Scheduled social time over zoom is not social time, it’s work prescribed team building

If anything these kinds of “meetings” felt like they made the culture on my team worse because they felt so forced and inorganic

I've had trouble implementing this in the past. We have biweekly social calls with my team, but a lot of people don't take part! And even when they do, when we have the full team (~12 ppl), usually maybe like 3-4 people dominate the convo and it's not super satisfying.

Have you found any tricks/ideas from the implementation at your org that has made it more successful for you?

I was one of those 3-4 people who felt compelled to drag the conversation forward just to avoid awkward silence and fill the time slot, ugh how I hated that period of time with remote work

> We do a weekly fixed appointment ..

We also have something like that. But since it is not spontaneous, not every participant in the same state of mind and hence those meetings are a dud. Whereas participants in water cooler conversations are there because they want a break and want to chit chat. So conversations are more natural and hence enjoyable.