have a group chat and never use DMs so people can see and chime in

Can confirm - the group chat sucked, especially for us (2002 skype) when it was voice chat, so we often kept non-crucial stuff to the tail end of work hour too, so there was 45 min out of an hour for work before a burst of chatter. That's supposed to have jibed with some kind of workflow pattern, and it worked .... well enough.

That, and you need some watercooler time. The current job has it only once a week, but we all come to meetings early and chat for 10 min while everyone else files in. Get some human time in.