6. Virtual coffee breaks
Academia is a human endeavor, a social activity. The image of the solitary lab-rat scientist is nothing more than a dated stereotype and it is well known that the academic international environment facilitates creativity.
In the home-office, fewer interruptions are great, more work done! But we still all need mindless breaks, and it helps breaking the isolation if you spend some of them with your team. Enter the virtual coffee break. At Gitlab, they are part of the company strategy to create “
a more comfortable, well-rounded environment” to work in.
Virtual coffee break can be done by setting up specific times during the week in which lab members can take a break, call in and chat (great for groups with coffee break at mandated hours), or via a single, permanent chat room to goof around, discuss news, sharing funny pictures and breaking the work routine with the team. The wonderful thing about the #random channel is that it does not require constant attention, it is something that one looks at (if they want) during natural breaks. You are in control of your social interactions, of course, when it happens and how much of it.
Many companies, like
Revelry and
Groove, dedicate a specific chat channel (in whatever platform they use for it) to virtual
#watercooler conversations, and so does Wiley's own Physics and Materials Science editorial group. For research groups suddenly separated by necessary social distancing practices, a virtual coffee break is part of new reality: