The Virtual Water Cooler - Combating loneliness with VMR's

Although video meetings make it possible to continue business operations as normal, the day-to-day social interaction between colleagues can be just as important for moral, drive, and mental health. And, with the right tools, you can make a pretty decent virtual lemonade out of your home office lemons.  

The morning chats by the coffee machine or the frequent visits to the water cooler are regular everyday moments we now realize were taken for granted. For some these social interactions are even the highlight of the day and necessary for their mental health. 

In the survey “State of Remote Work” conducted by Buffer in 2019, the participants stated loneliness as one of the biggest struggles of working remotely. While this is already an alarming number, we imagine this being even higher had this survey been conducted today.

As most businesses and organizations have managed to settle into routines for video conferencing at this point, meetings and operations are running smoothly.

This doesn’t change the fact that most employees aren’t given time to unwind and interact with each other on a personal level, without having to eat up valuable meeting time.   

At Synergy SKY we have colleagues working all around the world, most of us with a need for social interaction that is well above average. Wanting to bring the team together, and with the above factors in mind, the idea of a virtual water cooler came to life.  

 By dialing a water cooler number from a video client every member of the “Water cooler” channel in Slack gets a notification and can dial in to join you. We also added a bot that tells you a joke in case you need an ice breaker. 

Thanks to this set up we can meet by the water cooler when in the need of a short break, or for Friday afternoon drinks.  

This is not a product or solution from Synergy SKY, but a solution our colleagues have created while in quarantine. If you need help to set up something similar get in contact.