Why and how we do virtual coffee chats at Ofri
Where does the interesting part of a party happen? That’s right – in the kitchen! What’s true for parties, is just as true for an office environment: It’s while strolling down the aisle with your next-door colleague, whom you usually don’t talk to much, or having regular coffee breaks with your favorite office pal when you bond with them about and beyond work.
This is where fully remote companies can reach their limits in trying to provide for rich company culture and a lively team spirit. And that’s why at Ofri, we do virtual coffee chats on a regular basis. Find out how and why it works!
Why we do coffee chats
In a nutshell: Virtual coffee chats create an opportunity for team members to get to know each other. Because let’s face it: The remote work world offers fewer casual opportunities for informal, face-to-face talks and communication than a traditional office environment does. So, we decided to create these opportunities. Many remote companies use virtual meet-ups to improve team ‘bonding’ and enrich company culture.
How we do coffee chats
We kicked off our first rounds of coffee chats in July 2020 – typically Ofri, with a bit of tech-savvy help: For more instantaneous, urgent, or fun communication we use the business communication platform Slack. It made sense for us to go for an integration called Donut on the same channel to organize our coffee chats.
Donuts automatically sets up the pairs or groups of three, if there is an odd number of people in the team every other week. All team members get a direct message when the pairing is done and Donut also suggests who should take initiative for setting up the meeting.
Once the team members have self-responsibly agreed on a day and time together, they meet up via the video call app of their choice and can chat for up to 30 minutes. In our case, this tends to be either Slack or Zoom. The general feeling that people are enjoying the opportunity to chat with each other, has been backed by survey evidence in the meantime. Oh, and by the way – the coffee chats are paid.
What the team thinks about our coffee chats
Check out these anonymous quotes from team members to get an authentic insight:
„It was a really nice experience for me, especially since I didn‘t know everyone yet and my field of work rather limits interactions with others.“
„I had the chance to get to know team members better. I think this improves cooperation and makes you feel connected even if you are not working in the same place. And: It's always fun and interesting chatting with people you do not know well yet!“
„The biggest benefit has definitely been to interact with colleagues on a more personal level.“
“I feel more connected with the people across the company and get to know people as people.”
And last but not least simply: “I think they're quite fun!“
Coffee Chat stats
6 out of 9 team members think the frequency of every two weeks is just right.
8 out of 9 team members thought that the length of 30minutes was just right for the allocated time.
3 Tipps and tricks for organizing coffee chats in your remote company
1. If your team members prefer to keep the duration of the coffee chats flexible, let them go ahead and arrange them personally. This is supposed to be fun and light and shouldn’t feel like an added stress.
2. Donut does send out quite a lot of messages sometimes. But we can adjust our personal settings and even turn reminders off in Slack. If you have a similar problem with the same or another app, encourage your team members to take initiative and adapt their settings to their liking.
3. Donut isn’t connected to our “Days-off and vacation calendar” and sometimes pairs people with people who are out of office. If this happens, allow the team members to make a note to arrange a chat when their part
