Meet us at the virtual water cooler

(cowritten by me and Teddy, my co-founder at Episode Four)

When working remotely, corporate culture is at risk of being demolished. So what can we as small business owners do to combat that? What can we do to help our team feel connected and feel some of the positives that an office experience provides?

At a small creative company like ours, there’s no question that culture matters. But what do we mean by culture? Well more than anything, we mean the sharing of ideas, viewpoints and experiences. We have assembled a small team of extraordinary and diverse people whose tastes, experiences and skills reflect their enormously varied backgrounds, both personally and professionally. And we have done that because our promise that we can make hits for brands across a massive variety of genres requires it. 

At the start of each day, our team tends to gather in our office kitchen for coffee before going about their business, not because it’s scheduled but just because. They talk news. They talk memes. They talk shows they are bingeing. They talk about what they did since we last saw them. It’s fun. It’s valuable.

“Whose song is this?” is something often heard yelled through our office. It’s in response to the music we play which is known as Episode Four Radio and is a compilation of the 100 most meaningful songs to each member of our team. Every song has a story, an associated experience and an owner on our team. It’s fun and it’s a great way of learning about each other.

So this week, to try and keep this culture alive in these difficult times, we are launching two initiatives. Both are designed simply to keep our team engaged with us, with each other and with what we do.

1. Morning coffee from the kitchen – at 10am each work day (late not for luxury but because we know many people’s home life responsibilities have gotten more complex) our team will grab a cup and connect to an all hands Zoom coffee session from their own kitchen. No work agenda. Just a personal one. How is everyone? What’s going on? What have you been up to?
2. Friday Hit Club – Kind of like a book club, but not limited to books. Each week the whole team will watch read or listen to something proposed by one of their colleagues and then on Friday morning we’ll chat about it in an extended Friday morning coffee from the kitchen. It could be a film, a show, a record, a YouTube video, anything. The only guidelines that the proposer must follow is that it must be something you love, must not exceed 2 hours, must not be too heavy and must be something you think not everyone will be super familiar with.

For this Friday’s first session Teddy is proposing a movie he loves; Out Of Sight, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

And here is the schedule over the next weeks:

• Athena – @keonihudoba’s morning Instagram workout
• Aaron – This is the End
• Jenni – Guided meditation (eg. Calm)
• Sarah – Reply All Episode #140 “The Roman Mars Mazda Virus”
• Nicole – The Terminal
• Emily K – Sol LeWitt’s letter to artist Eva Hesse (as read by Benedict Cumberbatch)
• Mark – Black Mirror, Season 3, Episode 1, “Nosedive”
• Highlife – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Emily G - Bon Appetit's YouTube Channel "Pastry Chef Attempts to Make Gourmet Girl Scout Cookies"