How Virtual Employee Experience Can Be Managed in the New Normal – Part 3 of 3

LEVELS OF EXPERIENCE AND SAMPLE ACTIVITIES

The Levels of Experience below will help the organization to determine which type of activities do they already have in place, which are transmutable to a virtual platform, which ones can cater or work well to promote the culture, and which ones are acceptable to management. Not all levels of experience may be applicable at this time. It takes a team and an amount of planning and organizing of relevant and culture-friendly contents, presence of a graphic and/or multi-media artist and logistics too. Squeeze out the creative juices of everyone to realize a great virtual employee experience. What you will find below are just some of the many activities that you can do. There can be more that suits the organization, so let creative ideas flow. But do not stay too long planning for one. You must start somewhere, the soonest—at least in Level 1 and move gradually to higher levels as momentum builds up and as maturity of culture improves.

LEVEL 1 EXPERIENCE: This level is basically unidirectional, one-way type of communicating to the employees. The active party is largely the administrators and the designated management officer to approve the contents and creatives. The members of the page are the main recipients and viewers of all postings and has a passive role in it. Their reaction is limited to the conventional emoticons such as the socially appropriate “like” or “love”. The administrators and management might not get the genuine feedbacks of the recipients out of caution and fear of being misinterpreted or reprimanded. Somehow, that can be reflective of the organizational culture which may help the people manager to design programs that would help improve the communication and interaction skills of employees. Until such time they reach the maturity level in interacting within the digital space. Here are examples of activities under Level 1 Experience.

Level 1 Activities

1. Birthday greetings – Posting of pictures of employees celebrating their birthdays for a given month with matching brief message from the company.
2. Employee’s Service Anniversary – Posting of pictures and information about the employees who are celebrating their work anniversary.
3. Welcoming of New Employees – Posting of information and photos of new employees as part of welcoming them and for everyone to recognize them
4. Employee’s Confirmation to Regular Status – Recognizing the probationary employees who successfully earned their regular status.
5. Citation to employees – Posting of citations or recognition to employees who meet criteria of the company’s employee reward program.
6. Employee’s Promotion – The inter-office memorandum is the formal medium that normally captures the highlights of the career of an employee that justified his/her promotion. While it can be scanned and posted as it is, a concise version may work better in a digital platform where creative treatment can be rendered.
7. Quotable Quotes – Posting of one to two-liner quotable quotes that have motivational, inspirational or spiritually uplifting contents. Ideally, thematic and relevant to the times and behaviors being underscored are aligned to the company’s core values.
8. Devotional prayer – For spiritual upliftment of employees, hold devotional prayer session via spliced video materials carefully chosen and selected for the devotional. The material can be also be in audio or text.
9. Salute to employees – Posting of recognition to employees who are in the frontline and skeletal force facing the hazards of the job in the middle of something difficult such as the COVID-19 crisis.
10. Announcement on-video of employee’s special occasions or milestones – Traditional practice of announcing employees’ birthday, anniversary, promotion and the likes can be video-recorded and uploaded for greater multi-sensory impact.
11. Inter-office Memorandum – Typically, inter-office memos are posted in bulletin boards. Here, memos are encouraged to be uploaded for everyone to view and read wherever the employees may be. It gives everyone a chance to have the latest information on real time especially those with official business assignments on field or assigned outside the company headquarters.

LEVEL 2 EXPERIENCE: This consists of activities that require application of certain technologies similar as Vlog, FB Live, video chat, or tele-conference and other similar platforms where you can elicit feedbacks from employees such as survey. At the same time, allows employees to take care of their psychological well-being during this distressing condition. Expression of creative ideas, emotions, thoughts through various medium like painting, poetry, dance or music. Virtual as it is, it is interactive in nature compared to the one-way direction in LEVEL 1. The company prepares a structure in the activities to guide the interaction towards a specific worthy goal or outcome. Some examples are:

1. Trending Challenge Craze – This is a JFF (Just for fun) activity (like Tik-Tok) to stir laughter and creativity. As they say, laughter is the best medicine and a good way to maintain our mental health. This craze is very “in” to millennial employees. But because of its viral effect, even non-millennials can be persuaded to join the bandwagon. So, just for the fun of it, let us see who would join to shake the “blues” away.
2. Write a poem and write a song in line with COVID-19 experience – This is to stimulate their creative talents in writing a poem or a song. This will give them a chance to voluntarily express their artistry.
3. Singing of company jingle, hymn or anthem song – Singing of these songs will not only uplift their spirit but will keep the moving spirit of the company. Just like what group of singers do on video nowadays.
4. Posting of videos showing the best times in the company such as those in past or recent company events – This is a very reassuring medium where employees savor once again and appreciate flashbacks of their great times and feel grateful for the blessings that came into their lives. Each video presentation should only have 5 – 7 minutes duration to effectively hold audience’s attention.
5. Posting of new photos or videos that employees can contribute – Are there people in Work-From-Home arrangement? Are there those part of the skeletal force? Are there those in Forced Leave? In whatever state they are in, encourage them to send photos or videos and see how you could create something heartwarming and entertaining at the same time. Let employees feel they are still connected.
6. Postings of other motivational materials and suggested themes – Encourage employees to be contributors of contents in the Page, subject to the screening, evaluation, and approval of the page administrators and management.

LEVEL 3 EXPERIENCE: This level consists of activities that still require application of certain technologies but on a more competitive level or with greater degree of challenge and interaction. At this point, you want to rekindle the competitive spirt, the achievement drive, the passion of employees to do and give the best they can and excel in those endeavors in spite limitations. It encourages collaboration among employees to participate using digital platforms that they are exposed to daily and using those for more productive purposes. The company prepares a structure in the activities to guide the interaction towards a specific worthy goal or outcome. Some examples are:

1. Organize a virtual talent contest – The categories may be on poetry, group singing, solo singing, stand-up comedy act, and theatrical presentation either musical, comedy or drama using digital platform
2. FB Live in Employee’s Page or any applicable platform that can be used to cascade official directive or status update, motivate and inspire via interactive modality. – Text messaging or chat of simple instructions or announcements can be done on a transactional basis. But for multiple or complex agenda that require two-way communication, those are best conveyed through an interactive forum such as this.
3. FB Live featuring awardees, front liners or model employees – With a moderator or a host for the FB Live, select employees may be interviewed via live chat to inspire and uplift other employees. Ideally, a question-and-answer portion from the audience should take place. Otherwise, a video-recording should (please delete the word “somehow”) have some prepared questions for the featured employee to answer.
4. Devotional in FB Live or recording – Sometimes, devotional sessions are best done when topics are based on the specific needs of specific audience and are relevant to the time.
5. Contribution of educational learning materials – Training and learning process of certain subject matters do not all have to take place in the classroom. The page can be virtual learning platform for topics that can appeal or cater to most members of the page.

“Experience is the best teacher”, as the adage goes. Every day, there are countless stories that are told in social media, radio, TV, and other digital channels available where people can learn from. The company and its employees, as one work community, have many stories worth telling too. Whether you refer to lockdown period or post-pandemic, this experience has changed and will change the way we all live and work. We may still be conscious about physical distancing, but employees in its work community can always be mentally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually connected with one another, virtual as it may be. Learning from the experience, employees will realize that a good part of it came from the work community they belong. An experience that helped them rediscover the company’s endearingly unique culture. As the company continues to enrich that experience, the feeling of pride and great satisfaction may grow for belonging to an organization that overcame what overwhelmed everyone and was there for them through sickness and health, through good times and bad. From that time on we can loudly say, KUDOS!  ●

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