Abstract:

As the world moved to working remote during the COVID-19 pandemic, the initial optimism with working from home started to grow dire by the day. As the number of hours spend at home without colleagues peaked the feeling of insolation took over the initial positive rush of working from home. It became harder and harder to reach out to employees remotely and to get them engaged in company activities and teambuildings. Initially traditional events where mimicked in the online world with conference calls and broadcasted presentations the first attempt at mimicking of the work engagement was an online version of traditional and classics teambuilding activities. Even the after work and coffee networking activities were attempted to be transformed into the online environment via managed individual calls and speed dating. As the time progressed there was a need for more sophisticated attempts. In our study we tried to introduce innovative and interactive approaches to promote employee engagement in online environment. We attempted an experiment during a company conference held by a participating company, we offered the participants an offer to play computer games in teams rather than to participate in traditional online coffee break and speed dating activities. In our study we compare the level of engagement, participation level in the activities as well as the overall satisfaction from traditional online activities in comparison to playing cooperative online games. Overall, the participation level was not as high as expected but the level on enjoyment of the conducted activities exceeded our expectations.

Keywords:

Engagement, business, Covid 19, remote.