Building the Team Spirit: Virtual Communities at Fonoa

Fonoa has been a fully distributed company from day one. It allows us to be more flexible and hire the best talent, no matter where they are. However, building a community when everyone is working remotely isn't easy. To bring our team together, we regularly hang out after work virtually.

When you are not working in an office, you miss interactions that happen naturally in an office: a quick chat about your holiday plans at the water cooler, lunch with your colleagues, or spontaneous conversations. These interactions are important to feel good at work and get to know your co-workers. At Fonoa, we rarely meet in person so we build communities virtually to bring people together.

Thanks to our virtual communities, I can learn more about my colleagues and get to know them. It improves me as a person, as it broadens my horizons on many levels. I can discuss problems with people that have diverse backgrounds and experiences. This perspective enables me to learn about different personal approaches and how to be more efficient in communications.

Here are some of the virtual communities where we spend time, learn and have fun together:

• At Fonoa, people appreciate learning together. That's why we have a virtual Book club where we read the same book, then discuss it and connect some interesting points with our business. It is a great way to learn something new together and bond as a team. 
• We also have a Books and Podcasts Slack channel, where we share our favourite reads and listens. 
• Those, who are interested in investing, can join our dedicated community to talk and learn about investment strategies.
• Music Swap is a Slack channel where we share the bangers and our favourite playlists. 
• In our Cooking and recipes community, we share recipes we love and pictures of the most impressive dishes we made. 
• In the Fitness time channel, we share fitness tips and learnings of our fitness journeys. 
• The Automotive community is all about cars, motorbikes, and everything that has an engine. 
• Craft beer is a virtual community for craft beer lovers. 
• We have some Call of Duty fans at Fonoa, who created a gaming channel called Una cod, and even a clan in the game to play Call of Duty together after work.
• We created an inclusive community of women and allies called Women of Fonoa and a channel for Parents at Fonoa to discuss how hard and fun it is to keep the little ones alive :)

We have numerous communities inside Fonoa where we discuss things we like outside the business. These communities are open to all Fonoa employees, and they play an important role in keeping our co-workers together as a team and nurturing our company culture.