How do you build communities within your company? 🛠
Seraina Silja Hürlimann
54 replies
Whether it's your job or passion to engage employees and build communities internally, what worked well (and what didn't) in your organization?
Replies
Rosie Sherry@rosiesherry
Orbit
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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@rosiesherry Wooooooooow! Honestly, that’s such a good read. I‘d love to learn more from you. Are you up for a chat? 🙃🫣
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!
Product Hunt
Good question! I always start with the why, people come for the why more so then the what, why are you building this product then begin to build a community around advocates of that why if that makes sense.
A good book I came across that explores the science of community building is The business of belonging by David Spinks
@aaronoleary Haven't heard of that book - thanks for sharing! And I like your approach with the why. Do you have a great example?
Product Hunt
@serainasilja Not on hand, but this is a good explainer and where I get the concept from:
@aaronoleary True words!
The Content Odyssey Newsletter
Different companies have such unique ways of tackling it. It can be a Slack community, a referral program, hackathons, live events, in-person meetups, or just a good product that gets people to talk about it naturally.
@alexandracote Is an engaging community built by a specific department or by everyone?
The Content Odyssey Newsletter
@serainasilja depends on industry, I'd say it's a mix of a couple of departments + users/brand fans
We provide Scribd to employees if they want it, this created a book club internally (though I am not in it!). We also have specific team building meetings which brings out interests they have within the company that they can take ownership of - this might be projects, research or otherwise.
@aleksdahlberg Thanks for sharing! I like that you provide Scribd to them. And in general, book clubs seem surprisingly popular. We see teams talking about books in their internal podcast: each episode is a book recommended by an employee. 📚
Who organises the team building meetings?
Remy AI
A lot of our employees have a personal blog. Everyone reads blogs of each other and comments. Works well.
@okhlopkov That's nice. A decentralised, async, and personal way of learning more about each other. If your employees are up for telling their stories in mini podcasts, tell them about https://pager.fm — a podcast platform for teams! 🎙
First establish a sense of urgency. Then create a powerful guiding coalition, in which senior managers always form the core. This coalition should create a vision and broadcast it so that others are empowered to carry it out. The process moves on to planning short-term wins, consolidating improvements, and institutionalizing new approaches.
This strategy has been vividly described by author John P Kotter in his article "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail".
https://hbr.org/1995/05/leading-...
@serainasilja Create a Mission Statement that lets your employees know that the work your company does can have a real impact on the lives of thousands of people, globally.
For instance look at Twitter's Mission Statement: " To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information, instantly, without barriers".
Once you have nailed the Mission statement here are three recommendations you can put into practice to broadcast it:
1. Over-communicate vision at all-team meetings: Every month, during team meetings, explain the "why" behind the actions in each department and how they relate to larger company goals.
2. Send emails at least once a week sharing:
(a) some success stories of your company and how this success impacted the lives of individuals.
(b) tell a good story about your products or your company to give life to your vision and thereby captures hearts and minds the reader.
3. I used to work for a U.S based management consulting company whose brand slogan "Where the best choose to be" used to printed just below the company logo. Actions like these motivates the employees since they are made to feel special.
Similarly, Coco Cola's brand slogan is "Open Happiness".
A remote working solution.
I'm going to narrow it down to five helpful practices:
- Find what teammates have in common and capitalize on it: could be location, hobbies, experience, and so on. Finding a common ground drives effortless conversation and helps build natural connections.
- Encourage people to talk about their interests: often, I would work with amazing teammates and have no idea they were so cool until much later. That's why giving everyone room to shine is important.
- Keep an open mind and be non-judgemental: no one will ever want to share anything or be genuine in the workplace if they know every wrong move will be scrutinized.
- Find creative ways to engage people. Ideally, it's great to have events that show people in an entirely different light, like karaoke parties or acting workshops.
- Promote collaboration, not competition. Don't compare teammates with each other, don't play favorites, and don't single people out. All of the above create a toxic atmosphere in the workplace.
- Use communication-focused technology. I am mentioning this because I'm working on such a product myself (https://ovice.in/) but you can even use Slack chats to create internal communities.
@maya_ovice The first two points "have something in common" (like location) and "shared interests" remind me of this article by Oyster: https://www.oysterhr.com/library.... Maybe that is interesting for you, too. ;)
Do you think a specific department (or every employee) should do community building?
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?
Doing politics, I guess the best way to build community. Divide and rule.
LOL LOL LOL
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. ;)
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.
@evgeniyyakubovckiy Do you use Telegram for text and/or audio messages?
WorkHub
We try to ensure that everyone feels welcome and valued in the organization. And for that, we use different community-building exercises like games, activities, and contests to instill a sense of mutual dependence and shared value among our staff members.
@qudsia_ali I love the "feeling" part. Because community and culture are often only built to be seen but not felt. How many teammates do you have?
Build a community around the industry you're in.
The majority want to progress and it will be easy to keep motivated people around.
Once it is established, pick an activity. More physical the better.
Keep building data.
That's how you keep adding value. Give a reason why people should follow you.
@vivek_vardhan So let's say podcasting — where would you start? The future of audio?
@vivek_vardhan I know, it's so cliché. I'll think of better ideas. ;)
Commenter.ai
Fostering connections among employees is essential to building community in the workplace. You can lay the groundwork for these connections by encouraging employees to interact with one another, even though this can be a difficult task because it requires employee participation.
@amelia_charlie Do you know any examples and initiatives for fostering connections remotely?
Commenter.ai
@serainasilja I have come across some products like Thursday by @nishith_shah1
and Connect.
@amelia_charlie Thursday looks fun (and I like the name, @nishith_shah1!)
Good topic of conversation. It is increasingly important to have the notion that before creating a product or service it is possible to create the community.
In my case I created a startup that helps makers and entrepreneurs to find their cofounders to launch a project together.
Before that I created a whatsapp community with people interested in entrepreneurship.
We are now 200 people and many projects have already emerged.
The goal is always to grow a little more, but 200 people already filled a hall and that makes me proud.
@serainasilja Thanks for the answers.
What we do is create a campaign to present the project (like a kickstarter campaign) but the goal of the campaign is not to receive money but applications from cofounders with the skills that the project needs.
We share the campaign with our community but the founder can also share the campaign to reach a larger audience.
@ricardo_marinho_goncalves That's a tangible example with your whatsapp community — thanks for sharing it. And be proud!
Also, I know many female entrepreneurs who need to find a co-founder here in Copenhagen. It's really really hard. Like dating! 😇
Are your community members in one place?
@ricardo_marinho_goncalves That's great. Can I share this with my founder friends who are looking for co-founders? Send me details! :)
@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.
@ricardo_marinho_goncalves I'll take a look and share it, for sure! 🙌
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.
@bhav_singh Love "Story for the Week". Is this a written story? Where do you share it?
@serainasilja this completely depends on the person if he/she wants to narrate it or just write in our slack channel
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
@ismail_asif Listening to learn what employees care about is probably the most important thing. Thanks for sharing!
We follow three rule on all our workspace, including but not limited to meeting, training, team-building, group chat, documents...
- Be active
- Be clearly
- Be funny
@tungle_eth Three great rules! How do you do team-building? Any examples you want to share?