> “What’s been challenging in adapting to the new environment is trying to replicate some of the informal communication that happened around the office. It’s an area I’m particularly interested in right now.”

We've been using Discord to simulate an office environment, both from the perspectives of talking to people without scheduling a meeting, and from gathering as a group for discussions as needed. Hanging out in Discord is entirely optional. We use Slack to notify people if we need to talk to them, kind of like a shoulder tap in real life if you need to ask somebody a question at their desk.

This has been working pretty well for us. I especially like Discord's Push to Talk feature using a keyboard shortcut.