Culture and Community in the Time of Coronavirus
By: Wall Street Journal
Tags: Journalism, Culture, Events, Organizational Culture, News Media

By Kabir Seth and Jillian Breitfeller

Some of the members of the Culture Squad, before going remote.

Weekly Culture Squad meeting

The Digital Experience and Strategy team at The Wall Street Journal (DXS) has always had an active “Culture Squad” that provides support and inspiration, and fosters collaboration and community-building within the department.

Enhancing team culture has always been important, but with the shift to remote work since the start of the pandemic, the Culture Squad’s work to build a positive team environment has become even more essential. As we shifted our programming in response to this new world of work, we learned the importance of meeting people where they are and finding versatile solutions.

Before the pandemic, the Culture Squad had been working toward initiatives such as a team snack bar and shared supply shelves, the formation of a quiet room and community space, and handing out WSJ gear. We were also planning a hackathon, a movie night, and programs around communication style, “getting into flow,” and emotional intelligence. These events were geared toward better understanding ourselves and each other, and drove at the cultural values we aspired to.

That all changed when Covid hit and in-person meetups became impossible. Initially, we quickly pivoted to new programming aimed to support the team during this transition. We created an initiative to host weekly remote meetups, which included a chat around working from home with children, completing a group WSJ Crossword puzzle, learning how to bake pies, a group baking and happy hour, a pet meet-and-greet, pub games, a group mural, a Mario Kart tournament, movie recommendations, and a Harry Potter book and movie discussion.

Virtual pet meet and greet and Halloween costume party.

While the weekly meetups were fun and kept the team connected, “Zoom fatigue” was a real thing — and asking team members to join one more video call as the pandemic wore on seemed unsustainable. It was important that we took a step back and really looked at the problems we were aiming to solve, and brainstormed unique solutions. For this reason, we pivoted our programming, and focused on more flexible and versatile solutions, allowing us to meet changing needs.

Over the summer, we hosted our first full-day team “offsite” event, and instead of simply sitting on a large group hangout all day, we merged various forms of communication, including an event Slack channel and break-out rooms — along with finding time for workshops and entertaining activities that fell outside of our other work-focused programming.

We arranged a team-wide “shadowing” project, allowing everyone to shadow one person for the day, in order to learn about other teams that they may not always get to work directly with on a regular basis.

For our end-of-year holiday celebration, we provided a space where individuals could send “kudos” to a fellow team member, thanking them for their hard work. We’re also mailing out some long-awaited WSJ DXS gear — because remote or in-person, there is just something about matching swag that reminds us we are all a part of the whole!

In these challenging times, a culture of community and collaboration remains critical to our team’s success. What we can do to continue to build that culture remains a work in progress. Just as we listen to our customers to help determine our product roadmaps, we rely on our DXS teammates to guide our cultural initiatives. The programming and planning we do will come from feedback from our teammates, and as a Culture Squad, we must always ensure we are meeting the team where they’re at.

Kabir Seth is the DXS COO and VP Product Strategy. Jillian Breitfeller is a program manager working across the WSJ DXS team. Both agree culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Thank you to the Culture Squad: Allison Foley, Andrea Kebalo, Annemarie Dooling, Anthony DeRosa, Emma Brown, Erica Stevens, Jillian Breitfeller, Kabir Seth, Kristen Cabrera, Marta Jakubanis, McKellen Rattray, Tania Feliz, and Thomas Williams.