It goes without saying that remote work is different from traditional in-office employment. One of the biggest missing components from working from home though is a lack of serendipity. You don’t run into co-workers in the break room or chat casually with them in the hallway when you’re working from your home office. Every interaction is with intention. While some people like this, others find that creativity suffers and feelings of isolation can grow. So how can you replicate the chance conversations and impromptu brainstorming sessions office life used to afford in a remote workplace? It sounds strange, but it may be helpful to introduce some randomness into the day. One company, called Zapier, has had success with scheduling random video calls between employees. There are no real rules to these conversations—employees can talk about whatever they want—and while this doesn’t exactly replicate running into a team member in the parking lot, it can go a long way in generating some outside-the-box thinking. A major benefit of enacting such a policy is that it can connect individuals who may never otherwise talk. Deb Teenen, an editor of the company’s content, experienced just that. “One of my first [random] calls at Zapier was with a product manager who happened to be starting on a project to redesign our Help page,” she said. “We had a great conversation about content design, but more importantly, it ended up kicking off a longer-term working relationship. I helped his team better understand content needs; he helped me think about information architecture on our blog.”
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