As schools, businesses, and companies reopen and consider new policies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, here are three reasons why Dayspring—with intentional care around health and safety guidelines—is planning to move back towards in-person work at the office.
It enables us to do better work
There is no replacement for the kind of collaboration and brainstorming that meeting physically can facilitate. We particularly need the creative buzz and real-time feedback for the design and discovery processes we lead for our clients. We find that there is no substitute for the ease of communication and teamwork that occupying the same office space lends to our design and engineering teams.
Simply put, communicating and interacting in real time and in a shared physical space allows for richer, more nuanced communication between our team members. This “higher bandwidth” mode of communication is often critical when it comes to solving problems that are higher in complexity—whether that’s technical complexity in the solutions we design and engineer, or relational complexity as we translate client requirements as a project team into those solutions.
Some of our office paperwork filing and infrastructure services have continued in the office throughout the whole pandemic. But as others of us return from remote work arrangements, many of us are also finding the dedicated time and space the office provides is a welcome relief from less-than-ideal working environments at home. We have also recently expanded our office space to accommodate the growth in our teams as we anticipate new hires.
We are invested in loving our community
Part of Dayspring’s mission has always been to love our neighbor and to love the community. Yes, we are a digital consulting company with the ability and experience to operate remotely.
And when COVID-19 first burst onto the scene, it was clear that closing down and operating remotely was the best way to love our neighbor.
However, one of our priorities has always been to be a faithful presence in our local neighborhood. We want to see the flourishing of the community around us, which leads us to desire to be as physically present as the circumstances of the pandemic allow. This presence enables us to continue building relationships with our close partners in Bayview-Hunters Point such as Rise University Prep, Renaissance Center, and Redeemer Community Church.
Many of our partners feel there is no substitute for in-person encounters when it comes to community-building and education. Dayspring feels similarly and has outlined a three-phased return where we expect to resume working in the office three days per week by late Fall. That will give us the opportunity to overlap with the students that some of us on staff tutor, share conversations with Redeemer’s pastoral staff about work, justice, and human flourishing—as well as just to catch up on what people did over the weekend.
We miss each other (and we miss you!)
Simply put, we’ve missed being in-person with each other. And we miss meeting with our clients. Face-to-face conversation better embodies the kind of working relationship we hope to have with the people and organizations we partner with. We hope that our work together in the office is more than just delegating tasks, and we hope that our relationships with clients can encompass more than just business.
The past year has been hard, and shifting safely back into patterns that are both similar and different from pre-pandemic conditions can be challenging. But we’re beginning to see the benefits as well. Recently, some of our teams have enjoyed the fruits of reuniting in the physical office. Our Zoom meetings have fewer and fewer boxes in the gallery each week. We hope that transitioning back will spark better internal collaboration, allow us to live out the commitment to the neighborhood we aspire for, and help us to better serve our clients all at the same time.