I've tried doing audio messages before but i find it unbearable - both to listen to them and record them. I just love async text; i want nothing more than email/github
It feels like a simple gesture, but it solved many issues at once:
- unless something urgent was scheduled over it, it was a period where you'd be sure you wouldn't be interrupting the lead, and are free to ask questions. You never felt like you were wasting their time, it's already baked into the schedule.
- There's a lot less friction just unmuting a mic and talking to a group than pinging a channel or sending a DM, but also a larger guaranteed of a prompt reply.
- it was an informal meeting half the time, so it was a good way to semi-organically team bond compared to leaving a huge paper trail of sports discussion in a team channel. It also means it's very easy to invite others in if their help is needed. A few times, it'd be a "talk" period where we'd invite another team and they use the time to share knowledge of what they are working on.
- even if you had nothing to help or help out with, it was a great way to shadow the work of others and get a feel for how the team overall is doing. The most underrated aspect of an office space is hearing all this tribal knowledge in the background as you work, or during a break. This helped a bit to bring that back.
- Breakout rooms. If there was 2-3 parallel discussions forming, we can simply divide the meeting up instead of going through that weird song and dance of prioritizing discussions (hopefully not dropping it entierly) or booking another room.
Some companies went the complete opposite extreme and more or less made it an obligation to stay on such a "meeting".
Text can solve some of these issues, but if the walky-talky was anything similar to our office hours, I can see the appeal. It could be a generational issue, but you just don't get much "idle chatter" in formal chatrooms in my experience. Some people absolutely love that and lets them work more focused. Others can start to feel isolated from the team and the mission, so that socialization can help break the ice.
1. this was completely optional. it was a daily timeslot but we didn't go every day. We were more than free to schedule other meetings over it as it was the lowest priority.
2. Timezones will always be weird, but fwiw ours was at 3pm and slotted for an hour. Usually we could go over if there was a particularly thorny task but we respected everyone's time. Towards the end of the day but not quite around the point where we started to check out for the day.
3. The time should hopefully feel productive in some way. We never did any kind of "team bonding exercise" that'd fit more into some party icebreaker. we were professionals, and outside of some very specific hobbies members shared (e.g. half the team loved music production and would occasionally talk about sound design topics) I'd say 80% of the "active" hours were focused more on getting unblocked from some tasks. I think that's why it was important to frame it as "office hours" and not "social time".
4. It was absolutely okay to have quieter days. There was no pressure to speak out or pretend to be engaged or whatnot. After the first few weeks we'd normally just start with no video on and it'd be a small voice chat. There were days where 1 or more members just cut out early (and since it was a 4-6 person team, if half or more weren't engaged and the rest weren't stuck, we'd just not do it). There were others where it was just maybe 5 minutes of small talk and people just stayed in the ambience. It was common for at least one person at any time to be muted, so again: no pressure to engage. It was time for us to utilize.
Maybe it simply doesn't work for you, but I wouldn't cast off the entire idea just yet.
