In jazz, jamming is when you play together and it takes off, something magical happens. Jamming has become commonplace in music. Taken up by Marley - "jamming" - this expression also refers to the shared experience of live improvisation, with no other rules than the starting key. In France, we say "faire un boeuf" or "la mayonnaise prend" (the mayonnaise takes) and it's immediately less glamorous.
We at Confiture Parisienne prefer to jam, who knows why.
At work, we rarely jam and since Covid, not at all.
According to Le Parisien, more than a quarter of employees who have tried teleworking no longer want to return to the office. This undermines the myth of the entrepreneurial spirit, if indeed it ever existed outside the minds of office managers. Because the starting point for a work-from-home jam is to eliminate all hierarchy. This is impossible, in short, in the coercive world of work as we know it.
The smile policy of companies like Google, with its table football and Free Fridays, is an attempt at jam spirit that some employees—especially in France—may consider more stressful than an internship at Cogedip.
No hope?
Yes, maybe one: remind your employees that a business is nothing without them, even if they work from home— especially if they work from home.
And to create some jam spirit, why not give them a signed jam jar with their name on it? Well, yes, not with the company's name, no one wants to start the day with their company's name on the breakfast table.
If they don't grasp the allegory, at least they'll enjoy it. A pleasant way for everyone to remember that they're part of a community, the work community, which isn't necessarily the one we dreamed of belonging to, but for which it's not forbidden to sometimes feel a little jam spirit.
Ready to bring back the Jam Spirit?
