Why people stay with their teams
Colleagues are safe. They also know what to talk about. Walking up to someone from another department means risking an awkward conversation with someone who may later review your work. Your plan needs to make that feel safe and worthwhile.
Build mixing into the schedule
- Assign seating for one meal, by something other than team. Announce it in advance, and don’t do it every meal.
- Mix working groups for one session on a real question, so they have a reason to talk.
- Pair up newer hires, especially those who’ve joined remotely, with people outside their team.
Avoid forced fun
Adults can tell when they’re being managed. Avoid anything mandatory, or anything that rewards the loudest person in the room. Give people a choice, and don’t track who takes part. Keep in mind that people who drink less, who have kids, or who dislike big groups need ways to join too.
Respect privacy
If you’re going to collect anything, make sure people know who sees it. Any hint that leadership is watching who talks to whom will kill it. Keep away from questions about performance, pay or health.
Using Flare at a company social
Flare can make introductions by what people know and what they’re curious about. Ask what they’d like to understand better about the company, what they could explain to someone over a drink, and something about weekends. Someone from sales gets matched with someone in engineering, and they go and find each other.
It doesn’t need your HR system or SSO, and it holds no employee records. People use their own iPhones and answer privately. You get totals (how many joined and how many introductions led to a meeting) and nothing else. Leadership can’t see who talked to whom, because we don’t give that information to anyone. That’s also a limit: if you’d like to report on who met whom, this isn’t the tool for that.
Make it optional. Mention it in the offsite note so that people can install it beforehand, and offer it for one social hour rather than the whole week.