This round’s introductions
Priya K.
Risk, Manchester
Tom W.
Underwriting, Leeds
Thursday, 11:00, 20 minutes
First time these teams have met
One-to-one introductions for teams and memberships
Your people already belong together. Now introduce them.
Go.sip pairs colleagues and members for a short coffee chat, round after round. No event to plan, no name badges, no standing alone by the pastries.
Book a pilotSet up in an afternoon – all we need to start is a list of member email addresses.
Networking events don’t build networks.
Organisations spend a great deal on away-days, mixers and yearly conferences. Fewer than half of employees go to them, and the ones who do tend to be the people who were already well connected.
Meanwhile the quiet links that move information around, the weak ties between teams, branches and year groups, are the very ones hybrid work has worn away.
What the research says
1 in 5
employees said they had felt lonely for much of the day before
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace
25%
less time spent working across teams after the move to remote work
Microsoft study, Nature Human Behaviour
7×
more likely to be engaged at work when someone has a close friend there
Gallup Q12 research
£2.5bn
the yearly cost of loneliness to UK employers
New Economics Foundation
Where it hurts
Silos
Teams talk inward
Research at Microsoft found that remote work made teams more static and more closed off, with fewer bridges between groups. New ideas travel across those bridges. When the bridges go, the ideas stop moving.
Retention
Feeling cut off drives people out
About a quarter of employees say they have thought about leaving a job because they lacked connection at work, and the youngest feel it most. For membership bodies, weak engagement is the leading reason members do not renew.
Health
Loneliness is a business risk
The former US Surgeon General put the health cost of being cut off on a par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and Gartner named loneliness a Future of Work risk. It shows up in sick days, drift and turnover long before anyone says the word.
How does it work?
Bring in your people
Send us a list of member email addresses. We invite everyone, each person opts in for themselves and says what they would like to get out of it.
Go.sip makes the pairs
Each round we introduce two people who would not otherwise meet, across teams, offices, branches or membership grades.
They have a coffee
A 20-minute chat, in person or on a call, with a light opening question to start them off.
You watch the network grow
Turnout, new links across teams, repeat meetings and how people felt about it. A live picture of belonging, not a survey once a year.
We introduce people. We never read what they say to each other. Go.sip sees who met, not what was said. Opt-in by default, GDPR-compliant, hosted in the UK or EEA.
Belonging, in numbers.
Turnout
How many people opt in and go on to meet, round after round. The first sign that a community is working.
New connections
First-time links between teams, branches, sites or membership grades. The weak ties the research says matter most.
Repeat meetings
Pairs who choose to meet again without being asked. Friendships forming, not just diary entries.
Mood and renewal signals
Short scores after each chat that you can set beside eNPS, staff surveys or member renewal data.
Built for organisations where belonging is the product.
Hybrid and spread-out companies
Rebuild the corridor chats your office used to give you for free. Break the walls between departments, settle new joiners faster, and give remote staff a reason to feel part of something.
- A buddy for every new starter
- Cross-department rounds to break silos
- Open-door coffees with the leadership team
Chartered institutions and professional bodies
Your members joined for connection and for their careers, but most only feel it once a year at the conference. Give them a reason to take part every month, and something real to point at come renewal.
- Member-to-member coffees by region or specialism
- Mentoring rounds pairing fellows with new members
- Engagement data your renewals team can act on
Coworking and flexible workspaces
Community is why members choose you over a cheaper desk. Turn a building of strangers into a network, and make leaving cost more than a chair.
- Weekly member coffees across companies
- Founder-to-founder and skill-swap rounds
- Pairing across sites for workspace networks
Fair questions
Will people actually show up?
Taking part is opt-in, which keeps the quality high. Nobody is pushed into small talk. Chats are capped at 20 minutes, reminders go out before the day, and rearranging is easy. You see turnout for every round, so none of this is taken on trust.
How is this different from a Slack donut bot?
Slack pairing bots work well when everyone lives in one Slack workspace. Go.sip is built for the organisations where they do not: members of a professional body, tenants across a coworking network, or a company split between Teams, Slack and email. The pairing rules, the opt-in flow and the reporting are made for community managers, not channel admins.
What about privacy and GDPR?
Go.sip handles names, roles and when people are free. Never what they say to each other. Data is hosted in the UK or EEA, each person opts in for themselves, and anyone can pause or leave whenever they want. We are happy to fill in your DPIA or security questionnaire, and the DPA and privacy notice are ready to send.
Do the meetings have to be video calls?
No. Pairs pick what suits them: a video coffee, a walk, or a real one if they share an office, a campus or a city. For membership bodies, pairing people by region so they can meet in person is one of the most popular formats.
How do we start?
One 30-minute call to agree who takes part and when the first round goes out. You send one announcement to your people; we do the rest. A pilot runs for 30 days and ends with a written readout you can take to your board or membership committee.
Start small
One team, one branch, one member group.
Run a 30-day pilot. You give us a list and send one announcement; we handle the introductions, the reminders and the measuring. It ends with a written readout of turnout and new connections you can take to your board or membership committee.
Book a pilotOne 30-minute call to set up – trust pack and DPA on request.
Or email admin@gosip.chat