The office is divided. Help!

Dear Aunty B,

Our workplace has always been a happy and collegiate one, a place where staff with a commercial and creative focus have mixed easily. Not quite a big happy family, but certainly an easy, friendly team. Then a few months ago we moved.

Maybe it was because our old office was small, it forced us into each other’s pockets. But we enjoyed that forced camaraderie, or so I thought.

Since we’ve been in our new digs the commercial folk have moved into a glassed off partitioned area. Now they close the door.

Then last week came the last straw. One of them had a birthday. And a cake. All of it inside their new little fortress of glassy solitude. We always used to be a one-in-all-in “cake for everyone, it’s my birthday come celebrate” kind of office. But things are changing. What can we do?

John G,
Brisbane

Dear John,

Get a grip. Hells bells. You are grizzling over a birthday cake!

Now I am guessing that you moved because you are growing fast. As you expand, a business does develop sub-cultures and they usually develop around teams.

It is very healthy for a positive culture to develop around a sales team. Think of the psyching up the commercial people need to do every morning while you creative types slouch around sipping your long black discussing not much.

The birthday cake is not the last straw. What you need to watch John, is that everyone contributes to other team building activities like contributing enthusiastically to the Christmas hamper raffle or putting in a long and thirsty attendance at the Christmas party. These are events that require many attendees, cooperation and goodwill, not just an ability to sing in tune and scoff carbohydrate.

So John, I suggest you go and buy a raffle ticket and let them eat cake.

Your Aunty B.