Engagement with employees as ‘Work From Home’ becomes the new normal

Creating communities, inculcating loyalty and making the work force feel part of the family are all very important aspects that companies focus on

The definition of the word employee- a person employed for wages/ salary may have worked a couple of decades ago, but it definitely doesn’t hold true in today’s world. Whilst the crux maybe that people work for survival, today they also have the liberty to choose their place of work, the role and sometimes even experiment with different streams.

As leaders and mentors running teams, divisions and companies, our roles are two fold- Management of people and ensuring productive environments for them to work in.

Creating communities, inculcating loyalty and making the work force feel part of the family are all very important aspects that companies focus on. MediaMonks for example, adds a cultural identity by calling its employees ‘ Monks’ a term that automatically binds them as custodians of the brand . Hence offering them an identity in the system that is far greater than just an employee number.

Before Covid-19 our global offices enjoyed social activities like First Friday’s , Music gigs and milestone celebrations. In India, we took this a notch higher – by adding the boarding school ‘house’ system to the usual mix.

What Is that and how does it work?

Like any other office, we noticed, people tend to socialise only within their own department, but in the hope of a better, stronger and connected team we devised the House system . We used the chits to reorganise our 50+ monks into 4 houses – that would compete against each other with monthly competitions ranging across cooking, fitness, filmmaking, Halloween costumes & basketball. The bonding, comradery and spirit that followed as they teamed up to beat the other players, ensured that friendships were forged across departments. Accounts team, now helps solve the servicing team’s payment updates as they both are in the same house. Suddenly people found new friends within the system that they could count on.

But Necessity is the Mother of all inventions …

And so digital first creative firms like ours, created new virtual activities to suit WFH – From a 24 hour internal radio broadcast that is going to go live across each zone at 5 pm local time to virtual drinks catch up.

In the same spirit, this is the gap that HR heads need to close, in order to optimise productivity levels, and engagement.

With Key MNC’s announcing compulsory WFM till end of 2020 , and some even reorganising their work force to offer WFH as a more permanent option, a new internal communication system is required.

For some of our pharma & tech companies looking to create virtual employee communities, we are working on a dynamic platform based program that could solve MNC’s principal challenge.

With our teams themselves, practising WFM, the challenges, weaknesses, insights and reality of the situation is all too real. And so we went about understanding why the client needed this, their departments, tiers, work pipelines and stress points to string together a content based virtual employee engagement program customised to their industry and company.

As pioneers in the holy trinity of content, data and technology, the tech team at MediaMonks created the framework of what promised to be the answer to the virtual working problem.

The task: create a virtual community that motivates, engages and entertains teams as employees work from home. We defined various pillars

like Productivity, Engagement, Health and Internal communications and devised a 60 day pre planned program.

From daily virtual coffee catch ups( just like you would in office) to fitness classes, internal communications emailers, tech tutorials and team quizzes, the employees can log on to their system and personalise notifications and times according to their work schedule.

With AR filters specially designed for companies, virtual meetings need not be boring, as teammates choose the background most suited to their mood or even department.

From comedian hour, to online consultations, from cooking tutorials to virtual concerts, from music playlists to yoga desk exercises, we conceptualised different content modules to help talent adapt to WFH, without missing a physical office experience.

Whether the world will truly change forever or not, only time will tell. But since adapting, is second nature to humans-

As work dynamics change, so will our human resource management methodology.

About Media Monks:

MediaMonks is a global creative production company that partners with clients across industries and markets to craft amazing work for leading businesses and brands. Their integrated production capabilities span the entire creative spectrum, covering anything you could possibly want from a production partner, and probably more.

From creative campaigns and content to bespoke development and design, MediaMonks works above the line and below the fold at the intersection of creativity and technology. Operating across teams, time zones, and technologies with an incredible in-house team of 2000 + Monks. Their work is recognized by advertising and craft awards around the world, producing 131 Cannes Lions and 250+ FWAs to date.

Founded in 2001 and rooted in digital, you can find MediaMonks anywhere on the Web as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Dubai, Singapore, and Shanghai.

In July 2018, MediaMonks joined forces with S4Capital to build out the production platform of the future. Under the direction of Sir Martin Sorrell, MediaMonks is increasing its firepower on all fronts, adding new Monks, monasteries, and services such as data analytics and digital media buying.