lie’ game. Out of the several truths and fellow member’s hidden secrets that were discovered, the most entertaining ones included that we have a state-level football player, someone who lost 15 kgs in lockdown, someone who orders dishes only when she doesn’t have to share, a bubble wrap lover, a lazy chef, an acrophobic, a ‘lucky/ abhinav’ and a ‘kunu/ subrat’, a theatre avoider, a cyclist, a brass lover, and a Bengali who hates fish (what!).
The team enthusiastically let their hair down, and the fun session lasted for almost an hour. The things about colleagues that everyone assumed they knew about turned out to be a discovery of so much more! A true stress buster – as all the project teams got together and truly chilled in a laughter-filled evening that involved lots of teasing, lots of jokes- just like we used to have in our office days earlier.
Team B – Virtual Meet
The fun in the Chai Pe Charcha session for Team B extended when along with their team members, the NDP team (Bangalore, Gurgaon and Mumbai) members joined them for the activity and made it much more entertaining and informative. The activity involved everyone meeting each other and getting to know more about what projects they’re working on, their hobbies, etc.
The event started with Sakthi, Nishta and Kirthana’s wonderful singing talent. To make the event much more interesting, they played an online memory testing game which was the ice-breaking session for the team.
The ice-breaker was followed by the team’s discussion on the topic “Is work from home better or work from office is better?”. After a lot of jokes and leg-pulling between teammates, the debate had a surprising conclusion with most of the members wanting to continue with work-from-home.
The AEIONE team started working from the office from the last one month now, and they presented an incredible video right from lockdown till resuming back to the office with beautiful snapshots in it.
Watching their journey felt good. Other exciting events included the entertaining Dumb Charades (with Ashwini stealing the show with her powerful performance) and QA learning tips as well.
The conclusion was the chai pe charcha team with smiling selfies.
Team C – Virtual Meet
The Virtual Coffee/Tea Break, planned for Team C, on 18 Sep was an espresso shot informal celebration, and they had invited other teams which included, Aveva Project team, Talent Acquisition team, Sales & Marketing team and HR team.
It was a fun-filled moment where each one got to meet everyone else on one platform and started the celebration by introducing not only the new team members who had recently joined Qualitrix family but also the existing teams as well, that turned out to be an ice breaking moment for the team.
Team C uncovered their team mates hidden secrets and talents with games like Dumb Carades and Bingo.
This ‘desi’ Dumb Charades had movies like “Dhoti Lota aur Chowpatty, Sasti Dulhan Mahenga Dulha, Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan” and three teams having crazy guesses. It was an equally entertaining and team bonding exercise. The Bingo game included situations like ever said “Sorry !!! I was on mute”, shared memes with your colleagues during work, tried online dating?, ever laughed at your peer’s PJs during a meeting etc. was a perfect addition to their virtual celebration that evening.
