I found myself counting how many screens were tuned into our company all-hands meeting, remembering when scores of us used to gather with pizza and beer for a lovely 20 minutes prior to the meeting getting underway. Much of it works, but the informal information sharing and sociability that happen as meeting participants gather and disperse are lost. (I’m a sociable introvert.) Zoom and Microsoft Teams have taken the place of interacting in person.
Many of us have worked virtually, which to people like me is a mixed blessing. We also haven’t gone on a company outing to catch a Crabs game for two years. As a result, sales across the state have not met projections, industry losses have mounted and investors who were skittish even before the macro-economy began looking scary sit on the sidelines.įor reasons of both COVID and cost-containment, we - at least at my employer Papa and Barkley - stopped performing as much training. In the California cannabis industry, I’ll add that we’ve had our own separate recession as the illicit market remains way larger than the legal market. Additionally, we need to re-up our training and development game. That’s a mantra I’m hearing often and that I repeat. It’s time to have some fun at work again.
