Reconnecting

Suffice to say, it’s been a bizarre two years. It’s almost surreal now to be coming out of the pandemic and slowly making our way back to the office. After so much time working from home, it’s natural that a lot of staff were hesitant to come back in.

That’s where our Health and Wellness team stepped in. This awesome team have come up with a plan, to entice people back in to the office, but also to remind people to look after their mental health and wellbeing in these unusual times.

To do this? They’ve created a calendar for the year, with each month another theme. February’s theme was ‘reconnecting’, to get people talking and socializing with one another.

The aim of the game was to be paired up with another colleague, who you might never have spoken to, and have lunch together. Ideally, this would be in person, but as we have staff in six different countries and people still working remotely, it was fine to do via video too.

In total, 22 people signed up, and were paired up twice over a three week period. It was great to grab lunch together and chat, and as an added incentive, the Wellness team started a photo competition too – best photo and caption would win a lunch voucher.

My first lunch was with Imogen, who has just started at Evora. It was really cool getting to know one another over the Thorntons chocolates in the office.

A week, later, I met up with Ros – we’ve been talking over video for weeks now, so meeting in person was like meeting an old friend. We went out for lunch with Nat, and all of us really enjoyed getting out the office and talking about non-work things. Explaining to the server why we needed multiple shots of us posing in weird and fabulous ways was also a giggle!

Everyone had so much fun getting to know one another over the three weeks. It’s so important to feel belonging with others and create connections in the workplace – can definitely say that this months theme really helped with that.

Huge congratulations to Manuela and Ingrid who have won a food voucher to go towards their next lunchtime treat.

Stay tuned for next month’s theme and see how our group of volunteers find it!