Remote work isn't a phase anymore; it's just how many people work now. According to Gallup, more than half of remote-capable U.S. employees work in a hybrid arrangement, and roughly a quarter work fully remotely. But easy access to your own kitchen doesn't replace the small, human moments that used to happen by accident: coffee with a coworker, asking about someone's weekend, the lunch-table conversation that happens before a meeting officially starts.
We've been fully remote for years. Here's what's kept our own team close.
1. Start with a positive attitude
Simple in theory, harder in practice some days: a genuinely positive outlook toward your work and your coworkers keeps a remote team's momentum going in a way that's hard to fake once it's gone. Celebrate wins, professional and personal. Smile on camera. And assume your coworkers are doing their best, the same way you're doing yours.
That last one matters more than it sounds. Assuming good intent builds trust and makes people feel safer bringing up problems early, before they turn into bigger ones. You don't need a big gesture to show you're glad to be working with someone.
2. Make your tools work beyond tasks
Every remote team already has Slack, Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet running in the background. The tools aren't the differentiator anymore; how you use them is. A channel full of status updates and a channel full of actual conversation look identical on the surface, but only one of them makes people feel like part of a team.
That means using video on purpose, not just defaulting to it, and building habits that make space for small talk that used to happen incidentally at the water cooler.
3. Create fun channels
This is one of the easiest ways to put your tools to work socially. A "pets" channel where people share pictures of their dogs and cats. A "workouts" channel, a "what are you listening to" channel, a "true crime enthusiasts" channel, whatever your team actually cares about outside of work. These give people a reason to open Slack or Teams for something other than a task.
Two things worth knowing before you go channel-crazy: joining too many will bury you in notifications fast, and at a certain company size, individual interest channels may start feeling more like noise than connection.
4. Organize a monthly social hour
No team-building activity is going to feel effortlessly cool, and that’s fine. Being “at work” makes people hold back a little, no matter what’s on the agenda.
A few activities that have worked for our team include:
- Jackbox games
- Virtual escape rooms
- Online happy hours
- Ordering food together
- Gift exchanges
- Costume contests
- Genuinely silly icebreakers
A couple of things that make these land better: hold it on a Friday afternoon, so people head into the weekend already feeling good instead of having to tune back into work mode right after. And mix up the format: structured games one month, something looser like show-and-tell the next, so nobody's social battery gets drained by the same thing every time.
We never force anyone to join. It's stayed optional for years, and somehow we've still ended up with plenty of genuinely funny, sometimes touching moments together.
5. Make employee well-being a priority
Burnout is a real risk for any team, but remote work blurs the line between "home" and "work," making it easier to sneak up on you. The stakes are real, too: burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times more likely to be actively job hunting. Remote teams can support employee well-being by:
- Offering reasonable flexibility around working hours
- Encouraging midday walks, workouts, and brain breaks
- Respecting employees’ local time zones
- Questioning whether every meeting is necessary
- Giving employees uninterrupted time for focused work
Flexible hours help, within reason. So does encouraging people to step away midday for a workout, a walk, or just a brain break, then come back with a clearer head. It's a small trade against the occasional scheduling headache.
Time zones end up helping here more than you'd think. Before booking a coworker for an 8 a.m. call in their time, ask yourself if it's actually necessary. That pause alone cuts a lot of unnecessary meetings, and fewer unnecessary meetings mean savings for clients in meeting time and more focus when they do happen.
6. Say more than you think you need to
Text alone is missing half the information in-person conversation carries: tone, pace, environment, body language, and the pause before someone answers. When something feels the least bit unclear, jump on a quick Zoom call or Slack huddle instead of trying to type your way through it.
The same goes for feedback. Quarterly check-ins between coworkers and supervisors mean nobody gets blindsided by a surprise in their annual review, and frequent, informal manager check-ins give people face time with the person who has a say in their career beyond a scheduled once-a-year conversation.
7. Schedule unstructured time on purpose
The best team-building moments often happen during unstructured time together.
Take our monthly "dev chat," where developers talk through industry updates, current events, highs/lows, and shifts in how they work. Design and marketing run something similar on their own cadence. None of it is formal: people drop in and out, eat snacks, make jokes, and work through questions together as they arise.
If you happen to travel to where a coworker lives, make the effort to have lunch or coffee together in person. And every few years, when the company's grown or changed enough to justify it, a company-wide retreat is probably worth the investment.
Still learning as we go
Remote work comes with unique, very real challenges, but we've built a connected team across multiple zip codes and time zones, without ever sharing an office. If any of this helps your team find its own version of that, that's exactly the point.
