Work Cafés are known for being a meeting point for customers and non-customers where they can find support to create new trends. However, due to covid-19, they have had to reinvent themselves by turning the digital world to account in order to get closer than ever to customers.

Due to restrictions on public events, Work Cafés in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Argentina have been holding online events about many topics. Since April, they have held more than 65 online events on online platforms such as Facebook Live and YouTube, with more than 200,000 concurrent viewers.

This new way of interacting with our Work Café community is taking hold and will coexist with public events. The first-ever global event organised by the Work Cafés in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Argentina will take place on Wednesday, 30 September with guest speaker Toni Nadal, pro-tennis coach, trainer of Rafael Nadal and expert in managing adversity, achievement and values. His talk titled Managing uncertainty and adversity on the path to success will be broadcast live on Work Café’s digital channels in those countries.

This event will start at 18.00 CET. Sign up here. 

About Toni Nadal  

Toni Nadal was Rafael Nadal's coach, mentor and strategist for most of his tennis career. Toni's leadership expertise, global vision and communication skills make him an outstanding public speaker. ‘From the beginning, when the object was to have fun, we came up with a work code based on high standards. Both things are not at odds with each other’, Toni Nadal explains in relation to his formula for coaching Rafael Nadal.  

In his book Everything can be trained (Todo se puede entrenar), published by Alienta in 2015, Toni describes how his experience and work methods helped Rafa Nadal develop his skills to his full potential through training in unfavourable conditions such as on tennis courts in disrepair, under poor lighting and with bad tennis balls. He believes winning or losing relies not so much on physical conditions as on attitude, discipline and focus.

Work Café virtual talks

On 8 April, Santander Spain held its first-ever virtual Work Café talk titled Banco Santander, standing with businesses and entrepreneurs. It featured an explanation of ICO credit facilities and public aid to companies to overcome economic difficulties in Spain. The event was followed by additional talks about various topics to provide advice to the Work Café community.

The positive response to those talks encouraged other country units to take their public events online quickly with the invaluable help of their digital marketing teams. At the end of April, Santander Mexico and Santander Chile also adopted Work Café’s new initiative.

‘The extraordinary situation we’re going through because of covid-19 has put us to the test. We’ve reinvented ourselves by taking Work Café online. Everyone has adapted to these circumstances’, explains Rocío Vielva, head of Santander Spain's Work Cafés.

According to Laura Manjarin, head of Commercial Model at Santander Mexico, ‘virtual talks are a dynamic way of contributing to the community in these difficult, unprecedented times, and creating interesting digital content to stay in touch with our customers. Our adaptation of Work Café has been a complete success’.

‘Work Café’s virtual talks have allowed us to keep in contact with our customers to discuss important topics such as the economy, social issues, education, digitalisation, innovation, entrepreneurship and the environment. In this period, we have held more than 15 digital talks with outstanding speakers, reaching more than 400,000 people, which is total success. This boosts the Work Café spirit of connecting with people, helping them by being part of their lives’, explains Nicolás Besa, head of Monitoring and Commercial Model at Santander Chile. As part of the global expansion of the Work Café community and the digital events being held in several countries, Santander Chile has recently launched ‘Work Café Entrepreneurs’.

On 2 September, Santander Argentina held its first virtual talk with Pablo Henig titled Skills for an exponential world.

Work Cafés from several countries will hold their first-ever joint event on 30 September. However, it will not be their only international encounter to talk about important activities.