Postcards from anywhere: Banding together in new ways, even gathering in a garage
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With more people working remotely these days, people are banding together and adapting to working in new ways, connecting with colleagues differently. It may look different, but that feeling of connection, of doing important work, together, remains. In the coming weeks, the News Center will bind some of these new experiences in a scrapbook of postcards from anywhere.
This is no news flash: Life is different these days. Work is different these days.
It's hard to even conceive that barely 12 months ago most Mayo staff were working in cubicles and offices housed in Mayo’s buildings. These days, many are working in office spaces converted from spare rooms and closets, dining tables and even garages.
Take the Enrollment, Recruitment and Operations team within Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. The team had originally planned to meet this past summer (in a socially distanced way) at an outdoor park in Rochester to map out upcoming projects on a whiteboard.
"We needed to discuss and map out Spring Recruitment Sessions for two of the schools in Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and Zoom was not going to provide that for us," says Jolene Young, Education Administration. "We had originally scheduled a four-hour meeting on campus, but after some discussion around masks and COVID-19, we decided we would use a park in Rochester instead."
As Mother Nature would have it, a rainstorm dashed their plans, but they didn’t let that keep them from getting their work done. The team banded together in Young's garage instead and got to work.
While there were no drum or guitar solos to rile up the neighbors, this garage band did make their own kind of music.
"The meeting ended up being so productive that now we decided to hold a bi-weekly meeting in the garage to connect, brainstorm and do our daily work," Young says. "We have missed being able to work together, laugh and have conversations due to the pandemic."