Office at Offsite: How Temporary Colocation Shapes Communication in an All-Remote Organization

Abstract

This paper investigates the joint role of temporary colocation events and demographic diversity in shaping online communication between workers in an all-remote organization. Motivated by the recent rise in remote work, the emergence of the all-remote organizational form and the resulting increase in diversity within such organizations, we examine the effectiveness of temporary colocation events at stimulating subsequent online interactions across demographic divides. Leveraging proprietary Slack communications data as well as data on a company-wide retreat from a fully remote organization, we find that though such retreats enhance subsequent online communication, the benefits are less pronounced for pairs of demographically dissimilar employees. However, quasi-exogenously sharing a taxi ride—a brief period of constrained temporary colocation with a limited number of interaction partners—can help overcome these barriers, increasing online interactions even between demographically dissimilar pairs. Our research contributes to the literatures on remote and distributed work and micro-geography within organizations.

Keywords: Remote Organizations, Distributed Work, Future of Work, Online Communication, Temporary Colocation, Demographic Diversity