In a new article from Berlin’s excellent ESMT, Konstantin Korotov states that “What the crisis has revealed is how very dependent our work is on other people.” Initially, you want to agree with the statement, but the more you think about it, the less it makes sense.

You have been working remotely for almost 5 years now. Your experience as a remote worker taught you that you have to be extra open and welcoming and…well…nice to your colleagues and forge relationships through common projects, goals and opportunities. Physical proximity is a nice way to accelerate such bonds, but these can be done remotely just as well if you are cognizant enough to the challenges of being remote.

So now that everyone is remote, and new employees are not being physically introduced to their new colleagues by their manager, we have to collectively be more cognizant and spend the extra time to virtually meet our peers and colleagues. In fact, unlike dating, the smell of your colleagues or the way they look should play a small role on how much you like them so everyone being forced to work remotely might actually bring more teams together. The office could be saved for those team building exercises that will happen again once we can all travel again.

We will have a vaccine and we will be able to meet our colleagues again. Let’s not wait until that happens to build teams and relationships.