I just started at a 100% remote company. I don't feel a loss of social interaction here, but I did at my previous company. There's a couple things I would note if you want to succeed with a remote culture:
- Have very direct conversations on your team about how you want communication to go. Our agreements sit right next to our team charter.
- How the company manages chat seems to affect how people communicate. If there's zero organization and everything gets dumped into a single channel, then people also stop bantering in that channel.
- Company chat channels shouldn't just be for business. Have some community channels that let people coordinate around topics. Supply "feed" channels where people can dump pictures and videos; I tend to post pictures of my dog, plants, or brews.
- Let people create channels on their own but give them a framework for doing so. That way they're more discoverable and descriptive. For instance, all of our community channels start with #comm- and team channels start with #team-
- Email should only be for formal and external communication. Having all of your communication in one place, for the most part, is quite nice.
- Establish quasi-working hours. My team has a window where all or most of us are online. It's not super strict, but it's there so we can coordinate. Most of our work is done asynchronously though.
- Have a stated bias towards using video. We also use the video tool built into our chat application instead of something external like Zoom.
- All meetings are remote first.
- Have very direct conversations on your team about how you want communication to go. Our agreements sit right next to our team charter.
- How the company manages chat seems to affect how people communicate. If there's zero organization and everything gets dumped into a single channel, then people also stop bantering in that channel.
- Company chat channels shouldn't just be for business. Have some community channels that let people coordinate around topics. Supply "feed" channels where people can dump pictures and videos; I tend to post pictures of my dog, plants, or brews.
- Let people create channels on their own but give them a framework for doing so. That way they're more discoverable and descriptive. For instance, all of our community channels start with #comm- and team channels start with #team-
- Email should only be for formal and external communication. Having all of your communication in one place, for the most part, is quite nice.
- Establish quasi-working hours. My team has a window where all or most of us are online. It's not super strict, but it's there so we can coordinate. Most of our work is done asynchronously though.
- Have a stated bias towards using video. We also use the video tool built into our chat application instead of something external like Zoom.
- All meetings are remote first.