Best Virtual Break Room Tool for Remote Companies
Create the most fun virtual break room for your remote to hang out in! Get started in minutes.
What is virtual break room?
In a physical office, spontaneous interaction happens organically even without being labeled as such. That quick chat you had with someone to clear up some project objectives right after an all-hands meeting, conversation in the coffee queue, or chatting with your colleague on the way out from the office. Unscheduled conversations are at the core of our interaction. In a physical environment, they’re guided by our location and proximity to others.
If you’re using a tool like ZOOM for your remote work communications, spontaneity rarely occurs organically. It’s challenging to catch up with someone when you’re both embedded in a meeting that has 20 participants and someone is giving a presentation. Unfortunately, the limitations of standard video-conferencing significantly take away from the experience that one would otherwise have if working from a physical location.
A virtual break room is an online space that you deliberately set up for spontaneous interactions. It’s a permanent digital video-conferencing space that is always open and allows anyone from your organization to show up at any time to speak with other participants who are already over there.
Virtual team building with flat.social
While working remotely has shown incredible benefits in the past years, a physical office still makes it easier for team members to meet, network and have fun together. Fostering company culture while everyone is distributed around the world is hard and the tools that we currently have at our disposal are optimised for productivity, not connection.
But this is changing.
Remote teams use flat.social to socialise, collaborate and throw virtual parties! Create a permanent meeting space where each guest can move around, talk with others in proximity and hide for gossip in private rooms. It’s fun, creative, unstructured and nourishes the connections between your team members. With a number of activities designed to bring your team together, flat.social can act both as a company event space and a permanent virtual office where your remote team can hang out, play and collaborate.
What are the benefits of a virtual break room?
A virtual water-cooler
Majority of meetings that happen remotely need to be scheduled ahead of time. Participants need to click on the invite link at the same time and there is usually a a goal-oriented agenda involved. Organised meetings are great for productivity! Nevertheless, this dynamic largely omits the social aspect of remote work. In a physical office, team bonding happens not only through work but also during moments that are not deliberately productive. Think about the kitchen conversations, bumping into someone in the hallway or grabbing a quick coffee with one of your team mates.
Cross-team communication
If you’re working remotely, there is a high probability that the great majority of your daily interactions happen with people that you work with directly. While this is necessary, on a high-level it can lead to teams closing into silos and not communication important information outside.
How to create a virtual break room in flat.social?
The answer is simple - create a virtual office on flat.social where your remote team will be able to hang out and chat like they would be in a physical location together.
Flat.social allows your remote team to brainstorm, connect and collaborate in a fun virtual workspace that replicates the communicational dynamics of a physical office. At the core, every participant can move around and talk with others in proximity. (watch a demo video here)
Creating your first virtual workspace is really simple - you only need to create a permanent space (takes less than minute) and distribute the link to your team.
1. Sign up for free & create a virtual space on flat.social
2. Customise the space and brand it with your team’s logo
3. Add the link to the calendar invites. The link to a flat is permanent and never changes which makes it easier to join in.
4. If you wish, connect the virtual space with your Slack workspaceand set up recurring reminders that will notify your team about any events and meetings that you would like to organise in the space.
Movement and Interaction
With flat.social participants are not chained to a grid of tiny squares like they would in a classic videoconference. Instead, they can move around the rooms like they would in any multiplayer game.
Learn more about movement & interaction
Rooms & Activities
Your new virtual spaces can consist of multiple different types of rooms. Each room can be different - a mini-game, activity or something special for your team.
Dependently on the type of room, you will be able to host from 10 to 100 simultaneous guests.
See rooms & activities available
Spatial Media
By default each guest can only hear & see others around. Spatial audio and video allows for more natural and spontaneous conversations that are based on proximity, not on the loudest guests.
Want to speak with someone? Simply fly up!
Learn more about spatial audio & video
Collaborative, real-time whiteboard
Add colorful drawings, images, stickers, sticky notes and much more. Whichever room or activity type you choose, you can use it as a real-time collaborative whiteboard.
Build your own space
Build your own virtual space for your team or event by selecting from many of the available rooms and activities.
Each room is special and can be placed in whichever position you want. Fancy a quick retreat on the beach? Simply add the beach elements into your space :)
Physics 💫
Expression
It's so much more than just a plain video-chat. Guests in a flat.social meeting can express themselves through a variety of virtual gestures and customizations on how they present themselves.
From becoming a godzilla to doing a frog dance, it's all built to be playful and interactive.
Presentations and Screensharing
Engage your guests with interactive presentations and talks by using the spatial screen sharing and broadcasting features! Whether you're giving a talk or want to present something with a real-time video stream, sharing the live screenshare will be an experience that seamlessly integrates into the virtual space.
Frequently asked questions
What are the fun features of flat.social?
From flying around to playing football and doing a frog dance, there is plenty! We built those features to make flat.social the most fun place to organise an event online. Read more features that we built.
Is there a need to install anything?
No need to install anything new. It all runs in the web browser both on desktop and mobile. Safari and Chrome are doing great, Firefox is catching up!
Do you support simultaneous screensharing?
Yep, a number of participants can screenshare at the same time. Those can be positioned next to each other or distributed in various locations around the virtual space.
How much does it cost?
Check out thepricing page to see free and pro plans available.
Can I use it as an alternative to ZOOM or Microsoft Teams?
Sure, if all you do is fun and creative meetings! (we sincerly hope so:)
Over the past 3 years we learned that while ZOOM and Microsoft teams are amazing tools to keep you productive, they're not optimized to to keep a group of people connected, engaged and happy.
Hence, flat.social was created. It does not aim to be a complete replacement - it's an addition for when the priorities switch from productivity to human interaction. It's here to bring smile and show that spontanous creative moments and connections can happen without having to travel to an office or an event venue.
How do participants move in a flat.social meeting?
Meeting attendees can use WASD keys like in multi-player games or drag themselves around with a mouse.
How do I speak to all of the guests at once?
The experience is spatial by default - only ones around will hear you. You can however use the loudspeaker feature to speak to everyone at once. It's useful if you want to make an announcement or managing a larger workshop where attendees are distributed around the room.
