Why I believe a few photos and the best ballad of 1991 can change the face of collaboration at BuzzFeed
See the music video here: https://youtu.be/3AJZ8N6cVEo
A few months ago, I rotated into a special project outside of the People Team — to work on business intelligence with our advertising org. Soon after, our squad released a semi-secret document to pose the following question:
Everywhere we looked (literally, in each division) someone was asking us if we could help map out the finer points of the organization — the stuff that existing directories don’t cover (current projects, skills, what I work on in detail). Knowing who to go to for what and why was the most common need info-wise, and so #whowhatwhy became the battle cry of our team.
In parallel, my switch into HR was motivated in part by the belief that ‘fuzzy’ exercises, like knowing a fun fact or having a coffee chat with a coworker leads to great work. So I got to thinking, how can we innovate the tech we have to be more empathetic and educational?
The inspiration came from a conversation with one of our most senior executives. “I know every single person by name in my division,” he claimed. “And I try to recognize them in org-wide emails, but I’m not sure if my leadership team will know who’s who.”
Suddenly, really heart-warming emails started to bother me. For example, this from an exec: “Special thanks to Beau Kiniry, who organized the channel launch from the publishing side. And big thanks to Summer Burton, Andrew Gauthier, Michelle Kempner, Lauren Dolgen, Katie LeBlanc, Stacy Noble, Mireille Keuroghlian, Kevin McShane, Mahira Dayal, Cheska Bacaltos, the META team, Kari Koeppel…and so many others!” Like you, who may not work with me, I don’t know who these people are. I’m glad they are being recognized, but I don’t recognize them myself.
We have so much readily accessible people data on hand that it’s criminal to be so in the dark about who your coworkers are. Plus, the inclusion literature of IO Psych reminds us that colleagues from underrepresented groups may find it more difficult to share information about their authentic selves. So I learned how to make an add-on for Gmail (a brand new feature of Google’s) and finished a simple prototype in about a day. Then I did what I do best: make it complicated by filming and recording an entire music video to promote the product:
So what’s actually happening here?
- Whenever an employee name appears in the body of an email, you are served a card that contains their Workday photo, helpful basics, and special info like Fun Fact and what they work on
- Via Slack, you can now edit personal information in our internal API. This is a big deal because it puts the onus on the individual to keep some of their meaningful but transitory info up to date
- In Docs, you can also put a face to a name in one click (for every name that appears in your email) in a nicely formatted signature
There’s a lot more potential down the line: we did this in 3 days. I’d love to see the data become searchable, not just the people: for example, “who can I talk to about…” will reference all the user-submitted specialities and help us build internal networks.
But let’s put the geeky stuff aside. This project happened because I joined an Employee Resource Group and met a singer. And then met a few more on his team. And because I advertised my musicianship, I met a new lead vocalist in the nick of time. And because I advertised this project to the heads of the Tech team, I met three engineers from the UK who put their limited time into building real, ready-to-use tools. And because I joined an analyst’s skill sharing group, I met a production lead. And because I met him, I got a professional video shoot at the zero hour.
I love this video so much because the medium is the message: because I know the people in my organization and what they are capable of, near and far, I have the harmony of a lifetime to show off for Hackweek 2018.
Author’s note: I lied for the headline’s sake — the best ballad of 1991 is “To Be With You” by a nose.
Epilogue: since this video was made and circulated around Google, the pandemic pushed the company to invest in more remote-work-centric features such as these into their product. Think of us when you look at People Chips, or the AI tools auto-completing employee names in Docs. And keep pushing Google to think of their product as a core part of the HR experience!
Max is the founder & maker behind sheetswizard.com, where you can find educational materials and apps to help you be a great co-worker, better analyst, and excel at Google Sheets. Visit our newest apps like:
Custom Sheet Themes: launch every Sheet you make with custom colors & fonts,
Calendar x Sheets Integration: the easy way to grab and visualize cal data,
9-Block Maker in Sheets: make a 3x3 matrix in one click for your performance reviews,
Org Chart Slideshows (coming this week!): automatically make beautiful slide-sized org charts from your people & org data,
Workday to Sheets: the missing integration to beam HR data right into your sheets automatically.Try them out or reach out to inquiries@maxbrawer.com if your security policy blocks add-ons and you need custom or on-premises work.
To keep in touch with us here and find out what’s going on at BuzzFeed Tech, be sure to follow us on Twitter @BuzzFeedExp where a member of our Tech team takes over the handle for a week!
