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Amira van Weegen

Marketing Manager

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At some point, the sense of team spirit simply became quieter

An Honest Look at the Office: Why the Sense of Unity Often Feels 'Thinner'

Why the sense of community doesn't just come back

How Bad and Good Team Culture Make an Impact: A Short Story

How Genuine Connections Are Made – 5 Concrete Levers for HR

An Underestimated Lever

When the desire for connection meets reality

Cohesion cannot be mandated – but it can be crafted

March 14, 2026

Team Cohesion: How a Genuine Sense of Unity is Created and Why It Doesn't Come Naturally

5 mins

At some point, the sense of team spirit simply became quieter

The office is occupied, but somehow not really vibrant anymore. Everyone is working, everyone is nice. But that true sense of belonging that used to be naturally present? It has become harder to grasp.

The after-work beer that used to happen spontaneously. The quick chat at the coffee machine that suddenly turned into the best idea of the week. The moments when you felt: We're all pulling together here. They happen less frequently, sometimes barely at all.

If you're recognizing this as an HR manager, you're not alone. And it's not a small problem: Because what's lost is not just the mood. It's the glue that holds teams together—the connection that leads people to step in for each other, be honest with each other, and start the day motivated.

The good news: This can be shaped. Not through directives, but through conscious decisions that make real encounters possible again.

An Honest Look at the Office: Why the Sense of Unity Often Feels 'Thinner'

Start of the week. You enter the office, see a few colleagues at their desks, the rest are not there. No conversation in the kitchen, no spontaneous lunch, no brief chat in the hallway.

This might seem trivial. But it's not.

Almost 90% of people form genuine friendships at work during their career. And these friendships are much more than a nice side effect for companies – they are the reason someone is motivated to start the day, why teams stick together in tough times, why someone stays despite the possibility of earning more elsewhere.

The problem: Such connections do not develop in video calls. They arise in those very moments that are becoming increasingly rare.

Why the sense of community doesn't just come back

Many think: If people start coming to the office more often again, camaraderie will return on its own. But it's not that simple, and anyone who looks closely will understand why.

There's the new colleague in her third week. She has a question, sends a Slack message – and waits. No one asks her to join them for lunch. She eats alone at her desk. After three months, she starts wondering if this job is really right for her. No ill will. Just no one noticing.

There's the team that comes to the office every Tuesday – but it's always the same four or five people. Other teams stay away. They stick to themselves, new connections aren't formed. The cross-organizational exchange that previously generated the best ideas? It no longer happens.

And then there's the quiet problem that's hardest to grasp: No one knows who is in the office when. The journey there becomes a gamble. Anyone who has commuted for 45 minutes only to sit alone on a half-empty floor will think twice next time. A vicious cycle emerges – and no one has consciously decided on it.

This isn't a result of incompetence or indifference. Camaraderie quietly dwindles, due to fewer shared moments, fewer accidental encounters, fewer situations where real connections could be made. Eventually, the distance becomes so normal that no one notices it anymore. And that is the real issue.

How Bad and Good Team Culture Make an Impact: A Short Story

Imagine you are visiting two different teams within the same company.

In Team A, everyone sits at their desks, headphones on, eyes glued to the screen. The 10 o'clock meeting is processed, items are checked off, and then everyone goes their separate ways. When a new colleague in her third week has a question, she sends a Slack message — and waits. No one asks her to join them for lunch. She eats alone at her desk. After three months, she wonders if this job is really the right fit.

In Team B, Tuesday looks different. Two colleagues quickly coordinated just before the meeting—not because they had to, but because they knew the other was working on the same topic. When someone admits during the retrospective that they are stuck, help is immediately offered. The new colleague? She was invited to lunch on her first day. Now, she's the one who welcomes new people.

The difference between these two teams is not a coincidence. It is the result of moments, hundreds of small encounters, shared experiences, and the feeling of not being alone. This is exactly what distinguishes genuine team spirit from polite side-by-side work.

How Genuine Connections Are Made – 5 Concrete Levers for HR

How Genuine Connections Are Created

HR is not the company's event organizer. HR is the one who creates the conditions under which connections can form – and that is a fundamentally different task.

Because cohesion cannot be orchestrated. It happens in the gaps between meetings, over a shared lunch, when someone sincerely asks, "How are things going for you?" What HR can do is create and protect these gaps.

Encounters Across the Organization

One of the most common mistakes: Cohesion is only considered within teams. But genuine bonding also happens between people who don't work together daily – like between a colleague from marketing and a developer who meet by chance in the kitchen and suddenly realize they're working on the same problem.

This doesn't happen automatically. It takes formats that bring people from different corners of the organization together – not as a mandatory program, but as a genuine invitation. A monthly cross-departmental lunch with rotating participants. An open format where teams briefly showcase what they are currently working on. Small things that happen regularly – not big events that occur once a year and are then forgotten.

Shared Experiences That Cannot Be Forced

Employees can immediately sense whether a format is a genuine invitation or disguised obligation. The difference isn’t in the format itself – it's in who proposes it, how it's communicated, and whether it is truly voluntary.

What works: Formats proposed and co-created by the teams themselves. A summer party organized by someone from the team because they feel like it. A run that emerges from a spontaneous Slack post. HR can initiate these things and provide a framework – but they must grow from within, not be imposed from above.

Truly Engaging New People

New employees are particularly vulnerable in this respect. They join a team with its own history, inside jokes, and unwritten rules. And they observe all this from the outside – not knowing how to get in.

What's helpful here is not a large onboarding structure. It’s the colleague who genuinely asks, "Are you coming to lunch?" It’s the experienced contact person who not only answers professional questions but also explains how things really work here. HR cannot take on this role – but HR can ensure that someone does.

Rituals That Create Safety

Cohesion only grows where people feel safe enough to be honest. A short weekly check-in that discusses not just tasks, but also how people are doing. A retrospective where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, not failures. A "Wins & Learnings" moment at the end of the week that shows: We see what you achieve.

These rituals take little time but send an important message: Here, you can be human – not just an employee.

An Underestimated Lever

When it comes to who truly shapes the cohesion within a team, many first think of HR initiatives or messages from management. But the strongest influence lies elsewhere: with the direct manager.

It's not because they organize events or give motivational speeches. It's because employees observe every day how their manager behaves. Whether they inquire about how someone is truly doing. Whether they are present in the office themselves or just expect others to be. Whether they address conflicts or avoid them. Whether they offer recognition or silently assume that good work is a given.

A team lead who says "I'm in the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays, feel free to stop by" and truly lives it, makes more of an impact than any community day. Because it’s not an event. It’s an invitation from someone you trust.

This also means: HR can create the best infrastructure, develop the most thoughtful formats, and introduce the right tools, but if leaders do not exemplify cohesion, it dissipates. That's why investing in leadership development is not a soft measure. It is one of the most direct ways to foster a culture where people are happy to be part of the team.

When the desire for connection meets reality

Everything we have talked about so far – conscious encounters, cross-departmental exchange, the feeling of knowing that today there’s someone worth having a conversation with – requires one basic condition: that people know when it’s worth coming in.

And this is often where it fails in practice. Not due to good intentions. But because no one sees who is in the office when. That desk sharing might work on paper, but in reality, it consists of Excel sheets, Slack messages, and silent frustration.

This is precisely the starting point of anny. Employees can see at a glance who is coming to the office on which day and can consciously plan their own day accordingly. Desks, meeting rooms, and shared spaces can be booked effortlessly. And if someone wants to organize an internal community event, they can coordinate it directly through anny.

The real value doesn’t lie in managing spaces. It lies in turning the gamble of "Is it worth the commute today?" into a conscious decision. And that people who have wanted to reconnect for a long time can more easily find the right moment to do so.

Cohesion cannot be mandated – but it can be crafted

A true sense of belonging doesn’t arise from a new HR initiative, an annual team-building event, or an email from management. It emerges in the small moments in between. In the spontaneous conversation after a meeting. In the moment when someone notices a colleague needs support and simply asks.

These moments can’t be forced. But you can create the conditions that make them more likely. Through leaders who exemplify what they wish to see from the team. Through formats that are genuine invitations, not hidden obligations. And through transparency about who is present when – so the commute to the office isn't a gamble.

That's the real task of HR in this context. It's not about organizing events. It's about creating spaces – both literally and figuratively – where connection can happen.

A good first step towards that: Look at how desk sharing creates transparency about who is in the office when and how it already makes a difference.

→ Learn more about desk sharing

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