The lack of any meaningful social connection is a beneficial feature of WFH for me. I've switched companies many times and worked entirely remotely for the last 10 years with a short stint where I was a team lead and the company was WFH adverse. Not having a meaningful social connection to many of my coworkers has allowed me to focus on professional and personal development. When I want to socialize with coworkers I usually maintain texting or messaging relationships with coworkers who valued my work so I am able to keep a professional network in my pocket without ever needing to spend time in environments that are outside my control.
New people settle in faster in on site environments because we adapt to environments especially when we are required to.
The ideal situation requires a lot of effort and probably some desire to side-step professional development (talking about work) to spend time with people you currently work with doing something you enjoy (like playing board games). The ideal situation for me is probably something like being able to easily "coordinate company socials" with "let's play a game over Zoom/Discord". Even better if the Zoom/Discord are not company monitored and the interaction is ephemeral. Few products or services would give up the data collection since morale and performance can be measured in relation to the usage of these products or services.
New people settle in faster in on site environments because we adapt to environments especially when we are required to.
The ideal situation requires a lot of effort and probably some desire to side-step professional development (talking about work) to spend time with people you currently work with doing something you enjoy (like playing board games). The ideal situation for me is probably something like being able to easily "coordinate company socials" with "let's play a game over Zoom/Discord". Even better if the Zoom/Discord are not company monitored and the interaction is ephemeral. Few products or services would give up the data collection since morale and performance can be measured in relation to the usage of these products or services.