Workplace culture gets talked about constantly. What’s often missing from the conversation is community. In our latest Pally Talk workshop, Elizabeth Gowing, who has worked on community at every level from grassroots charity projects to advising the Prime Minister of Kosovo, showed why EAs and PAs are the crucial connection that makes a workplace community work. Here are the key takeaways.
1. You already know how to build community
- Think about the communities you belong to outside work: a book group, a choir, a gym or yoga studio, a faith group, a neighbourhood association, a sports team, your friends.
- Then ask what makes them work. Our members named:
- A personal welcome, and being known by name
- Turning up consistently, at a set time, so relationships have time to grow
- Doing something difficult, or learning a skill, together
- Coffee, tea and biscuits after the main event, with small tables to sit and chat
- Saying out loud that everyone is welcome, including people who haven’t been for a while
- Connecting with people who share part of your identity
- We use these skills every week in our personal lives, then leave them at the door when we start work.
- Try it: pick one thing that makes your favourite community work and ask what it would look like at your office.
2. Elizabeth’s model of community at work
Four levels, from the foundations up:
The bedrock: get the basics in place
- Communication and inclusivity: formal channels (email lists, CC rules) and informal ones. Is “everyone is welcome” the first thing a new starter hears?
- Resources: what people need to do their job wherever they work, whether that’s the office, home, a café or their phone. Light, air, greenery, IT and infrastructure.
Belonging: the human behaviours
- Places to talk: if the office is all cubicles and corridors, there’s nowhere to slow down and connect.
- Shared stories: the founding story, the inside joke, the legend everyone tells new joiners.
- Sharing food: lunches and breakfasts are a basic human way to connect.
- Play: quiz nights, parties, the foosball table. People are different when they play.
Strength: where EAs and PAs come in
- Pass on local intelligence: industry news, new resources, new people, even the new sandwich shop.
- Bring something back: when someone attends training, a conference or a field visit, how do they share what they learned?
- Share tools: the resources, templates and online tools that make work easier.
- Share networks: “I know the person in IT who can help with that.”
Sustainability: making it last
- Speak each other’s language: understand the jargon of finance, sales and property teams, and translate between them.
- Resolve disputes informally, before a niggle becomes a problem.
- Lend a hand when someone is overloaded, unwell or under pressure.
- Channel energy into solving shared problems.
- Build bridges between generations: connect new starters and maternity cover with the people who hold the institutional memory.
- Think creatively: use movement, music, art and humour, not just emails and spreadsheets.
3. Why it matters: the research
- Learning: how connected your team is predicts how well you learn better than the quality of the course itself. Two people take the same course; the one returning to a supportive team learns more.
- Mental health: in Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, 13% of employees in Europe said they felt lonely for a lot of the previous day. In a team of 20, that’s three people.
- Retention: Deloitte’s Gen Z and Millennial Survey found their ideal workplace is shaped by belonging and shared values.
- Better learning, wellbeing and retention all feed into productivity and the bottom line.
4. Ideas you can use this week
- Randomised coffee pairings: a tool like Donut matches colleagues for a regular catch up. One member’s former company ran a weekly “coffee buddy” and let staff expense it.
- Monthly team lunches: people make the effort to come into the office for them.
- Protect the first and last five minutes of online meetings before the AI note taker starts, so there’s space for informal chat.
- Share new lunch spots and local finds to get people excited about going out together.
- Personally invite colleagues who rarely come in when there’s a social coming up. Someone thinking of them makes a difference.
- Check in with new remote joiners after the first flurry of onboarding attention fades. Don’t assume someone else is doing it.
- Put music on at drinks or lunches. It signals the shift from work mode and helps people stay.
- Play differently: Lego building at monthly drinks taps into a different kind of thinking.
5. Low budget ideas for a team that’s lost its spark
One member asked how to bring together a mostly hybrid team of 60 on a smaller budget, at a difficult time. The group suggested:
- Make the quiz about your people: have colleagues submit questions, pull facts from LinkedIn profiles or play “who said this?”. Keep the pace brisk so no one gets bored.
- A scavenger hunt: some event companies place actors in local cafés holding clues. Teams start at the office and explore the area together.
- Do good together: a challenge to get charity leaflets into as many local places as possible gets teams out into the community for a good cause.
- Creative activities: painting was a surprise hit at a previous offsite.
- Raise its status: present social time as something that drives learning, productivity and happiness, not a nice extra.
6. Freelancers and private PAs
- Freelancers: you can bring community into small, remote client teams. Leave them with a habit of regular catch ups and space to talk, even after your project ends.
- Private PAs: roles can be isolating. Tell recruiters a team matters to you, and use this model to describe what good looks like at interview.
- Everyone: your professional community counts too. Pally Talk and your wider EA and PA network are communities you can lean on and learn from.
Your next step
- Take Elizabeth’s 15 question community audit for your workplace.
- Spot one strength to build on and one gap.
- Choose one small thing you can change this week, or rally others around.
Missed the session? Watch the full workshop replay in the Pally Talk community, along with the audit and slides.
Elizabeth Gowing is a founder of The Ideas Partnership and a three time TEDx speaker. She was adviser to the Prime Minister of Kosovo on communities from 2021 to 2025, and lectures on sustainable communities. Her new book, The First Bllok: the lives of a Kosovan Neighbourhood, is out in November.