The story of a big family called an organization

1. Challenge:

At my previous job, I was holding the position of Internal Communications  Manager which is a mostly employee-centric role that focuses on connecting the  organization’s different departments together and ensuring relevant  communication flow between them, on both a work and human level.

Given that my organization was an incubator and accelerator and that its  components we mainly different incubated startups that did not reside in the  same location, ensuring proper information flow between them and ensuring a  human connection between all employees working for different sectors in  different startup cultures doing various non-similar jobs was a challenge to say  to least.

I had to come up with a way to centralize the information I was receiving from  different entities streamline it into relevant chunks for all employees to identify  with and try to connect them on a human level to enhance company culture.

How to do that? …. One story at a time, I thought.

2. Selection:

I come from a Media and Communications background where stories and  messaging are highly important. Employing this side of my expertise I decided to  solve this challenge using the power of storytelling.

To do that I aimed to create a shared story all employees across different  departments can relate to and take part of in order to start building  connections.

To do that I had to ensure rolling out a larger storyline and communication  stream (through a newsletter and feedback channel) then I had to apply a  waterfall logic to trickling narratives across different startups and departments.

3. Application

First I established the newsletter that combined the success stories of each  company and its departments to boost employees pride and engagement.  Seeing their department’s names being celebrated among all other departments  helped drive a common positive sentiment between employees. They started

being aware of others names, achievements and activities and now information  flow was ensured among startups and departments.

Second was to get these people that are reading about each other to meet in  one place to recognize and celebrate each other’s successes. That’s when we  resorted to town halls where we were able to bring together employees that  previous to that were complete strangers introduce them to each other over  food and beverages which always proved to be an appealing catalyst.

During these town halls I felt that these people are now meeting over food and  chatting for brief periods but not being able to create lasting connections that  can benefit the overall culture of the organization, for that I established the  Employee engagement committee a group of individuals each from a different  startup to discuss the startups’ culture pain points in each department, from  that committee I was able to bring together different people from different  cultural backgrounds and expertise to share information about themselves their  teams and what we can do together to improve our common organizational  culture.

Based on that we started creating small engagement groups brought together  over common interests like a movie club, football club, etc… Soon these people  were seen leaving work together to go do their shared activities, which helped  boost connections inside the organization and overall culture and positive  sentiment thus productivity at work.

4. Insight

One insight I gathered from this plan of action was how similar people are and  that they are able to connect on a deeper level over a shared interest  regardless of their background and field of work. This now helps me always  look at the human side of everything, this can bring meaningful connections in  business and build lasting flourishing relationships that can drive businesses  forward.

5. Approach

Next time I might jump on sharing these stories first and foremost because at  the end this was the more accelerating driver behind enhancing company  culture, far more than business news and updates.

