In an instant, every company became a remote company. Regardless of culture. Regardless of market. Everyone who managed to survive the instantaneous and cataclysmic downturn was suddenly working from home. And juggling any number of duties in addition to their day job. And just as suddenly, things that used to require a personal touch simply couldn’t.
This change didn’t only impact the work being done. It directly disrupted the culture of the companies being built. It changed the tools they used from nice to haves into mission critical infrastructure. Whether their teams were used to using them or not.
And if you’re part of a company that hadn’t dealt with being an online first, remote company, how are you supposed to convey and support company culture in a Slack channel? That’s where Portland startup ChatFox is hoping to help.
As they highlight in a recent blog post, the challenge of remote worker isolation is real. And we’re all isolated now.
Although loneliness has a role to play in remote work isolation, it is more than just being alone. As an in-office team member, you get to have all of the water cooler chats, coffee room chats, birthday celebrations, etc. These things can be mimicked to a degree using various communication strategies. What you do not get is to be part of the team’s successes. Those impromptu professional catch-ups around the office can move teams closer to meeting deliverables as well as impacting an individual’s mobility within the organization.
After installing the chat app on Slack or Microsoft Teams, the bot goes to work. Offering things like coffee chats and icebreakers to get employees connected and communicating. And ensuring your team members can gauge their progress and connectivity. Working to recreate that serendipity of an in person office environment.
The ChatFox app has a free tier for startups and starts at $2 per team member for larger organizations.
For more information or to try it out, visit ChatFox.
