Future of Work: Do we still need face-to-face meetings?

The future of work is virtual. But do we still need face-to-face meetings?

It seems like there is no coming back from remote work. Companies everywhere are working through what works best for them as they grapple with remote vs. on-site vs. hybrid. There are examples of companies doing a great job with a fully remote workforce, and of others that have made it clear that they believe that in-person teamwork is critical for the rapid execution they expect. Of course, some jobs just don’t have the option of being done remotely, but even they may benefit from connecting the folks doing them with peers doing similar jobs in other locations.

Although virtual work moved forward by light years during the early pandemic, the concept was not new. I have been working in virtual teams since the nineties in California. I worked in a multi-national industrial biotech organization, Genencor (now part of International Flavors and Fragrances). We had manufacturing plants around the world. We had engineers running plants in China, Argentina, Belgium, Finland and in 3 locations in the US. In the early days of remote work we formed what were called World Wide Ring Teams and eventually the Global Engineering Organization to help these engineers connect with their peers in other plants. We wanted to create a support network to help them improve their processes and troubleshoot their issues so that all plants could rise to sharing information and using corporate best practices. We used primitive versions of today’s tools to share documents and had frustrating early attempts at video calls that usually ended in us switching back to the conference calls in exasperation. (So glad that this is much easier now.)

The most powerful thing we found to help these virtual teams gel was to bring the teams together face-to-face for a few days. Often this was at an offsite retreat. There was no substitute for being pulled away from the quicksand of daily activities and fire fighting and spending a few days getting to know each other, exchanging information and getting excited about the future. The mix of technical exchanges, team building activities and just having a beer or a meal together helped us build important bonds across countries and cultures.

Without these retreats, our plants would have continued to work in silos rather than becoming a powerful, united and world-leading biotech manufacturing organization. Without these retreats, I never would have known how popular Tango dancing was in Finland! I forged strong friendships with colleagues around the world that continue to this day.

Culture / Alignment / Strategy / Trust Building are all enhanced by face-to-face interactions and make future virtual interactions more powerful.

The more I work remotely, the more I appreciate the value of face-to-face interactions.

What experiences have you had with corporate retreats? Have any of them been transformational? What role do you think they play in this new era of remote work?