Episode Details

We have reached episode 200! We are celebrating… and we invite you to celebrate with us.

Many of our listeners and guests responded to our call for contributions for this episode, and it's wonderful to reflect the diversity of teams and people working in various ways virtually and remotely and flexibly, as expressed in the variety of ways we celebrate together. Because 21st Century Work Life is about choice and the way you want to do things.

Maya and Pilar may have celebrated this milestone by connecting with listeners and how they celebrate. Sometimes it's the smallest things - like the way emojis can convey so much emotion, in so few pixels. (And if you'd like to communicate more with fewer words, send us your favourite emoji as a celebration of this episode!)

Larger teams might create more formal ways of using their regular communications channels to celebrate in a slightly more structured way, such as Morgan Legge (interviewed in Episode 146) at Convert.com who sent us a screenshot of their Slack, where they have created channels for #humblebrag #gratitude and so on - things that are outside of the everyday work but weave the recognition and acknowledgement of each other throughout the working day.

Gant Laborde (Episode 174) at Infinite Red have a #kudos channel for similar effect, and also have internal 'ask me anything' sessions to wrap up successful projects - which often take on a celebratory tone. Tim Burgess from ShieldGeo share that they go further and prompt all team members to contribute to a weekly round-up of shout-outs for colleagues - a lovely way to encourage people to reflect on who has helped them and how, and all interesting uses of asynchronous communications from all these teams: you don't need to be in a special meeting or conversation, to recognise a job well done.

When new people join a team that is also a cause for celebration, and Marcus Wermuth from Buffer (Episodes 188, 195 and more to come!) shared how they have a GIF party in their Slack to welcome new arrivals (because if an emoji speaks a thousand words, how about one that moves..?) Marcus also shared he likes to celebrate work things with his wife, do something out of the routine in the working week, it doesn't have to be with his team to be a celebration.

Jamon Holgrem ( Episode 183) from Infinite Red does something similar, 'pelting' new hires with GIFs in a special channel, while at Buffer they use an app called thread.com for calling out more business-related achievements for specific recognition and attention.

Employees who are around long term can be acknowledged in other ways:

17.57 Teresa Douglas (Episode 193) from Kaplan (author of Secrets of the Online Workforce)

On their 10 year anniversary with the company they celebrate with a professional caricature portrait of their team-mate, reflecting aspects of their interests and personality in a unique way - Teresa got hers last year.

They also celebrate in more ad-hoc ways, including 'secret' team happy hours over video where all of the Canadian team got together to celebrate with one another, on the day that all their US colleagues were enjoying Memorial Day - being a multicultural team means you can enjoy each other's local holidays in creative ways.

Meetings are often the focus of team celebration of course

Alison Jones (Ep