Whether it's your job or passion to engage employees and build communities internally, what worked well (and what didn't) in your organization?
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We have tried to find the interests of our employees and have created few groups around the same, we currently have 3 groups online gaming, memes( the ideas have really been super for the marketing strategy), and story for the week(members sharing their story). These group have really help in creating the good rapport between the team members even when few of our members are working remotely.
Hey Seraina! Great question! I've been working in a startup and the company growth was quite impressive. Once we switched to LeSS framework, we started building cross-functional teams which decreased the communication for different roles. So, we decided to build communities and here's the structure we used:
👉 Design community — designers discussed tasks separated from their team flow, each community member presented their work that wasn't tied to their team scope. Sometimes designers hosted some huge researches or conducted presentations focused on educating other community members
👉 Product community — product managers also created their separate plan with researches, hypotheses, and stuff like that. We used to invite analysts to this meeting
👉 Fronted and Backend communities (sometimes they had combined meetings) — weekly meeting that was focused on educating its members, discussing individual results, mentoring, and setting up overall processes
Here are some tips for building a strong internal community:
- being a part of community should be voluntary, it's much better to engage employees to be a part of it than forcing them to attend the meeting
- it is totally fine to invite an expert from outside to share the knowledge with the community. You can also bring some clients and power users
- each community had a dedicated Slack channel
I should also mention the most popular one — Alco community — weekly Friday meeting in the bar near the office, that was the biggest one and the most attended event for the whole company 😂
Hope it makes sense. Good luck!
@lipkovskiy Wow, thanks for this detailed answer. It's very insightful. I like the approach of communities for designers, engineers, and product people. Was there someone responsible for facilitating it? Or did it happen naturally?
I also think it's very powerful to bring in experts from the outside. I know one example of a company that started an internal podcast for their employees through the pandemic. It was like their fireside chats but without the fire. 🪵 They interviewed mental health experts, working from home champs, and homeschooling teachers, … recorded it, and shared the episodes with their workforce. Both helpful and entertaining!
There's a phenomenon in Copenhagen with Friday Bars — I assume that's the same thing you mentioned. Highly popular!
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communities are only built around a product/company if the message of the company is strong and has a greater good attached to it.
the employee needs to resonate with the message of the brand and that's how a community will be built.
@andrewcanday That's hopefully THE reason why people join a company. I also hope there's room for smaller communities within one big community in a company where people gather around all kinds of topics. ;)
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LISTEN TO THOSE YOU'RE TRYING TO REACH. ...
MEET YOUR AUDIENCE WHERE THEY ARE. ...
POSITION YOUR CLIENTS AS THOUGHT LEADERS. ...
CO-CREATE A “SECRET LANGUAGE.” ...
DEVELOP A SOCIAL MISSION. ...
IDENTIFY YOUR SHARED PURPOSE. ...
LET YOUR AUDIENCE BE PART OF YOUR BRAND DEVELOPMENT. https://bit.ly/3OH03xD
@serainasilja the name of the platform is called Teamfounder.co and the coolest part is actually creating the campaign. After all, everyone likes to come up with good projects.
Telling the story of the project, what has already been done, the challenges and who is the ideal team are some interests that we ask. And attach images and videos to attract readers and cofounder candidates.
Check out the site and all the information is there. If you need help, let me know.
Be transparent with the team. We have an all-hands meeting each month.
Our CEO is good at making Mojito for all of us. We drink happily together.
We use Notion and Airtable to comment and give constructive feedback async without too many meetings.
@ranee_zhang So everyone should have a CEO who can mix good Mojito! 🍹😉 How do you do the all-hands meeting?
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Technology has been a part of our lives ever since it was invented. So why not use them to improve relationships? Social networking is a great tool for keeping people connected, not a universal evil as many companies think. They allow you to get feedback fairly quickly, as well as build friendships. We have a chat room on Telegram.
Interesting topic. I find that a medium to big organization (anywhere over 100?) often are marred by silos. Not knowing what other teams are doing. Traditional social media platforms for corporates don't cut the ice.
@zoon_s Good observation! Silos are a big trap for bigger companies. Do you have any ideas how to avoid them and building a company-wide community?
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@serainasilja Yes, I do have an idea. I believe there has to be certain degree of nudge and transparency into overall activities. This I believe could be achieved through gamification. Are you also working on similar idea?
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I take an experimental and MVC approach. Always be trying stuff out with an effort of bringing people together and seeking to co-create value.
https://rosie.land/posts/a-guide...
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