In the era of working from home and hybrid working due to Covid-19 there has been one major challenge that doesn’t seem to have been satisfactorily solved: How do we socialise if we’re all working from home?
TechQuarters, a company providing IT support services in London, had a few things to say on this subject. We spoke to them about how some of their users have been using their Xboxes to stay in contact and socialise with each other during the pandemic.
“One of the things I never really thought about back when we were all in an office together is that you get to be around people from different departments,” says Ben from the company. “I’m in marketing, but the sales guys were one table over, and the IT guys just next door. We’d chat about or games we were playing, or films, etc. But when we started working from home, there wasn’t much overlap between departments.”
So, how did the company boost socialisation between departments after the office was closed down?
“It started off on Minecraft!” says Ben, “a couple of people from IT asked who was on it, and if they wanted to create an official TQ server (Note: that’s “official TechQuarters server”), just for a laugh. But we got pretty serious with it, some sales guys got involves. We tried building a town; but it didn’t go well.”
So, it seems the Xbox network is a great way to stay in touch with colleagues that you might not have much to do with at work. For this IT support company in London, it certainly helped during 2020 and seems to be carrying on still! But what are the best games for work colleagues to play together?
“Minecraft was pretty big for us early on and we still go on the TQ server occasionally,” says Ben, “but we’re always up for trying out new multiplayers. Sea of Thieves is a favourite of mine. We played Golf with your Friends for a while but that started ruining some newly made friendships…”
So, if its becoming harder to have office parties and company dinners, could company gaming sessions be the new thing? Are there many businesses out there doing the same thing?
“I don’t personally know of any other IT companies in London that do it, but there must be some out there. Perhaps we can start one big Minecraft Realm together or start an IT support championship on Forza Horizon!”
