A tool that has helped me keep close to my team while remote
Well everyone talks about this topic nowadays, don’t they? I didn’t want to be different.
Before the pandemic I was already taking a day per week, give it or take, and even though I thought the full remote thing would not work for me.
Why? Because I imagined how difficult would be to develop personal relationships in a new team or in a new company while being completely async in a chat room, and only to talk about work.
And this has been the main problem for most people and companies, right? Or at least one of them. How to keep the relationships between people.
The company I work for, during the pandemic, implemented a system or a tool, whatever you wanna call it, that I haven’t seen any other company do and help me a lot, because I switched to a new team during the pandemic and I had no relationship with these new people.
That was, Discord. Discord was one of the popular tools to help remote teams work, and what my company did was create a server for us where we have audio rooms, mimicking the rooms in the office, for the teams to gather if they want.
What happened was, not all team members of my team did this, but a few of us gather during the day in our team room.
My work day starts by turning on the computer and join my team room and I spend my day in there with other team members. Of course we do not keep all day talking with each other but every time anyone has any doubt it’s as simple as just shout a “Ana, are you there? — Yes, what’s happening?” or just to share something personal or a funny moment like one of my team members got a new cat and we keep hearing his adventures with his new baby cat and how she plays the guitar and chew his computer cables :D
I feel like this is very similar to the dynamic that could be happening in the office.
Helped me a lot when I switched teams because I was able to ask help synchronously, I didn’t need to send a message in a chat and wait for a person to join somewhere and speak with me and also helped to build a relationship with my team because we have a lot of synchronously moments to speak with each other during the day.
And of course, as in the office, it‘s ok to turn off the audio and be on your own hearing your music while still being present in the audio room, and if someone needs you it’s as simple as to click in the turn on button and everyone can chat with you again.
This is my take of it, would be nice to see other companies implement something like this, it’s not perfect but it might help a bit.
