Hi everyone,

First post! Discovered the community this morning and loving it.

I work for a tech startup with employees across the UK, Spain, Germany and in different parts of the US. We are fully remote - that is, no office nor any intention of having one - and in terms of operations, logistics and most other aspects of the work we do, we're experiencing no difficulties. The nature of our work is such that we are capable of doing most everything virtually, and the intention has been to hire globally with the funds we would otherwise spend on things an office would cost. This has proven largely successful.

The singular issue we have is relating to social activity. The team are spread far and wide, with no clear 'hub' in any location, and there are some difficulties we are facing in terms of the culture. People all work by themselves, at home - and while they are often on calls or in virtual conference rooms, there is a gap in terms of pure relationship-building. Some of the team - largely, in Engineering - are very resistant to increasing social activity, whereas others in the business are crying out for some ways to change this. We're improving cross-team communication in a general sense, but in terms of social activity there's a clear disconnect. We are organising a company retreat; pulling people all into one in-person location in Europe later on this year which will build a community among our current staff, but as we scale I'm concerned it wont solve our issues.

Has anyone had any real success with this? I'm trying to avoid 'enforced fun' scenarios if I can but it seems like that's the only real direction I can go at this point.

Thanks!