One of the best things about being a digital nomad is the freedom – choosing your location, your rhythm, your lifestyle. But let’s be honest: one of the hardest things is the connection gap. You don’t have colleagues at the desk next to you discussing their yoga teacher training experience from over the weekend, you won’t bump into a co-worker you’ve never met before during your coffee visit to the kitchen, and you can’t grab lunch with your manager or teammates. Sometimes it feels like you’re just floating from city to city without really knowing the people you work with.
The good news? Staying connected as a remote worker is 100% possible, even if you’re working from a beach cafe in Bali one week and a co-living space in Bulgaria the next.
In fact, your remote co-workers might become your lifeline for keeping you grounded and sane when your environment and location might feel like they are taking the ground from under your feet due to the change.
It just takes a bit of intention, empathy, and sometimes some creativity. Here are some practical ways (backed by my own experience) to build those meaningful ties with colleagues – even when you’re thousands of miles apart.
How I First Learned to Build Remote Connections
Long before I called myself a remote worker, I stumbled into the skill of connecting remotely. I was working at a big multinational where my small team often had no work due to a slump in the industry. Out of boredom and an anxiety to be useful, I did something unusual: I started reaching out to people in other offices.
At first it felt awkward, but I learned to introduce myself (“Hey, I’m Julia from the London office”), explain how I’d found them (usually by scouring the company ‘intranet’ for those with my specialisation or by asking a co-worker for a recommendation) and why, and then simply ask if I could help.
More often than not, people replied – not just with work, but with friendliness. I ended up collaborating with colleagues in the US, Romania, from other offices in the UK and Scotland, whom I never met in person, but who later became genuine friends.
Later, this skill was helpful for many years in communicating and staying in touch with work partners and colleagues across the globe when I became remote.
Looking back, I think the secret was empathy. I paid attention to their lives, asked how they were doing, commented on little things (like the photos of lizards in the report taken by a colleague the day before, which I received from an ecologist colleague as part of the work assignment from a field trip), and shared bits about myself too. Work was the anchor, but the connection grew from there.
That experience taught me something that’s just as relevant now, as a nomad: staying connected is about seeing the human behind the screen, not just the job title.
1. Treat Communication Like a Lifeline
When you’re on the move, communication becomes your tether to your colleagues. Without the office chatter, you have to create those touchpoints yourself.
- Use messaging tools often: Apps like Slack (https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/) or Microsoft Teams (https://teams.live.com/free) are your virtual hallways. Drop updates about your work, ask questions as often as possible and share how you are doing, ask about how they are, share photos from your day, or even just a funny meme. Little things add up.
- Jump on video calls: Yes, it can feel tiring, but turning on your camera helps people feel like they’re with you, not just your name in a chat box.
- Don’t jump on a video call – remember it’s also OK not to jump on a video call too – some of my remote friends have told me that they went remote because they didn’t work well when needing to interact with people too much, so if feeling the pressure to switch on your camera means you won’t reach out to people at all, better stick to what you can do consistently, even if it’s just messaging over Slack.
- Don’t limit it to work talk: Ask your colleague how their weekend was, or share something from your travels. It makes you real, not just remote.
2. Sync Up with Your Teammates’ Locations
One unique perk of being a nomad is that your path might literally cross with your colleagues’ – if you’re proactive.
- Before changing location, ask your team where they are. You might discover that your designer is in Barcelona at the same time you’re planning to be there.
- If you can, plan your travel to overlap with teammates’ locations next time you need to change where you are. Even one coffee in real life can deepen a relationship that’s been purely digital.
- If meeting in person isn’t possible, share where you’re headed to anyway. It creates conversation and sometimes even future meet-up opportunities.
- The ability to change location also creates so much opportunity for conversation – ask your colleagues if they’ve been to a country you are planning on visiting, or ask them how their current location is and the realities of day to day living there and relate it to other places you’ve visited, if it’s natural to do so.
3. Celebrate Milestones (Yes, Even From Afar)
Once, 10 years ago, during my in-office days, a co-worker I barely knew and whom I had nothing in common with, from another team and another floor, bought me a cake for my birthday, brought it to my desk whilst I was away at lunch, and wrote a note, reading ‘from a secret admirer’. It felt so special. Since then, she’d become a friend for life.
So from my own experience, I feel like celebrating these milestones matters. It’s not about the card or the cake, it’s about showing you care. That’s what makes colleagues feel like friends.
In offices, people get cake and cards for birthdays, work anniversaries, or farewells. As a nomad, you don’t want to miss out on those small but important rituals.
That’s actually why my team and I (a fully remote crew ourselves) started building GatheredCards (https://www.gatheredcards.com/) – a group greeting cards app for remote teams, designed as a digital solution for celebrating milestones like birthdays, farewells, weddings and work anniversaries. Instead of one person signing a paper card in the office kitchen, everyone adds their own personal messages online – sometimes with images or even an AI-generated illustration. It can be as simple as a note, or as playful as adding a picture of them playing tennis, sipping a coconut on the beach, or anything that reflects their personality. The final card can feel collective and heartfelt, even if you’re spread across time zones.
You could either send the card by yourself or organise other colleagues to collectively sign the greeting card – another opportunity for you to mingle with your other colleagues.
I also think that it’s similarly effective to send them a ‘happy birthday’ message over email as well, if a lower-key approach feels more appropriate.
To find out when everyone’s birthdays are, my personal tip would be – striking up a conversation with a colleague on your birthday and slotting in that it’s your “birthday today”; then using this as an opportunity to casually ask them when is theirs. Take a note of this in your calendar.
And when it’s their special day, send them a free e-card, or, if you are close enough, and preferably the same gender (as you don’t want to confuse your colleagues with your intentions), you could even buy them a coffee or a cake online from their local coffee shop if it does online orders (similar to what my colleague did years ago). You are unlikely to be able to find out their exact address without sounding creepy (unless you are already very close), but you can let them know it’s waiting there for them whenever they are ready. Alternatively, you can just let them know that you’d like to order them a coffee and ask them how to best deliver it. From my own experience, this can go so far.
4. Start Small, Stay Consistent
When you’re travelling constantly, it can be easy to drop connections if you’re not deliberate. The trick is to make small but regular efforts:
- Send a colleague a voice note to say thanks for their help.
- Comment on their work update, not just with a thumbs-up but with genuine interest.
- Share a photo of where you’re working today (co-working terrace, mountain hut, café). It gives others a window into your world.
- Remember the things they’ve shared with you from their work or personal life, even if it’s not relevant to you, and ask them how that’s going for them the next time you speak.
- Ask them about their day and share how your work or day is going, even if it’s just a moan!
Tiny gestures like these make you feel closer, even if you’re continents apart.
5. Use Work as the Anchor - But Don’t Stop There
Work is the easiest excuse to start conversations. Ask for feedback, ask for help, or offer to help. But once the door is open, step beyond the work.
That’s what I discovered back in my corporate days – work questions were the hook, but curiosity and empathy were what turned colleagues into friends.
When someone mentions they’re sick, wish them a speedy recovery and don’t forget to follow up with them to see how they are recovering. If they share a hobby, ask about it. If they post a cool photo from a field trip (or from their weekend hike), take a moment to engage.
However, don’t feel like you need to go overboard and turn every interaction into a friendship building performance – you don’t want to appear creepy! Only when you remember or when it feels natural is OK!
Sometimes connection with colleagues can be hard, especially for those of us who are the only remote worker on our team, as not all of us are as lucky as to work for 100% remote or hybrid teams!
In these situations, whilst you can still successfully implement all the things I did to build friendships with my non-remote colleagues in other offices, such as messaging and being the one that’s “online, but who cares”, co-working spaces and nomad hubs might be very important to feel less alone.
- Use co-working spaces for socializing. You never know when you’ll meet someone who works in your industry or even in your company.
- Attend local digital nomad meetups (you’ll find tons on Meetup or in local Facebook/WhatsApp groups). Talking to other nomads about their challenges can give you new ideas for how to connect with your own colleagues and make you feel less alone.
- If you’re staying in one place longer, consider joining a co-living community. These are often designed to foster both professional collaboration and social bonding through games and events.
6. Co-working Spaces and Nomad Hubs as Social Boosters
Sometimes connection with colleagues can be hard, especially for those of us who are the only remote worker on our team, as not all of us are as lucky as to work for 100% remote or hybrid teams!
In these situations, whilst you can still successfully implement all the things I did to build friendships with my non-remote colleagues in other offices, such as messaging and being the one that’s “online, but who cares”, co-working spaces and nomad hubs might be very important to feel less alone.
- Use co-working spaces for socializing. You never know when you’ll meet someone who works in your industry or even in your company.
- Attend local digital nomad meetups (you’ll find tons on Meetup or in local Facebook/WhatsApp groups). Talking to other nomads about their challenges can give you new ideas for how to connect with your own colleagues and make you feel less alone.
- If you’re staying in one place longer, consider joining a co-living community. These are often designed to foster both professional collaboration and social bonding through games and events.
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8. If You’re a Team Lead (Or Aspire to Be One)
It’s tempting to fire off messages whenever inspiration strikes, but remember: your teammate might be just falling asleep while you’re ordering breakfast tacos.
- Use tools like World Time Buddy (https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/) to check overlaps before suggesting a call.
- If someone’s hours never line up with yours, lean on asynchronous tools – Slack threads, recorded Loom (https://www.loom.com/) videos, or shared docs.
- As a nomad, you may also be shifting time zones a lot yourself, so communicate clearly about your availability.
This respect goes both ways, and it builds trust fast.
9. Combine Work and Play
One of the best parts of being a nomad in a remote team is that there will be people who share your lifestyle and values and not just your work.
- Suggest a virtual co-working session – log onto Zoom with a teammate, work in silence, and chat during breaks.
- Starting a shared playlist with your team, or suggesting a game of Skribbl.io (https://skribbl.io/) or an online pub quiz after work can serve as a universal connector.
- Creating accountability and connection by throwing a challenge to a colleague that you both will go to gym daily, for example.
- For more great ideas on wellness and connection, check out RemoteTribe’s guide on holistic wellness activities for remote teams: https://www.remotetribe.life/personal-growth/20-holistic-wellness-activities-remote-teams-digital-detox/
These little shared moments build stories that last beyond deadlines.
10. Keep Reaching Out - Even When It Feels One-Sided
Sometimes you’ll feel like you’re always the one initiating. That’s okay. Connection often takes one person to break the silence. If someone doesn’t seem to be too interested in human connection with colleagues, that’s OK too and needs to be respected – there will always be those who will appreciate the effort and will reciprocate.
A quick message like, “Hey, thought of you when I saw this article,” or “do you need help with anything” can keep the bond alive. Over time, it balances out.
Concluding Remarks
Being a digital nomad can feel lonely, especially when you are some of the few people who are remote on your team, but it doesn’t have to be. Staying connected to colleagues isn’t about big gestures. It’s about small, consistent, human touches: asking, listening, sharing, and showing up.
Every little effort – from planning a meetup when your travels overlap, to organising an e-card with a group greeting cards tool like GatheredCards, to the everyday casual chat about their hobbies or day – adds a small thread to the fabric of connection.
In the end, staying connected to your colleagues, especially as a nomad, can be a powerful way to stay grounded and to feel like there is someone who sees you and cares about you every day – a thread of consistency during times of constant change.
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