Remote teams, Distributed teams, Work From Home Work culture, call it what you will but the pandemic changed our work culture and many companies jumped on this ship and decided to stay.
Like with everything everywhere the distributed model of work has its pros and cons. While this article is not going to be speaking for or against what reputed publications have called the new model of work, what we want to acknowledge is the loss of mundane water cooler conversations and the intellectual intimacy employees and teams build as they connect over ideas.
How do you take such conversations virtual? How do you get people to engage in a distributed workplace? Sure people on the same micro team can connect over ideas in a brainstorming session. Sure people on the same project can connect as they collaborate to find solutions. What then about everyone else?
The people within an organization are hand-picked for their skills and abilities, for the value they add to systems and processes, and for the wisdom, they bring to the table.
In a distributed team, so much of this is restricted to the ten or fifteen people each of them interacts with. One could argue that a good idea can spread through teams from one person to another, but why wait for one domino to fall and ideas to evolve over a period of months when you could set it off in one shot?
On the other hand, how will people connect over ideas if they don’t know the conversations that are happening? Without water cooler conversations, without bumping into each other in the break room, how do new employees meet and connect with the community, particularly the more senior employees?
These were some of the issues we wanted to solve as built Zircly, DCKAP’s Employee Experience Platform.
Designed to help companies build a strong, culture-first company, Zircly comes power packed with many features including polls, events, OKRs, and more.
For today, let’s look at a Zircly case study and look at 4 of the many ways Zircly has helped DCKAP build a global community that connects over ideas.
Simply put, the community module is a space for your employees to publish content in all its different forms. Ideas, achievements, suggestions, recommendations, and tips and tricks are some of the things that organizations can encourage employees to share. The possibilities though are endless.
Connecting Virtually: A Zircly Case Study
With Zircly’s community module, ideas and information arcanreak free of the clutches of smaller teams and spread into every corner of every mind in organizations, irrespective of their size. Here are 4 ways DCKAP has grown because of ideas.
Connecting Over Ideas
Until the pandemic hit, DCKAP was a fully in-person office, and like with any organization people met, discussed, collaborated, and connected over ideas and inspiration in person, face-to-face.
Once the pandemic hit, everyone was contained within the four walls of their homes, and ideas and inspiration took a backseat as the consequences of our collective global crisis became more apparent.
Years later, and now fully distributed, DCKAP having grown in numbers and geographically, was faced with a new challenge. How do you facilitate connections between people from different countries and cultures? By facilitating conversations and collaboration of course.
Not conversation and collaboration for work, but conversation and collaboration to inform and inspire.
Since beginning to use Zircly, DCKAP has found an increase in the number of content pieces published, even going so far as to hit a record number of 11 posts in a single day. The increase in content also reflects an increase in engagement, with each post having an average of over 20% readership within the first week. That is, over 20% of all employees read almost every post.
Virtual Clubs and Competitions
Another way that DCKAP’s employees are connecting is through their walking Club, DCKAP Walks.
What started as an initiative to get everyone walking evolved into everyone competing with each other to get their 10k steps, which then evolved into everyone posting about their walks to celebrate their wins.
Virtual Games
A super fun way Zircly’s community module brought everyone together last holiday season was through the Secret Santa game. Much like the traditional game, there was a lot of note-passing, clue-giving, and task-giving, but this time everything was online.
Added to that, you could chat with your Little Elf or your Secret Santa anonymously, as you try to figure out who your Secret Santa was. Some people had tasks to post on the community module, some people share their guesses and some spoke about the rewards they received for completing tasks.
At the end of the game, all Secret Santas gave their Little Elves a present from the wishlist the latter shared, before the grand reveal.
Games like Secret Santa are a great way for your employees to connect, and with Zircly, games like Secret Santa are not restricted to the real world anymore. DCKAP community members sure had a ball as they bid farewell to 2022.
Inspiration From Within
Last but certainly not least, Zircly is a great way to celebrate wins, appreciate teammates, and announce achievements. Doing so on Zircly’s community module makes employees and teams feel appreciated for their hard work, and gives them recognition beyond their team.
Public, pan-organization appreciation, along with the story of how a goal was achieved, a challenge was overcome, or how an issue was confronted also gives other employees from other teams the chance to learn something new, and apply it to their challenges at work and in life, allowing inspiration to come from and spread within the organization, bettering the community post-by-post.
Zircly, DCKAP’s Employee Experience Platform, is easy to understand and free to use. Head over to zircly.com to learn more.