A Tasty Networking Treat
Donut provides dozens of fun connections
At a busy tech company, meeting people from other departments can be hard — even more so when the company employs hundreds of people. If you’re not on the same team, you and your co-workers may pass each other in the hall or reply to each other on Slack, but you don’t get the chance to meet and talk face-to-face.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a resource that connected you with co-workers for coffee and networking? Don’t you love that idea? Or … Donut you love it?
Enter Donut, a Slack algorithm that randomly pairs co-workers from different departments so they can meet up for conversation, coffee and maybe a doughnut as well. Any full-time employee at RetailMeNot who wants to participate can simply join a Slack channel appropriately named #donutchuwannameet. Every fourth Monday at 10 a.m. Central time, users receive a Slack message pairing them with a new Donut partner.
The program was launched by a cross-functional group that cultivates and promotes an ever-better culture at RetailMeNot while inspiring and enabling people to do their best work. Reilly from Marketing spearheaded the Donut project within the culture team after hearing about it from someone who had a similar program at their company. “The team members are always looking for new ways to improve the RetailMeNot experience,” she said, “and this seemed like a cool opportunity.” Plus, she added , the Donut app on Slack was easy to set up.
Donut has been a-round for a few months, and it’s getting rave reviews. Over 200 employees are participating in the program, and that number includes most of the company’s leadership team.
“We have so much great feedback from people,” Reilly said. “On a scale of 1 to 4, we got a 3.6 rating about how Donut improved employees’ experience with RetailMeNot.”
What does the future hold for this sweet program? Hopefully more inter-departmental networking, greater empathy and understanding between co-workers and even the start of long-term friendships. “As RetailMeNot continues to grow and hire more people, I like the idea of maintaining connection on a deeper level,” Reilly said.
At this rate, Donut is poised to set up those great connections by the dozen.
