The Arena Newsletter
Issue 48 | February 17, 2022
“The water-cooler conversation in every job I’ve had is sports, it’s what did you do this weekend, it’s ‘How are your parents doing?'’” — Kal Penn
For decades, “water cooler moments” have been an important part of office life, the “informal conversations that people have in their office or workplace” (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/water-cooler). When the COVID-19 pandemic shifted a majority of the workforce to working remotely, however, those everyday water cooler moments disappeared. As we spend more and more time working from home, what are we missing?

The Importance of the Water Cooler
In an office setting, the water cooler (or anything in an office that creates a place to gather) provides a space for co-workers to bump into one another and chat about work projects, home life, popular shows, sports, hobbies, everything. Those moments of quick, unpredictable check-ins are harder to replicate when the whole office is working remotely.
Option 1: Create a Different Avenue
So how do we remedy this? Recreating those water-cooler moments from afar takes a different type of intentionality and level of planning. In the article “Four Ways to Spark Water Cooler Moments for Your Remote Team,” Forbes Magazine recommends:

“More neutral online spaces, where no one has strong ownership or plays a role in facilitating conversation, are ideal for reducing isolation and enabling genuine dialogue. To encourage genuine connection and build a strong community, consider creating company channels like a WhatsApp group, Slack channel, or an online message board where people can post about non-work topics and share commentary when they’re feeling inspired to” (Howland 2021).

Encourage your colleagues and employees to experiment with different avenues of less formal chats, from video chats to instant-messaging platforms: Everyone is going to have different preferences - which can be discussed around the virtual water-cooler!

In April’s newsletter, we'll discuss Option 2.
Office culture may never return to the way it was before the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon everything associated with it. Whether you find yourself back in the office or setting up a 5-minute virtual chat to talk through the latest episode of your favorite TV show with a co-worker, water cooler moments are still as important as ever; we just have to find the proverbial water cooler.
In the Arena
The Arena App has built-tasks: Why not create a task entitled, “setup a structure for informal water-color conversations”?
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