How to Have Watercooler Moments When Your Team Is Remote
There are ways to bond with your team even when you only see each other over Zoom
When I took a new job a year and a half ago that was 100% remote, I told myself I was going to gain a lot of productivity. However, I didn’t expect that I’d be losing something as well: namely, the ability to connect with my coworkers on a personal level. As many more of us have begun working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, many managers may be coming to the same realization that I did.
My oversimplified view of remote work ignored a couple of key details. In the past, I would work remotely only one day per week at most. When I was only working from home for one day at a time, I could turn off Slack and email guilt-free and work heads-down. That’s not the case when you’re 100% remote. And more importantly, even if I thought I was going to be more productive, I wasn’t going to be around people. It wasn’t until I had been working remotely for three months that I started to realize how big of a problem this was becoming.
I spent the next year reading everything I could find on remote work and talking to the smartest minds in building remote teams. If you have questions about the nuts and bolts of remote management — running meetings, setting communication…
