Build a Wall… Of Love

What a week.

Like most Americans, I woke up on Wednesday morning exhausted and with a throbbing, Scotch-induced headache. Regardless of who you voted for this week, the US population at large was tired, beaten up, and Facebook bruised.

Every morning, I quickly check yesterday’s engagement data with our app, Growbot. Growbot is a tool that helps people celebrate one another at work. Everyday, thousands of employees use Growbot in Slack to recognize one another.

On a day when the country had bloodshot eyes from either crying or celebrating (yes, marijuana was legalized in CA, among other places), I wondered to myself if the election results would change the kind of data I was used to seeing in Growbot.

After one of the most emotionally charged days in US American history, my hypothesis, based on my newsfeed and heated group text threads with family and friends, was that there would be very little appreciation to share throughout the day on Wednesday. It felt like a pall had fallen over half of the country, and perhaps they’d be looking inward instead of sharing outward.

What I observed next blew me away.

• Another employee requested that Growbot give a ‘shout out’ to their peer for listening to their concerns and helping their new hires get on-boarded efficiently.
• Another employee celebrated their team lead for bringing in bagels for an experience review training session on Wednesday morning! Sometimes, it’s the small (delicious) things.

Slack coined the phrase, ‘Wall of Love’, for their Twitter Wall showing the love and appreciation that their customers and partners have for their enterprise chat application. That evening, I watched employees build an entire Wall of Love about something that matters much more than software. They built one to celebrate their people.

And unlike the election poll results, the data backed it up.

By mid-day Wednesday evening, single day engagement with Growbot was the highest it had ever been.

We also saw a 133% increase in the number of emoji reactions added to Growbot recognition, meaning more employees were socially recognizing their peers in Slack.

Not only did these employees Build a Wall of Love, they also built a bridge!

Because Slack serves as a communication hub to help facilitate more open dialogue and conversations, we saw people connecting with one another from opposite sides of the country to celebrate their remote teammates, both domestically and abroad.

Seeing the love and appreciation being shared on Wednesday makes me optimistic about the future of our country, and the people in it to build one another up, brick by brick, and support the values that make our workplaces and nation great.

There’s a lot of work to do. But being empathetic, aware of the goodness and pain our peers are experiencing, and highlighting the positivity we see everyday is a good start.