That’s How We Communicate Inside Our Office
Introduction
Hey everyone, if you had a chance to check our article, you might know us, WESEEK, Inc.
We are a venture company that originated in 2005 in Japan, focuses on software development, and provides our main internal wiki Service GROWI.cloud. Thanks to the hard work given by every one of our employees over the past twenty years, we transferred from a small company with only the founders into a business that can afford two offices in the Kanto & Kansai regions in Japan.
As an IT company specifically involved in the Knowledge Management industry, we also have high standards for internal communication in our company. Some of the strategies are quite interesting and rare. But overall, all methods are useful and aim to stimulate internal communication.
Thus, in today’s blog, we would like to share some of the internal communication tools and strategies we used to encourage internal communication in our office. It would be worthwhile if this real-life example would inspire you somehow!
1. Slack, Google Meet, GROWI.cloud
These three are the main tools we are using. Slack for messages and chat, Google Meet for voice and video conferencing, and GROWI.cloud for all internal document sharing.
Slack
On Slack, other than the common use, we have a “Tamariba” channel (which means “place drop any message you want” in Japanese) to let workers communicate freely. It is quite fun everyone talks about topics from animation, and daily life to news discussions. Honestly, this is the most active chat channel in our company.
The always-on video call, Google Meet
In addition to daily meetings, Google Meet is used as a part of an always-on video system to connect our two offices, aiming to promote team engagement. This method may sound controversial, but it is quite useful for a venture company that has offices in different locations like ours.
In our company, for example, it’s common for people to work on the same project but located in different offices. Hence, communication between the two sides of the office is unavoidable. Using Slack to send messages is indeed one way to deal with this. But there will always be times when typing can’t quickly and effectively explain what’s going on. So in this case, our workers would raise their voices to reach out to the other side of the camera.
Internal Wiki, GROWI.cloud
“…If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.” — David Ogivily
One thing is we always use the product first before publication and updates. To further improve the product and understand the customer's perspective, all the workers in our company use GROWI.cloud this internal wiki service in the workplace.
GROWI.cloud is markdown-based and allows simultaneous multi-person editing. It also boasts high security and various authentication methods are available to simplify authentication management, including LDAP/OAuth/SAML.
Thus, GROWI.cloud is used in almost every situation of information sharing, without worrying about its security.
2. Shared Space
Sofa & Japanese Tatami
We have two shared spaces with different styles: Sofa & Japanese Tatami.
Usually, workers would choose to have lunch or small talk and sit on the sofa to relax.
Although workers need to take off their shoes to go on Tatami, it is quite a part of Japanese tradition so everyone would prefer to sit on Tatami when they prefer a longer conversation. Also, Tatami reduces the physical distance between people thus it is natural to see people get closer and laugh all the time during the conversation.
Book, Board Game & Snack
The shared space at the office is complemented by a variety of activities arranged by the affairs team for everyone’s enjoyment.
For example, we have two bookshelves filled with different kinds of books, ranging from programming to design, typically aligned with the skills pertinent to our work. Employees can suggest books for acquisition through the internal current system (which we will mention later), after which they become part of the company’s shared resources. It’s common for individuals to share insights gleaned from their reading or collectively explore new skills derived from these books.
Additionally, the office culture reflects a shared enthusiasm for board games, fostered by the CEO’s passion. A dedicated shelf near the shared space provides various board games, catering to the enjoyment of most employees.
Next to the board games, we have a snack area where we can relax and chat. Here, both locally sourced treats brought back by employees and a diverse selection provided by the affair offer opportunities for brief respites and casual conversations among colleagues.
3. Internal Currency
We have our own internal currency system where employees earn coins for taking part in activities together. You can collect coins by joining study seminars, attending welcome lunches for new employees, or participating in meetings to discuss our goals (called KPT meetings which we will talk about later), etc. These coins can be exchanged for all sorts of things, like company merchandise or books from our shared resources.
But here’s the cool part: you can get coins not just from the affairs team but also from your coworkers. They can give you coins as a way of saying thanks for doing good work or for being helpful. This creates a nice cycle of appreciation and makes communication within the office even better.
The whole system fits well with our office culture, especially since we all love playing board games together. It’s a fun way to make our workplace even better and encourage internal communication in a such fun way!
4. Meetings & Activities
Weekly KPT Meeting
To make sure employees know what each other is doing and what kind of problem they have, we have a KPT meeting once a week.
KPT meetings can be broken down into three big parts: KEEP, PROBLEM, and TRY. Everyone would talk about the things they think they do good, the problems they are facing, and what they gonna try in the next week, with a team unit.
KPT Meeting becomes a good reflection time for not only individuals but the team as a whole.
Three months Seat Changing
To ensure everyone has a chance to talk with other department members, the location of the seats would be changed once every three months. This provides opportunities to reach out to employees who never had a chance to talk with.
Exchange Trip between Two Offices
With the always-on video system, working in different offices did not cause any inconvenience. In fact, we always encourage the employees to have an exchange trip between two offices for several weeks.
This experience allows the members to know more about both offices and to have more face-to-face communication with the team members, who are usually separated by a screen, thus making their future work smoother.
Summary
Looking back on these strategies, as members of WESEEK we are amazed by how the current working environment promotes active internal communication with true effort.
We hope this blog can give you all some ideas of how internal communication could look like not just in a boring and formal way, but bring innovation.
Please leave a comment & share with us how your workplace uses creative ways to promote internal communication.
About Us💡
In addition, we, WESEEK, offer the internal Wiki service called “GROWI.cloud” that supports Markdown and provides powerful functions. GROWI.cloud is a service for efficient information storage, retrieval, and sharing, and can improve the quality of information management within an organization.
Besides organizational use, GROWI.cloud is also available for individual use and you can always start with a free trial here. After the one-month free trial, you can change your plan into either the individual, duo, or trio plan, OR continue to use the personal plan for FREE with a maximum of 25 users! Go to price & features to learn about the details.
GROWI.cloud origins in Japan and now also offered in the Philippine and other countries which allows customers to use the service in English.
Go to GROWI.cloud to learn more about us. You can also follow our Facebook to see updates about our service.
