How we developed internal communities to be smarter and grow a culture. Chapter 1
Hi. My name is Alexandra and I’ll tell you how we at Vivid began to build our internal communities 💜
I joined the company when we had about 60 people, 1 small office, one country, and everyone knew each other personally.
Now we are 350+ people, 30+ nationalities, offices in 3 countries and we realized that we had to work very hard to organize and support knowledge sharing in the company, the growth of exertion.
First of all, why do we need internal communities in the company at all?
Our main goal: for everyone to have a place to come and get help and knowledge from the same experts. It helps to develop internal expertise, and share knowledge within the company. Plus, employees feel a special unity when they are among like-minded people. Lastly, we want top implant and promote corporate cultural patterns (company values) in groups.
What types of problems are we solving?
We want to avoid creating the same product (service, process) twice. For example, when one team has already found a way to solve a problem, they sharing that knowledge makes sure other teams don’t have to repeat the process from scratch. Everyone needs like-minded people to develop, when you’re alone it’s really difficult because you have no one to discuss your problems, tasks, to think about something together. In a community, you always have a place where you can ask questions
What benefits do we get from having internal communities?
We get a strong team with great expertise and strong culture. We also get regular knowledge exchange, plus the opportunity to organize events with speakers from other companies to share experiences. It is also possible to organize external events where the community will come out, and this is a plus to the employer’s brand and of course to the personal brands of employees
How do you start building a community?
- Identify areas (e.g., product management, design, go developers) in which there is a large enough number of specialists, at least more than 10 people — this is ideal. Although I’m a fan of the step-by-step approach, so my advice is to start with any number and invite new employees already at the onboarding stage.
- Find an ambassador in every community — a very important step, because, without an ambassador, nothing will work. The ambassador should be an employee with a fairly high level of hard and soft skills, who has a good reputation in the team (that is, their opinion is respected and listened to). Plus this person must share your views on the development of the community, be able to socially engineer. Does that sound too good to be true? Believe me, there are such people, they just need to be noticed and helped to develop their potential.
- Lastly, you need to create a channel and send a welcome message to the information channel to invite employees to join
How do you work with ambassadors and community members to make things work?
First, you need to agree that all activity with employees is organized by the ambassador. They regularly ask colleagues to participate in activities, drive the organization of meetings, and so on. In the meantime, you are the boss (mentor) of the Ambassador, i.e. you hold regular meetings with them, suggest what to do, give feedback. Also, you need to arrange for several team members to run activities to set an example for colleagues
What development tools & types of content do we use?
- Regular meet-ups on various topics
- Informal community meetings
- Regular informational posts from different members of the community
- Question posts to bring up some important topic of discussion
- Questions from community members when they need help figuring something out
Developing a community is not easy. It is complex social engineering work that requires constant support and activity, especially in the launch phase. When you’re just starting out, you have to invest a lot of time and energy to get things up and running.
But with time, the community will start living, and become a valuable asset to the company.
