Let me guess: You love the flexibility and perks of remote work, but can’t help but wonder: Is something missing from my team’s culture? And if something is missing, is the only way to bring it back with a Return-To-Office mandate? (Spoiler: We don’t think so!)
Gather gives distributed teams a virtual office: a place where you can collaborate like you’re in person. In addition to video calls and chat messages, you can stop by someone's digital desk or wave people over to join your conversation. It's a way to bring back natural communication to the overly scheduled life of remote work.
Sounds great, but does it work?
I could tell you why I personally love working in Gather’s virtual office, but we both know I’m biased. Instead, I’ll share exactly what our customers say about using Gather.
The top 5 benefits of collaborating in a virtual office, according to Gather users:
- Increased employee engagement and retention rates
- Fewer meetings on the calendar
- Faster communication loops & shorter conversation times
- Easier on-the-spot mentorship
- Greater sense of connection to the team and fewer feelings of isolation
1. Increased employee engagement and retention rates
When new teams pilot Gather, they often refer to internal engagement surveys or retention metrics to gauge if Gather is making an impact.
Customer Example:
Human-I-T is an organization that had a strong in-person culture that suffered during the pandemic and continued to decline as they expanded remote operations. After using Gather, employee retention improved by 70%.
Of course, Gather alone won’t fix your company’s attrition issues. However, it gives your remote team a place to put strong company values into action. Instead of an isolating work environment, you have a shared place to engage the team.
“I've seen a drastic shift in attitude in terms of how happy the team is to actually show up on work, as well as the level of collaboration that the team is doing as part of their day to day tasks.”
Robert O., CTO via G2
Customer Example:
Weme, an innovation agency in Brazil, began surveying employees weekly to gauge their happiness with work. After rolling out Gather, weme saw a 10% improvement in employee engagement thanks to a less isolating work environment.
2. Fewer meetings on the calendar
Remote employees tend to fill their calendars with standups, coffee chats, and coworking blocks simply to maintain face-to-face time with colleagues. While it’s important to maintain relationships, forced conversations aren’t always the best way to do it.
With Gather, instead of relying on scheduled interactions, you can simply walk up to someone’s desk or Wave them over if you want to talk. The result? Fewer meetings and more natural conversations.
Customer Example:
Engineers at Beatport will look around their Gather office to find available designers to pair up to review prototypes. Because they can find five minutes during the day when people are free, they’ve been able to cancel meetings and keep calendars open.
The visuals of seeing when and where people are talking also make it easy to walk in and out of conversations – again, without ever scheduling anything or jumping between meeting links.
A few examples:
- A senior engineer can wave a junior developer over to shadow a bug fix at the moment of discovery
- A new hire can overhear their teammates talking to absorb context about the business
- A product manager can walk over to the support team’s desk pod to get qualitative feedback on a recent launch
3. Faster communication loops & shorter conversation times
The average conversation on Gather is less than 10 minutes long. For comparison, the average Zoom meeting in 2022 was 52 minutes. (Source)
The difference is due to how easy it is to walk up and quickly talk to someone in Gather versus relying on formally scheduled meetings or long chat messages. Our customers say this helps them get unblocked and make decisions faster because it feels like collaborating in a physical office.
“To talk to someone, you don't need to write a message or make a call; you simply approach their space and can communicate with them by voice, which often speeds up communication and brings the experience closer to that of working in a real office.”
Laura S., Frontend Developer via G2
Customer Example:
CTO Labs is an Australian consulting firm. Their CTO, Mike Mengell, loves that Gather has brought back “the moments between meetings.” As employees move around their office, they typically keep their video on to have passing conversations in the halls. These quick interactions help them build and maintain relationships without sitting through 8 hours of back-to-back Zoom calls.
Pro-tip: During your 30-day Gather Office Free Trial, you can see your team’s average conversation length in the Insights Dashboard. You can use this to gauge if your team is taking full advantage of the ease of conversations in Gather.
4. Easier on-the-spot mentorship
When you have a question and need help from someone, you can simply look around your virtual office and find someone available at their desk. There’s no need to pull up calendars, and no need to waste time typing out the dreaded “Hey, are you free for 5 minutes?” message.
“In some of my prior remote jobs, the only way to tell who was around and "available" was clicking around a list of Slack statuses. Talk about isolating—not to mention uninviting for a newcomer with questions.”
Katherine L., Technical Writer via G2
Whether you’re a senior engineer mentoring a junior developer, a hiring manager onboarding a new employee, or an individual contributor building skip-level relationships, Gather breaks down barriers so everyone in the organization becomes more approachable.
Customer Example:
TradeLink is a remote-first company that’s been able to scale team culture thanks to Gather. Their Head of People & Culture, Mareike Knappe, described how Gather helps onboard new employees: “They quickly learn who is working in which team and can build these connections within a matter of a few days! Easy and efficient onboarding processes. It’s uncomplicated.”
5. Greater sense of connection to the team and fewer feelings of isolation
Almost 25% of remote workers struggle with loneliness, according to Buffer’s State of Remote Work.
Collaborating in a virtual office helps combat feelings of isolation because you can see people talking to each other and working around you. Even though it’s a digital representation, you can feel that you’re not alone. This sense of presence helps people feel more connected to their teammates and company culture.
Here’s a sample of what Gather users have to say about feeling connected to their teams:
“In the past week of using [Gather], this is the first time in four years I’ve actually felt like I was part of an organization and not just a guy who lives in Atlanta and works for Beatport.”
A member of the Beatport Engineering Team
“The best thing about Gather is that you feel like you're in the office. You see your coworkers gathered together, and you can already get an idea of what they might be talking about.”
Pablo G., Fullstack Developer via G2
“Remote work is often very impersonal, making it harder to establish camaraderie or a sense of connection with team members. With Gather and its visual environment, this distance seems to shrink a little.”
Laura S., Frontend Developer via G2
Conclusion
We talk to distributed teams every day who benefit from collaborating in a virtual office on Gather. From productivity benefits like reducing meetings to cultural benefits like increasing engagement, these teams break down barriers and increase connection.
Want to know if Gather is right for your team? Get started with a 30-day Office Free Trial. If your team has more than 50 employees, contact us, and we’d be happy to discuss a custom onboarding plan.