Virtual Corporate Events and Meetings as a New Trend in the HR Industry

Author: Yurii Filipchuk, CEO/Founder at Party.Space

2020 has transformed the HR industry. Most of the organizations switched to remote and are still working from their home offices. Now, companies can find professionals in any corner of the world, enter new markets, and grow without being bound to a specific location. 

But what about the corporate culture? When working remotely, it’s essential to maintain the connection to the company values and feel a part of the common culture. To keep the workers motivated and connected with their team, HR managers need to rethink the way they build healthy relationships in the company. Here is what will drive the HR industry forward. 

87% of public SaaS companies are going hybrid or remote-centric

After a massive shift to work from home because of the pandemic, most companies decided to change their work process and go hybrid or remote-centric.

According to this McKinsey report, 41% of surveyed employers said they were more productive working remotely than in the office. 

Why is it so? People are not getting distracted by frequent meetings and conversations and can better concentrate on their tasks. Besides, remote work allows building a convenient schedule and feeling more happy and productive. Having a lot of remote work experience during the pandemic, people feel more confident working from home now and don’t treat it as something unusual anymore. 

People are social creatures and need to feel more connection with their co-workers

Of course, remote work is not all roses and rainbows. One of the challenges people face is the need for communication and connection with their fellow workers. When employees do not share a physical office space, they may feel isolated and disconnected from the company. 

And this is not about the obsessive need for online meetings in Zoom during or after work. People have to understand how other teammates think and act. Current apps and platforms such as Zoom or Google Meets are business-oriented and not designed for creating shared consciousness, a feeling that you are on the same page with your teammates. 

So how should team building look like in the era of remote work? First of all, it is no more a perk companies can boast about in their job openings. To keep workers motivated and engaged, HR managers need to make such gatherings (even online) a core of the company retention strategy. With the right approach and technology, virtual team building can become a robust tool for improving collaboration, communication, and productivity.

Virtual hubs are the future of remote work culture

A virtual human-centered environment personalized for the company’s culture and values is the future of remote team building. Every company has to have a human-centered remote environment for after-hours, team bonding, and informal events. Audi Spaces is one of the first examples of this shift.

Nowadays, GatherTown, Teamflow, and Party.Space are working to solve the problem of engagement and activity between employees that work remotely. GatherTown is creating virtual spaces for people to interact with each other online. Teamflow is a virtual office where your team can hang out. 

Party.Space is the answer to so-called Zoom fatigue. It’s an online virtual party platform featuring immersive 2D and 3D virtual spaces. Most of the tools built for communication via video and chat are boring for casual online gatherings after work and do not engage co-workers in fun activities. Party.Space gamifies communication for people who work remotely and do not know each other well. It does it by creating virtual 3D venues, where co-workers hang out, participate in different activities, and communicate. 

And that’s not all. Party.Space helps companies work on their corporate culture and measure its results by tracking data points of informal communication and even A/B testing corporate cultural activities. It means that HR can assess the quality of interactions in teams, the level of engagement in certain activities, and track what works better and what measures to focus on in the future. 

Party.Space mission is to bring remote team building to an entirely new level and break the ice between co-workers who work remotely and don’t know each other in the face.

Note: The platform is invite-only as of the time of writing

Final Thoughts

One never knows how long the trend of working remotely will last. However, most of the tech businesses already got used to hybrid or home-office approach advantages.

So we can expect remote work options to stay with us for a long time. Now, businesses have to focus on another task: keeping their employees' commitment and engagement in the new normal.

Typical tools for business communication are not the way out, so companies have to look for the tools that combine fun, team spirit, and feeling that you work in one team, from anywhere in the world.