BRUSSELS - 31/01/2017 - Woobe announced today the official launch of its internal networking solution.
Woobe addresses the hyperconnectivity in today’s workplace: employees are more and more “connected” with their teammates, but at the same time we report a lack of real human contact with colleagues in other departments, divisions etc which translate in less collaboration or will to share information. This “silo mentality” affects mostly big companies and leads to a loss of efficiency and morale.
The team at Woobe conducted a survey on companies with a minimum of 200 employees that has shown that 70% of employees have lunch always with the same colleagues of their same department but, at the same time, some 75% would like to meet new colleagues from other departments because this will make them happier. Unfortunately, the main networking opportunity they have got are the big company dinners where people tend to stay with the ones they already know.
Human contact is the key factor and the survey shows a high correlation there : the happiest employees are those who are eating with colleagues more often and build more informal contacts in their company.
Other findings from Woobe’s survey include that in big companies (more than 2000 employees) employees eat with their colleagues less often than in small companies (less than 200 employees), and that having lunch with colleagues from other departments is even more unlikely. Employees of big companies are also the most enthusiast about being invited to a lunch with colleagues that they don’t know. It is clear that large companies have the opportunity to boost cross-silo contacts between their employees.
Other interesting findings are related to the age of the employees: older employees (35 and more) become less and less interested in eating with their colleagues and so they rarely meet with those from other departments, they need to be stimulated to build an internal network for their own wellbeing.
Very young employees (under 26) aren’t satisfied of their informal contacts in the company. This probably explains why they are eating very often with their colleagues, specially with those from other departments.
For the HR department, it is clear that employees are looking forward to receiving support with networking via tailored activities.
The three main solutions to break the silo mentality that most companies put in place are: team building activities and company's dinners or enterprise social networks.
All these solutions have proven to be reliable for many years, but they have their limits: they are gathering always the same attendees, they are hard and expensive to organize because too many people are involved. At the event itself, people tend to regroup with their team rather than having contacts with other colleagues. Furthermore, all these current solutions fall short as far as participation rate, employees’ engagement and measurability are concerned.
So the question is: how to go beyond these limits and, at the same time, drive high participation rates and employees’ engagement? Well, the answer is “frequent micro-events”, that is events which are repeated several times in a given time frame and with a small number of attendees. Yet organising these kind of events might be quite difficult for large companies, with hundreds or thousands of employees. The HR will be overwhelmed by the number of variables involved to plan the event and handling the last minute cancellations might be even worse. They need the right tool to help them complete this task.
Woobe is the tool that will give HR a the possibility to organize long-term and specifically designed small-group events over large groups of individuals and to collect real time KPIs. It is an effective, long-term and scalable solution that can design inter- or intra-department campaigns with different objectives and separate goals. With only few clicks, and in less than 5 minutes, the HR will create a campaign. Woobe will send automatic invitations to employees, according to their calendar availabilities and the criteria defined, such as department, age, seniority, etc. What Woobe is not is “yet another tool” for the employees or a "tinder-like" app: they will receive invitations in their regular “outlook” calendar and the HR manager has the ability to be proactive by setting up the campaign of micro-events. Woobe automates the organisation of micro-events: hundreds of events with a small number of attendees to foster real human contact between the employees and let the HR department finally manage the Human resources.
The managing partner Guy-Louis de le Vingne said: “HR departments follow two opposite objectives: empower their employees with smaller and smaller teams while ensuring these teams work together. The best way to achieve both is through micro events, but these have administrative burdens which are so high that is close to impossible to organise them. Woobe simply makes it possible.”
The Brussels-based startup proudly announced the installation of its solution to the first client: a major Belgian bank.
About
Woobe is a startup launched in Brussels in 2015 by Barefoot Studio. We are a team of entrepreneurs committed to always deliver the best service possible to our clients, and striving to develop our brand further everyday, by staying on the edge of technology.
We are the all-in-one service for large companies which have to deal with NWoW challenges, silo mentality and change management.
Woobe creates teamwork, promote real internal networking and support the implementation of the New Ways of Working. Furthermore, Woobe offers real time statistics about the events as well as qualitative data collected via quick surveys after every event.
Woobe comes with a web application that let the HR organise a campaign of micro-events among thousands of employees. It selects the attendees according to the chosen profiles and their availability from their corporate agenda.
Woobe is also a mobile app that help users manage their events and see who they’ve met during the micro-events.
Contact Details:
Guy-Louis de le Vingne
Managing Partner
+32 495 73 72 10 - [email protected]