As a leading advertising agency in the field of healthcare, one New York-based health organization is used to a fast-paced environment where things can change at a moment’s notice. So, when offices in New York shut down and workers were forced to work remotely, the health organization quickly adapted to the new normal. However, remote work introduced a new issue for the agency: coworkers weren’t interacting as much as they used to.
“A lot of feedback we get is that you don’t get to talk to people outside of your team,” says Janice from the health organization, “We work at a 150-person company, but I only talk to the same 15 people.”
The health organization wanted to implement a connections program through a company culture app that would link employees who don’t regularly interact with one another. The goal of this connections program would be to strengthen company culture, increase employee engagement, and reduce employee turnover.
The health organization’s core values — courage, curiosity, grit, and generosity — encourage employees to try new things, all while keeping clients and coworkers in mind. That’s why LEAD talked to their Connections Program team who were tasked with developing and improving the agency’s culture in a new, remote world initially in 2021.
Adapting To Change
While the health organization is used to the fast-accelerating field of healthcare, they wanted to keep change within their agency as manageable as possible. Of course, a global pandemic forces adaptation pretty quickly.
Before the pandemic, the health organization put no effort into employee matching, a key function of company culture apps like LEAD. “The necessity really came from COVID,” says Janice. “This is solving a new challenge for us.”
One of the goals of LEAD.bot is to help companies have better collaboration across teams, better productivity, and less employee turnover. By integrating LEAD.bot into Microsoft Teams, the health organization hopes to minimize turnover and make the modern working culture more comfortable for all employees.
Finding A Way to Connect
For the health organization, the solution to the lack of engagement across teams was clear. “We were looking for ways to create better connections,” Janice says. However, with so many programs and options to choose from, Janice wanted to use a program that they knew people would actually use — a reason they chose LEAD.bot.
After reaching out across her network, Janice was introduced to the concept of an employee matching bot for Microsoft Teams and learned that other companies had success with remote team building through these bots.
Janice performed some research and discovered LEAD.bot and quickly recognized its value in facilitating connections between employees and managers throughout the entire organization. “We came across the LEAD.bot software and thought that would be a great, new way to increase employee engagement in a virtual world,” she recalls.
Reaching Across Teams
For a company like the health organization, utilizing LEAD.bot goes beyond building a company culture. The agency consists of roughly 20 teams, and employees rarely interact across teams. Introducing new hires was very difficult virtually but connecting employees across teams seemed virtually impossible.
This problem in employee connection was exacerbated due to COVID. Fortunately, the health organization was able to perform employee matching with little effort, giving employees new chances to interact through Microsoft Teams with LEAD.
Janice and the health organization also learned that LEAD.bot performs employee matching based on how you set up the bot. For example, you can set it up to match people across teams, guaranteeing that matched people meet new people. Alternatively, you can match employees within the same team for icebreakers, virtual coffee breaks, webinars, or quick activities.
By getting the connections set up through LEAD.bot, the health organization spent more time focusing on cross-team communications, and less time on manually matching employees in the hopes of creating connections.
Building A Stronger Culture
There’s no denying that remote work puts a strain on company culture. Fortunately, for innovative companies like health organizations, there are clever ways to create a modern working culture for a remote or hybrid business.
Along with increasing cross-team communication, introducing new employees to coworkers, and retaining talent, the health organization used LEAD.bot to help develop its remote work culture.
Janice notes that the health organization selected LEAD.bot with the intention of connecting members from different teams. However, with increased functionality coming to the bot, they’re looking forward to exploring new ways to establish a strong remote work culture.
The New Normal
Things are slowly beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy, but the change brought on by COVID is here to stay. Towards the end of 2022, we talked to Janice again and she notes that, while the health organization hasn’t made any official announcements or plans, the expectation is that remote work will continue to play a large role in the agency moving forward.
“Our company hasn’t made any plans to return to the office full-time, so we’re assuming we’ll be at least partially remote,” she notes. “It seems like we’re shifting toward at least a partially remote workforce,” meaning some full-time employees living outside of New York.
Of course, this means that all the issues that arose with remote work — particularly culture building and cross-channel connections — won’t fade away with the pandemic. Instead, the health organization must continue to innovate and discover ways to establish a modern company culture.
As the workplace adapts to COVID-19 and future changes, adding the flexibility many employees wish for, LEAD.bot will ensure you adapt well.
