Is the handshake dead?

​Is the handshake dead?

Yesterday was, believe it or not, 'National Handshake Day'. The last Thursday of June is apparently a day on which people pay tribute to one of the most ancient traditions of greeting.

The handshake is generally thought to date back to 5th century BC, based on archaeological ruins in ancient Greece which depict soldiers shaking hands. Shaking hands is a custom with which we are all familiar. Huge amounts of research has gone into how we can tell a lot about someone from how they shake hands (a great example being an interview situation).

But then Covid happened….

It got us thinking about some questions, which might seem flippant but are quite important, particularly as we collectively start to reshape our world of business and personal interactions:

- If you were meeting someone in person now, would you want to shake their hand?

- If someone held out their hand to you, would you shake it? Would it be rude to sanitise your hand straight afterwards (I have seen a few people do this)?

- If you don’t shake someone’s hand when you first meet them, does it make it harder to build rapport with them?

Has shaking hands gone for good? And now we are more attuned to the spreading of germs, would you want it to return?