>To me the only thing lost when WFH vs working in the office are the random conversations you eventually pick up when passing by the coffee machine
The way to get these is to basically ban private conversations. Have everything as a thread in Slack or somewhere, create topic channels where people can actually join these conversations
You want to get more conversations by banning conversations? That makes no sense.
We are not machines that convert money (or food/coffee) into code. Social contexts matter, there are personalities behind each face. If you understand the context of your co-workers then it's easier to understand online communication (since most non-verbal communication that happens in person is lost over online channels). Meeting in person sometimes just makes online communication more effective.
Often people will default to DMs for things, which makes it appear like no one is chatting and isolates these casual chats to 1:1 DMs.
If you encourage these kind of conversations to happen in channels (Public or private), other people can jump into the conversation.
I've seen the difference it makes when everything is done in public channels instead of DMs. Everything feels more lively and you interact with your team a lot more. Everything in DMs feels isolating.
Banning private conversations gets you fewer conversations. It's intimidating to talk in front of a lot of people. Even moreso without the trust built up from a bunch of in person interactions.
It would help if there were an easier way to convert a short 1:1 chat into a public thread with a consent click on each side though.
If there were better communication tools than slack I think I'd enjoy WFH more but I find that the commonly used tools dehumanize the process - there's 0 adjustments (like this one) to accomodate psychological safety and the tools are built around transactionality.
The way to get these is to basically ban private conversations. Have everything as a thread in Slack or somewhere, create topic channels where people can actually join these conversations