Finding Community in a Digital World

Many of us have made the shift to working from home. Few of us though, have made this shift having never gotten to work full time in an office before. I am one of those people. I was lucky enough to have had in person internships. Some of my favorite moments of each day were being able to share about what we all did over the weekend, complimenting each other on our trendy business casual wear, and getting to riff about the good and the bad throughout the day.

I loved these conversations as an intern. I imagined that when I was a full time employee and a peer to my coworkers the conversation would be leveled up. My favorite part of the day would become even more spectacular than it was.

When I found out that I was going to be working remotely I had many different feelings. I had worries, concerns, and excited thoughts — I was also feeling very cheated. Cheated of those in person casual conversations that turn coworkers into friends.

I knew people who went from working in person to home who would create a zoom rooms for coworkers to chat in, have digital lunches, or something like that. The issue was that those relied on having existing relationships with your coworkers. As a new employee I didn’t have those relationship. And as a team of 2 people, team meetings were 1 on 1s.

Luckily for me, my company had something called ERGs, or employee resource groups, one of them was the women’s erg which I decided to lean into. I started as a slack channel member, who upgraded to a zoom meeting attending member, and graduated to creating my own event.

Roses, buds, and thorns.

I decided that this meeting was going to fulfill my need for coworker small chat and how I would make friends in the organization — it did that. Roses, buds and thorns was a time each week where people could share the good(roses), the upcoming(buds) and bad(thorns) that they were facing. The conversation was open to both personal and professional items. I hosted these meetings and learned that I wasn’t the only one craving small talk. People need a place to chat with their coworkers about their lives. Sharing ranged from new recipes people were trying, to the death of loved ones, dealing with medical conditions at work and everything in between.

I am unable to have that pre-work small talk with coworkers, I am able to create a new digital first tradition with my coworkers.

If you’re wanting to create a space for people to share with each other, I recommend starting a roses, buds, and thorns group.