How To Set Up Coworking Days And Get Hybrid Teams Together

Key Takeaways:

1. Local coworking days are a great way to get hybrid and remote employees together, whether they’re on the same team or cross-functional but live in the same city or area.
2. Setting up a regular coworking cadence for local teams helps them retain flexibility while still connecting with their coworkers in person and fostering a sense of community and belonging.
3. It’s on companies – especially people and workplace teams – to make it easy for employees to meet, even when they don’t have a leased office nearby to go to.

If your employee population is spread across locations and you have hybrid and remote employees in your workforce, you’re likely facing some (or all) of these challenges:

• Remote employees rarely meet coworkers in person and feel less connected to their teams and roles
• Employees who don’t live near a leased office don’t have a workspace they can go to on a regular basis
• You have employees from different teams who live in the same city but don’t have a chance to meet and build relationships
• You have hybrid employees who come into your leased offices a few times a week, but there’s no coordination, and it’s a missed opportunity for connection

We’ve seen our customers demonstrate that hosting coworking days for local teams – whether in flex spaces or leased offices – is a game-changer for increasing connections, collaboration, and productivity in a flexible workplace.

Here’s your guide to setting up coworking days for your teams 👇

Figure out your challenges

Don’t organize coworking days just for the sake of getting people in the same room – data shows that employees want to meet with purpose and intention.

Think about what you’re solving for, as the cadence, format, and agenda of your gathering might be different depending on what your goals are:

• If your hybrid teams lack face time with leadership, you might want to organize a quarterly get-together
• If cross-functional relationships aren’t strong enough, you might need to focus on chances for socialization
• If employees are coming into offices but are misaligned on days and times, you should work on transparency and scheduling

Give gatherings a structure

Not all coworking days are the same. Some focus on planning, collaboration, and getting things done, while others are about getting people together, facilitating connections, and building strong teams.

What we’ve seen from our customers shows that employees prefer structured gatherings that come with a clear goal and purpose when it’s organized top-down – but appreciate socializing without an agenda on their own terms.

The best way to solve this is to organize quarterly, monthly, and even bi-weekly gatherings for your team – AMA sessions with leadership, project kickoff sessions, all-hands meetings, or brainstorming sessions – while leaving room for your team to self-organize and set up their own cadence of team bonding and structure-less days that let them connect and foster a sense of belonging.

Make it work for your team

If getting together in person is hard, cumbersome, and complicated for employees – they’re not going to do it. So it’s on companies to ensure employees have a workspace nearby to go into, an easy process they can follow, and ways to organize and know who’s going into the office (or flex space).

Here’s how – apart from using Gable – to achieve that:

1. Identify a culture carrier in each location: Reward employees who build culture by empowering them to host events with coworkers and drive attendance and collaboration.
2. Set up a company gatherings playbook: Instead of reinventing the wheel, set up basic guidelines and suggestions for local meetup scenarios. Include budget, suggested vendors and any form of reporting employees need to submit.
3. Give shout-outs for team meetings: Have one hub meeting? Highlight their get-together as an example for the whole company. Share photos on Slack, send them coffee, or give out benefits points to your most engaged groups to motivate others to join.

Organize coworking days for your teams easily with Gable

Join other people-driven companies that know the impact of intentional in-person connections on building culture, enhancing productivity, and increasing the sense of belonging. Use Gable to manage all your spaces – from flex to leased offices – and stay on top of usage, workplace data, and employee satisfaction, all in one place

Book a demo with our experts and find out how we can make your hybrid workplace a hub of connection.