Meet people in person when working remote

Clarisa Guerra

When you start working remote, you miss the daily in-person contact with colleagues, but not all of it. Everyone needs social contact, but the right amount varies. Some people love days when they don’t have to see anyone in person. Fortunately for remote workers, social contact doesn’t have to come from colleagues.

Socialising in the office

In office jobs, you find yourself around people all day, every working day. With luck, and good choices, you even like them. Inevitably, given how long we spend at work, this fills much of our need for weekly social contact.

In my twenties, I enjoyed socialising with colleagues. We’d often end up going out for drinks after work, especially when we’d moved to another city or country to work on a client site, didn’t know anyone else there, and didn’t have any family commitments.

In my thirties, I worked in a small programmer-centric company. We barely talked during the day, but used the beer-filled fridge in the kitchen as meeting-avoidance hardware. Drinking beer after work one or two days per week, made most meetings unnecessary.

Working remote

In hindsight, I found socialising with colleagues fun, but not inclusive. You get a better team when you don’t limit your colleagues to tech bros who want to drink beer at work every day. It also means that you have both the space and obligation to arrange your own social life.

When working remote, you can design your own experience, instead of conforming to a specific in-person office culture. When you take responsibility for your own social contact, you can spend as much or as little time with people as you want.

Socialising in person

Working remote gives you opportunities to take control of social contact.

1. Decide how much social contact you want. You don’t have to see colleagues in person every day, and you don’t have to experience social isolation, just because you work remote.
2. Work in public places with other people. You don’t always have to interact with people. When you work in a cafe for a few hours a week, you can enjoy the atmosphere and ignore everyone.
3. Meet up with friends and ex-colleagues. Depending on where you live, you might enjoy a weekly lunch date with someone you know well.
4. Attend industry meet-ups. If you save your social energy for a one or two monthly local events, you can meet new people, and then not need to socialise as much for the rest of the week.
5. Attend industry conferences. Similarly, one or two annual conferences provide intense social contact, after which you might not need to socialise much for the rest of the month.
6. Travel to visit and co-work with friends for a week. Visit a friend or family member who you don’t see enough of because they live somewhere else, and (co-)work at their place for a week.
7. Meet colleagues in person. Meanwhile, when you work remote, you still need to see your teammates in person, ideally for a few days once every few months.

Once you get used to having more choices, you might find it hard to imagine ever going to back to a situation where you spend every working day in an office with the same people, whether want to talk to them or not.