VIRTUE | CHIT CHAT

Corona has put us at risk of loneliness. We’ve adapted to a the digital workflows, but this came at the expense of human connection. Working from home made us focus on efficiency and productivity, basically banning out small talk, neglecting building up social fabric and creative culture.

A study by the University of Michigan showed small talk enhances executive functioning, a set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. In other words, small talk made people better at their job, in both social and non-social activities. Another study by the Academy of Management showed that small talk promotes wellbeing and mental health, contributes to positive emotions of employees and fosters good workplace citizenship.

That seemingly insignificant chit chat about weekend benders, vegan recipes or cross fit scores are worth more than the occasional raised eyebrow. They’re a driving force behind innovation, collaboration and efficiency. An invisible machine that propels company performance forward, and ‘rona pulled the plug on this invisible machine.

So we created Chit Chat. A small talk enabling Slack tool that connects people to random colleagues from around the world for five minutes, after which they automatically get connected to someone else. If the conversations are great you can extend it and you can get talking points if you run into awkward silences. We used it to build connections across the team scattered across 21 markets and the tool worked so well, that we thought of giving it away for the world to use for free.

Try it for yourself here.

TLDR: To fight isolation & maintain company culture, we created Chit Chat. A free Slack App for some well-needed human connection, free to use by any company out there.