3 Ways to Facilitate Remote Connection in the Workplace

Creating space for connection in the remote world.

 

“Think about those small moments you used to have at work, and establish ways to reinvent those moments, try to keep it less work specific, and a little bit more personal: create opportunities to connect with people.”

 

The amazing Sammy Courtright (Co-Founder of TenSpot) said this in our RAC Clubhouse conversation, and it hit me hard because it was the advice I needed to hear.

 

You might guess from these weekly newsletters that I get pretty excited about the work we do – so when I hop on to meetings with my team, I love to dive in, hear how things are moving forward, solve tough problems together, and go as fast as we can. Efficient meetings, yay!

 

But when I pull back: my co-workers and I are often each others’ only daily connection to anything outside our homes.

 

That is, in its own way, a responsibility (at least I think leadership should recognize it as such). It’s also an opportunity: these touch points are rare moments of connection in an extended period of disconnect.

 

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to implement this: to nudge people to chat with each other about things that aren’t work, a space for people to catch up. Sammy’s words have inspired me to ask YOU for advice.

 

How do you make space for small moments? Here are some things we’ve tried so far:

 

• Happy hours + team activities (sometimes with breakout groups) – we’ve done a bunch of these, and they are ALWAYS fun (the Tenspot platform facilitates awesome experiences)
• Donut (Slack app that connects teammates for 1on1 coffee hangouts)
• Including time for personal catchups in 1-on-1’s (this, by the way, is a place where I know I’m personally not doing a great job, yet)

 

I know we’re missing something in our overall structure – what are you doing? Given that we’re at a point in digitization where connection and rewriting existing norms has never been more seamless, I would love to hear how better to create spaces for our team to connect.

 

Oh! And one more thing we’re doing this year: March Madness brackets! Which in turn made us realize that we HAD to do them for the RAC 🙂

 

So this year, we are doing the first ever RAC March Madness Pool!!! The winner receives a $50 gift card of their choice

 

And if you finish in 2nd place? You get $10! (As someone who has almost won several March Madness pools, I am very passionate about making 2nd place worthwhile haha).

 

No prior basketball knowledge needed! If you’re on the fence, you should definitely join in (and if you’re REALLY on the fence, shoot me a message, and I will make the case why you should play along). We are all recruiting experts NOT basketball experts haha.

 

This was excerpted from the 3-16-2021 RAC Newsletter. Sign Up for the Newsletter here.