Staying Engaged in an At-home Work Environment

I have committed nearly half of my life to my career in advertising. 
 
That’s over fifteen years at eight different agencies across two states and one island. With that, I’ve discovered one common theme. My level of engagement, excitement and thrill was triggered by working in-person. 
 
Why? Over those fifteen-plus years, life-long friendships were built. I consider these friendships as gifts in different phases of my career. People who have helped celebrate my children’s birthdays became my go-to mentors, gave me hugs on hard days, sent me flowers to help grieve a loss, coached me through personal development…all started in an office. With people.
 
In the fall of 2021, I made a career leap and joined The Many. We are a hybrid agency that supports the well-being of our staff by permanently allowing people to work from anywhere, with the option of going to an office in Pacific Palisades. 
 
In pre-pandemic years, I yearned for that kind of flexible work option. My day-to-day consisted of a three-hour combined commute, arriving home at 7pm on most days. As a parent, extra-curricular sports were out of the question. Making it home for a 5pm practice was wishful thinking. 
 
Fast forward to 2022, we are now living in the era of having the “best of both worlds”. We can work from anywhere in the world, in The Many’s case, with the option of going into an office. But given the distance, I choose to work remotely 99% of the time. This allows me the freedom to be a present and engaged parent, wife and human. 
 
However, this comes at a cost.
 
The remote-first choice strips away the ability to build and cultivate in-person life-long friendships at work. We lose the office banter, post-weekend story shares, or after meeting life catch-ups. These moments simply cannot be replaced by virtual meetings.  
 
But that doesn’t mean we need to lose that connection completely. Instead, we can a) re-think how we foster and cultivate our relationships in and out of the workplace and b) come up with a solution to fill the void.
 
A Harvard Business Review article revealed that lonely employees cost U.S. companies up to $406 billion a year and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the lack of social connections increases the odds of death by at least 50%. 
 
Research shared in that same article validated that lonely employees have a higher risk of turnover, lower productivity, more missed days at work, and lower quality of work. 
 
I consider myself an extrovert. An outgoing human who thrives and feeds off of human connection, seeking to maximize social engagement. When an extrovert is fulfilled, we will bring 1000% to anything we do. 
 
Since I have chosen the remote-first path, I have felt the humdrum rhythm of the day-to-day. To infuse much-needed human connection, I made brave commitments recently. Said yes to a girl’s trip to Valle de Guadalupe in Mexico, created new friendships and opened doors to future social gatherings.