Remote yet Connected: Staying Connected
We’re still humans, even if we mostly only see each other in video chat. How can we build understandings when we don’t bump into each other in the hallway or by the much lauded, proverbial water cooler? This is particularly true when your employees are thrust without much notice into remote work because of COVID-19. These practices will help people stay connected, reduce isolation and lift the energy of your team so they can keep doing great work.
Being Humans Together (BHT)
One of the more creative and delightful ways of staying connected is by coordinating a video chat to talk about life outside of work. BHT is now a standing, optional half-hour weekly timeslot at Truss. It is one of the favorite parts of the week for some of the Trussels. Here’s how it works:
If under 9 participants, each person gets 2 minutes to talk about anything at all they want to (but talking about work is lightly discouraged).
If it’s more than 9 participants, a quick checkin happens on how people are feeling, and then breakout groups of 3-4 people each for a deeper dive. (Zoom has a feature to randomly create breakout groups)
We sometimes have a prompt:
What’s one story about you that you think really represents what you’re like?”
DAD JOKES
What is your favorite pizza topping?
What’s the story behind your name?
What GIF are you today?
Have fun with it! This is a way to reflect and strengthen your own culture and values. BHT was conceived by one of our Trussels. Create a space for one of your folks to come up with a unique and creative expression that enhances the connections in your company.
Topic-based socializing
Whether it’s crafts, a book or movie club, or playing games together, having a way to share space in a lightly structured way is a great way to prompt learning things about each other. We create these topic groups in topical Slack channels.
Applicable to groups of 50 and above - when you will have critical mass for interest. Ok to do before, but with less frequency.
Colleagues-and-coffee Slack channel
A certain set of people are often able to make it to BHT or to a topic-based socializing event, and some folk see each other often because they’re on the same project or committee. To introduce some serendipity into the mix, we also have an opt-in channel that randomly pairs two (or three) Trussels together every other week. The Trussels then schedule a time together and meet to talk. We use https://www.donut.ai/.
Applicable for groups over 30, highly recommended after 50.
Perennial Pastry
Some folk have fallen into more regular hangouts with each other outside of being randomly paired. Whether once a month or every other week, we fluctuate between explicitly not talking about work or allowing work check-ins. Great for deepening relationships with far away coworkers.
Celebrations Slack channel
We have a bot to remind us of folks’ birthdays and Trusselversaries. It also gets the gif party started. People opt in to have https://birthdaybot.io/ remind others of their birthdays or join date in a stand-alone channel to keep distractions contained.
Applicable for groups of 15 and more, sooner if you don’t have someone around who cares to track dates.
Coworking on Things We Don't Want to Do
There are some tasks we all put off because we just plain don't want to do them. At Truss, we've tackled this by scheduling remote coworking time we fondly call, "Coworking on things we don't want to do." Somebody adds a meeting to our company calendar, usually for an hour, and the folks who opt-in keep each other company while we slog through our to-do lists. Past tasks accomplished include: filing expense reports, sorting through boxes of mail, and creating a form for an internal survey.
Discretionary kindness budget
Everyone has a noncumulative budget to do nice things for other Trussels as a part of their Employee Effectiveness Budget. We’ve sent each other stickers, coffee cups, and yarn. This helps with bonding of a distributed team in a direct way.
Check out the rest of our “Remote yet Connected” series on distributed work