We'd love to invite you to an upcoming Tessitura Arts & Culture Connection webinar, "Reigniting Your Furloughed Team"
With so many people working in different ways or waiting to return to work, how do you keep them engaged? What should you be thinking about when they return to work? Join this discussion to hear insights from Annie Scally at Ticketing Network East Midlands and Justin Giles at Shakespeare’s Globe. Annie and Justin have developed plans to keep furloughed staff engaged, bring back their teams for reopening, re-integrate staff when they returned, and intentionally keep the positive changes that have happened in place as we move forward. Justin will share re-induction and staff development plans for 2021 and Annie will be talking about how a buddy-up scheme will help and support those returning.
Following the discussion, we will break out into small groups to share your ideas, considerations, and additional questions.
Please click this link to register in advance via Zoom. Register In Advance
Hi I would love to continue the conversation started by today's call. I think we felt a little rushed at the end to get additional ideas out and I wanted to share a few takeaways that my colleagues in Room 6 shared. Both internally at my organization and within our regional Tessitura Community, we have hosted a few virtual happy hours. Internally, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center our virtual happy hours are meeting once a month. Calls start at 5 PM and end promptly at 6 PM. It's a time to come together at the end of the day see familiar faces and talk about anything but work. Sometimes there is a theme and other times there are not. Fun themes in the past have been Favorite Vacation Destinations, Two Truths and a Lie, and Show & Tell. There have also been similar check-ins with furloughed PT staff where we actively engage in conversations about what they are doing now. Have you moved? Have you been able to find another job? Share opportunities like the Tessitura Associates. A forum to ask questions about what's currently being done at work and the direction the organization is moving in once reopening. There are also casual conversation breakout rooms to share favorite performances in the hall and sometimes funny customer engagement stories. These have really been great to connect with our usher staff who are 65+ often retired and miss engagement with their work family.Meredith Woolard (she/her) shared a fantastic way of working with me at the beginning of 2021 -- A Pomodoro NetWORKing Session. A time to come together for a 2 hour Zoom call. It's a great time to work and get quite a few things done off your To-Do list, but also connect. Someone usually even leaves their mic unmuted to hear typing of computer keys and different office sounds. We started this on the first Friday in January and a group of us have continued to meet every Friday since. It's so helpful with the "water cooler" conversation! And it's so easy to forget how often so many colleagues are working in various isolated conditions with little outside interactions.
How it works:
The virtual co-working event will be hosted via Zoom.
We’ll kick things off with a warm welcome and an overview of the format and then we’ll jump right into coworking using the Pomodoro technique. Learn more about the Pomodoro method.
Coworking Sprint #1 - Work independently on anything you like for 25 minutes! We’ll share a timer to keep us all on track. Talking time is limited during these sprints.
5-minute Break #1 - Grab a drink, a bathroom break, or a nice stretch. You deserve it!
Coworking Sprint #2 - Work independently on anything you like for 25 minutes! We’ll share a timer to keep us all on track. Talking time is limited during these sprints.
5-minute Break #2 - Grab a drink, a bathroom break, or a nice stretch.
Coworking Sprint #3 — Work independently on anything you like for 25 minutes! We’ll share a timer to keep us all on track. Talking time is limited during these sprints.
15-minute Break #3 & Wrap Up – Connect and share what you got done during the day’s coworking session.Email is sent out and interest is collected via a survey. Calendar invite sent to those who are interested.
I want to hear more on Coffee Roulette that was mentioned today. Any other engagement ideas?
Thanks for these ideas, Jeremy! I was intrigued by Coffee Roulette, too! , can you share details?
Hi Meredith Woolard (she/her) & ,
Coffee Roulette was an idea mentioned by another member of my breakout group that sounded very fun! We didn't get long to chat about it, but he had mentioned that they randomly choose staff members to match up for a virtual coffee break. I was thinking the idea through for my organization and I thought we could do 2 or 3 person coffee breaks of maybe 30-60 minutes over Zoom where we match people up across the organization. I believe the person in my group talking about it was Kristian, but I do not recall his organization; hopefully he will see this and respond!
We also had suggestions of Musician matching games (faces with names I believe), you could do it in terms of matching up random things about a team member or a quirky function of their role, but now I'm thinking of it in terms of a fun social media game for musicians and their instruments too! My team at KWS also has our repeat virtual games night tonight where we meet on Zoom and play online games via Jackbox.tv for Pictionary/charades type games (requires one person to pay) although this requires a certain level of tech understanding and access to a smart device for the games (smartphone or tablet).
Other simple ideas we talked about were pre-digital concert talks with staff, bi-weekly all staff lunch meetings, sometimes with fun games or activities (last week at KWS was about ergonomics and your workspace at home), weekly team specific and all staff memos sharing positive feedback from patrons, staff recipes, other good news and so on.
I'd love to hear other ideas for teams of all sizes if anyone else would like to share!
Kristian Clark There's a lot of love for your coffee roulette idea - if you're happy to share with a broader group?
Thank you Becky!