Sometimes you need a break. Sometimes your team needs a break. Otherwise work feels sluggish and slow, and you find yourself taking a meandering route to the problem rather than tackling it fresh and head-on.
It’s a problem of productivity.
Technology unfortunately isn’t very good at helping with these sorts of issues unless it is an app to order a delivery, so why not settle for something like Afternoon Tea? It’s an excellent way to re-hydrate your staff in hot weather, bring the team around to have informal discussions about work or life and is very cost effective.
In colder months it is just as pleasant to drink tea, of which many homes and offices abound in (along with snacks).
Technology really only seeks to solve technical productivity problems: our customers want to work smarter, not harder. Working smarter can sometimes mean not working at all though: however much time a person puts into a particular task or set of tasks, they may be stuck in a rut and no amount of technology will fix it. That calls for a clean-break to reset.
Mental-blocks can often be brought on through clunky technology or processes building an underlying stress within your workforce. Stress can seriously hamper the reliability of your workforce and so providing a pleasant working environment can build or regain trust within your organisation, as well as giving staff a chance to mentally and physically recharge.
But… why Afternoon Tea in particular you ask?
While writing this it is quite hot outside and our staff are naturally keen on ice cream, sweets and beverages in order to better tackle the second half of the day. Afternoon Tea as an event tends to happen at 3pm, or 15:00 hours, and so is well placed for placating the pressure of a busy day.
As with power naps, Afternoon Tea allows a team to look at issues or questions with renewed vigour and a fresh perspective. You could consider it as a form of practicing Mindfulness, if that squares better with staff and colleagues.
Further to this, Afternoon Tea is fun – in fact it lets staff connect through food which is an excellent activity in itself, and the nature of Afternoon Tea means it is a cross-cultural and a very inclusive, fun event. Fun is one of our values, and is central to our approach to life and work – if you aren’t having fun, there’s a problem and it needs to be looked at.
If you are trying to do Afternoon Tea remotely it is worthwhile using technology which is suited to community-building rather than traditional 1-1 meeting software. We would recommend using Discord because it allows staff to ‘drop-in’ a shared room/channel which makes it a fun informal event – with cake – otherwise it is just yet another meeting.
Thinking about technology laterally helps us use it better, and sometimes the best use of technology is to not use it all; Afternoon Tea falls under the Cultural element of Digital Transformation and allows your staff to use technology more efficiently by punctuating their days with other low-tech events.
For us, Afternoon Tea greatly improves the mood and attentiveness of our staff – allowing them to better solve complex problems and respond faster to them. It allows us to build an inclusive culture with sufficient variety for it to be a daily activity be it in the office or at other locations. Finally, it’s fun and gives us all something to look forward to on even the busiest of days.
