B2P: how in 5 years to collect 3,000 news for a corporate publication in an IT company numbering> 100 people
The Internet does not answer the question “How to collect corporate news in an IT company for a Business to Personal edition?”. Meanwhile, he is very interested in PR and Eycharov. It is obvious to all: employees need to be informed about what is happening in the company, tell them news from neighboring projects, development plans, broadcast somehow the authorities' expectations about the corporate culture, goals ... But how to collect this information? Who to ask? How to present it?
For 5 years, we in the IT company EastBanc Technologies wrote 3,108 news in our corporate wall publication called "Summary." Approximately 2.5 news every day. In this article, we will explain how and why we are doing this. In the course of the story we will show the results of a survey dedicated to a report in which 54% of employees participated.
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For reference: EastBanc Technologies is an IT company from Novosibirsk with more than 100 employees. We are engaged in automation of business processes ( one , two , three ) development of mobile applications ( one , two , three ) and design ( one , two ). We have been blogging on Habré since 2013.
On Monday, September 10, 2012 (5 years ago!), The first issue of the report was released, consisting of 1 sheet filled with four news items. Since then, we have not slept a single Monday and have issued almost 250 reports, which we have been posting all five years at the same time, in the same form, on a corkboard in the corporate kitchen.
The format of the wall newspaper discourages many. Immediately answer the top 5 questions:
The need to publish a corporate combat sheet appeared when the company experienced rapid growth: in 2012, management changed, put in order the processes, and the intensive attraction and hiring of new employees began. People and projects became more, information, passing from mouth to mouth, no longer reached other departments and even adjacent rooms. When the number of employees increased to 50, and the number of projects increased to 20, it became clear that we needed to launch quick and transparent information.
And since one of our corporate values has always been “To hell with everything - take it and do it!”, We without long thoughts, meetings and editorial boards created such a wall format, with A4, buttons, layout in Word, informal language and style.
There was always a lot of humor, colloquial words, memes, slang, anglicisms in the reports - language purists would not like it.
Over time, people, time, resources appeared, but the summary remained emphatically ascetic and informal.
4 years ago, we also added buns to this tradition, which our director brings at exactly 9 am every Monday. How it affected the perception of information was not measured, but according to the sensations - everyone is happy with the addition.
Writes 1 man-PR. Starts collecting news on Thursday at lunch, finishes writing by Friday evening. The director’s review is reviewed, and it is postponed until Monday, awaiting printing and hanging.
Summary consists of 5-15 sheets. In the largest report was 23 news. Sometimes it all fits on one cork board, sometimes it does not fit into two - depending on the season.
This news collects PR man. There is a Skype chat in which there are 16 people - all the newsmakers of the company (team leaders, project managers, directors, employees of the project office). On Thursday, they begin to throw their news stories there in 1-2 offers. Then the PR man comes to everyone's feet and asks more in detail.
Often, more than half of the chat participants are silent. Mostly silent like technical colleagues. We must go to them and get the news in a fair battle.
Every PR specialist in an IT company knows such a problem: you approach a technical colleague, ask what he did for a new, great, important for humanity in a week, and he tells you that RELEASE IS PASSED, WE ALREADY WRITED IT WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF TRAINING, I AM NOTHING ELSE DID NOT HAPPEN. Familiar, right?
But the old wise PR man knows that you can look at any enterprise from different technical angles, and never again talk about it again and again, share new designs, interview different project participants. So we advise you not to go for excuses, but to act as follows:
Usually the most difficult thing is to write project news. Here it is important to observe sufficient technical detail, but not to overdo it, so that the reader will not wilt in the middle.
At the beginning of the news, we will definitely give a retrospective, recalling what and for whom the project is, what was already written about it, what events happened on it. Because not everyone remembers the details of large long projects.
If this is a successful release, be sure to thank all the participants. If not successful, we neatly explain why the file happened, and tell the plan of salvation.
If the news about negotiations with a potential customer tells us where he came to us: on recommendations, from Habr, by Google request, from the conference ... It is very important to explain to people how our external communication channels work, because they help us write news and cases on the site, articles on Habr and speak at the conference.
There are always a lot of photos in the summary: application screens, pictures from business trips, from customers' offices, new souvenirs - very rarely, when we have nothing to illustrate the news, because: 1. The PR man goes around the office and fotaya everything that will fit. 2. Employees-newsmakers for five years are also trained to send proof-photos to a special chat.
Even our customers know about the report, read it when they are in our office, and pose as usual at the end of the meeting so that they can not only tell, but also show their colleagues how, in what composition everything went. New customers are also positive, and even donate their internal corporate publications. For example, this newspaper was presented to VSK, there is an article about a mobile application that we developed for them.
For 5 years we have posted 3,293 pictures in reports!
Hard with bad news. We do not like to bring them, we do not like to scold anyone in the summary. Accurately, for which sometimes the accusation of agitation and embellishment of reality comes from colleagues. We are working on it.
Sometimes we publish reports in infographic format, such as this one, timed to coincide with the decade of the company:
There are also annual reports with the results, which are hung on the board on the last working day of the year. Special reports fully devoted to one interesting project or past corporate. Photo bulletins consisting of solid photos (for example, when everyone goes to work conditionally on January 14 or May 10, a bulletin with photos of our colleagues' instagrams hangs on the board, telling us how to spend the holidays):
Sometimes we release a funny report, for example, on Friday 13:
And once even released a summary of the reports. In honor of the anniversary two hundredth. We collected the accumulated facts and figures and hung the entire corridor with such posters:
In five years, the company has doubled, we are already more than a hundred people.
These problems became clear just in the course of life and as a result of a simple audit that we conducted to clarify the question “How to improve the reports?”
We decided to just ask the people in Google-forms. The results are not shocked and even pleased in some places. The editors knew about the problems that the colleagues identified in the survey, and so, but that the percentage of positively perceiving reports was so high, she did not guess and was pleasantly surprised.
In the survey participated 54% of the company's employees. 92% of respondents consider the report useful:
Apparently, we give in to the fashion on the redpolitiki and (with the help of Maxim Ilyakhov’s advice ) we prescribe our own, with reference to the report specifically. It is necessary to formulate the idea of a summary (again and taking into account the results of the survey), to determine the topics and headings, their sequence, the structure of notes depending on their content, the rules of illustration. Based on the fact that many people do not understand from the reports, what goals are set for their departments, it is necessary to figure out how to convey this.
In addition, we will solve the problem of a small kitchen, we added several comic options:
This is all, of course, a joke, but we seriously think about every component of the truth in them.
If this post seems interesting to the audience, we will publish the second part and tell you how they improved the readability indicators and what they did for it. Participate in the survey!
For 5 years, we in the IT company EastBanc Technologies wrote 3,108 news in our corporate wall publication called "Summary." Approximately 2.5 news every day. In this article, we will explain how and why we are doing this. In the course of the story we will show the results of a survey dedicated to a report in which 54% of employees participated.
')
For reference: EastBanc Technologies is an IT company from Novosibirsk with more than 100 employees. We are engaged in automation of business processes ( one , two , three ) development of mobile applications ( one , two , three ) and design ( one , two ). We have been blogging on Habré since 2013.
When and how did EastBanc Technologies publish a B2P newspaper?
On Monday, September 10, 2012 (5 years ago!), The first issue of the report was released, consisting of 1 sheet filled with four news items. Since then, we have not slept a single Monday and have issued almost 250 reports, which we have been posting all five years at the same time, in the same form, on a corkboard in the corporate kitchen.
“You are such advanced IT people all from yourself, why on paper?”
The format of the wall newspaper discourages many. Immediately answer the top 5 questions:
- Yes, we have a corporate portal and corporate mail.
- No, we are not going to transfer the report there.
- Yes, there are people who do not like it.
- Yes, most like it.
- And finally, yes, we are ready to improve this format, provided that it helps us more effectively communicate information to people.
Why for us the question of such simplicity and unpretentiousness is fundamental?
The need to publish a corporate combat sheet appeared when the company experienced rapid growth: in 2012, management changed, put in order the processes, and the intensive attraction and hiring of new employees began. People and projects became more, information, passing from mouth to mouth, no longer reached other departments and even adjacent rooms. When the number of employees increased to 50, and the number of projects increased to 20, it became clear that we needed to launch quick and transparent information.
And since one of our corporate values has always been “To hell with everything - take it and do it!”, We without long thoughts, meetings and editorial boards created such a wall format, with A4, buttons, layout in Word, informal language and style.
There was always a lot of humor, colloquial words, memes, slang, anglicisms in the reports - language purists would not like it.
Over time, people, time, resources appeared, but the summary remained emphatically ascetic and informal.
What tasks does the summary solve?
- Summarizes the results of the work and translates the corporate values of the company.
Our values are simple: to be experts, to be able to solve any technical issue, but not to get off the ground and delve into business processes to create information systems that not only automate the processes of organizations, but solve real tangible problems for living people. We try to drag this long thought through the storyline of each weekly report. The summary gives each of us an understanding of what global cause we are involved in. So that a person does not see the company through a narrow window of personal tasks.
- Informs about everything that happened in the company:
- project news
- new employees
- office news: new furniture, classrooms, the emergence of a corporate library, upcoming corporate…
- news of the personal life of colleagues: weddings, homeland, anniversaries, graduations ...
- Helps to overcome geographical fragmentation.
The company has offices in Novosibirsk and Washington, both issue reports and exchange them. Employees of the offices are working on joint projects, and it is important for them to understand the agenda of their colleagues and to keep the general information background despite the 12 hours difference. The Russian summary is also translated into English for English-speaking colleagues. - People stretch their legs, standing in front of the board and reading a summary. And that, for programmers, this is relevant :) More than once we were asked to send it by mail or transfer to the portal, but the editors always answer - physical exercises in combination with information have a great effect on health!
- It supports the oldest corporate tradition - to take news of the past week with coffee every Monday morning and right there, together with colleagues, to discuss them.
4 years ago, we also added buns to this tradition, which our director brings at exactly 9 am every Monday. How it affected the perception of information was not measured, but according to the sensations - everyone is happy with the addition.
How many people write?
Writes 1 man-PR. Starts collecting news on Thursday at lunch, finishes writing by Friday evening. The director’s review is reviewed, and it is postponed until Monday, awaiting printing and hanging.
How do we collect news?
Summary consists of 5-15 sheets. In the largest report was 23 news. Sometimes it all fits on one cork board, sometimes it does not fit into two - depending on the season.
This news collects PR man. There is a Skype chat in which there are 16 people - all the newsmakers of the company (team leaders, project managers, directors, employees of the project office). On Thursday, they begin to throw their news stories there in 1-2 offers. Then the PR man comes to everyone's feet and asks more in detail.
How to knock out the news from the programmer / PM'a / timlid
Often, more than half of the chat participants are silent. Mostly silent like technical colleagues. We must go to them and get the news in a fair battle.
Every PR specialist in an IT company knows such a problem: you approach a technical colleague, ask what he did for a new, great, important for humanity in a week, and he tells you that RELEASE IS PASSED, WE ALREADY WRITED IT WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF TRAINING, I AM NOTHING ELSE DID NOT HAPPEN. Familiar, right?
But the old wise PR man knows that you can look at any enterprise from different technical angles, and never again talk about it again and again, share new designs, interview different project participants. So we advise you not to go for excuses, but to act as follows:
- First, collect weekly feedback from salespeople, and on its basis roll up to PM. During this time, the customer could sincerely thank you for something, tell a story related to UX, or vice versa, you can catch PM on the basis of all this and speak out interesting news.
- Collect new designs with new functionality, come with a printout, poke a finger and ask: “And what is this? What is this for? And how did you do that? ”
- Start asking questions specifically on projects.
For example:
- Well, and on Leroy Merlin “Negotiations”, what, you didn’t do anything at all?
- Yes, did so, one little thing.
- Come on, tell me about the little thing.
- Yes, improvements. Then screwed the button, there scroll removed.
- Why scroll removed?
- Not all users guessed scrolled.
- And what happened?
- Negotiations were incorrectly booked.
- And what of that?
- Confusion was with the reservation.
- Well, now, are you booking correctly?
- Now, like complaints no longer come.
So, imperceptibly for the victim, you cooked porridge from the ax, and you have a chic life story about how with the help of your company's work thousands of people will now safely use the meeting rooms.
And the trick is that when you ask a manager about all his work at once, and he leads, for example, 5 projects, he certainly doesn’t understand at once what things are outstanding, and which are really routine. You need to be well versed in his projects and ask specific questions.
What do we write and how do we illustrate?
Usually the most difficult thing is to write project news. Here it is important to observe sufficient technical detail, but not to overdo it, so that the reader will not wilt in the middle.
At the beginning of the news, we will definitely give a retrospective, recalling what and for whom the project is, what was already written about it, what events happened on it. Because not everyone remembers the details of large long projects.
If this is a successful release, be sure to thank all the participants. If not successful, we neatly explain why the file happened, and tell the plan of salvation.
If the news about negotiations with a potential customer tells us where he came to us: on recommendations, from Habr, by Google request, from the conference ... It is very important to explain to people how our external communication channels work, because they help us write news and cases on the site, articles on Habr and speak at the conference.
There are always a lot of photos in the summary: application screens, pictures from business trips, from customers' offices, new souvenirs - very rarely, when we have nothing to illustrate the news, because: 1. The PR man goes around the office and fotaya everything that will fit. 2. Employees-newsmakers for five years are also trained to send proof-photos to a special chat.
Even our customers know about the report, read it when they are in our office, and pose as usual at the end of the meeting so that they can not only tell, but also show their colleagues how, in what composition everything went. New customers are also positive, and even donate their internal corporate publications. For example, this newspaper was presented to VSK, there is an article about a mobile application that we developed for them.
For 5 years we have posted 3,293 pictures in reports!
What do not we write?
Hard with bad news. We do not like to bring them, we do not like to scold anyone in the summary. Accurately, for which sometimes the accusation of agitation and embellishment of reality comes from colleagues. We are working on it.
Special Report Formats
Sometimes we publish reports in infographic format, such as this one, timed to coincide with the decade of the company:
There are also annual reports with the results, which are hung on the board on the last working day of the year. Special reports fully devoted to one interesting project or past corporate. Photo bulletins consisting of solid photos (for example, when everyone goes to work conditionally on January 14 or May 10, a bulletin with photos of our colleagues' instagrams hangs on the board, telling us how to spend the holidays):
Sometimes we release a funny report, for example, on Friday 13:
And once even released a summary of the reports. In honor of the anniversary two hundredth. We collected the accumulated facts and figures and hung the entire corridor with such posters:
What are the problems
In five years, the company has doubled, we are already more than a hundred people.
- In fact, we have two factions - a weekly report that very finely crushes the picture of life in the company, and an annual report that covers it for a long time.
As a result, employees often do not develop an understanding of intermediate results: weekly flashes of news stories such as “Progress to release”, “Finished sprint” and “Sent compred”, and annual ones are immediately dumbfounded by global results. Probably, we also need quarterly summary reports with news on the scale of “Zarelizili release”, so that a flag of understanding appears in the minds of colleagues on some important milestones. - People do not fit in the kitchen. You may have to hang the summary in several strategic locations.
- At times the cheers is a patriotic tone. At some point, we, protecting employees from stress, are very carried away by it. Although at the beginning of the reports were extremely honest, and they listed by name those who failed the release, for example. Obviously, there is a middle ground, and we will find it.
- Opaque rubricator. News is now distributed roughly as follows:
- Weddings, homeland.
- New employees.
- Projects, project, projects, here in a bunch of training.
- Office news, corporate parties.
As a result, on the third paragraph, readers are dizzy, because there are mixed news of long big projects for S7, Leroy Merlin, Ingosstrakh, VSK, there are a lot of these projects, and it’s difficult for people who have nothing to do with them structure.
These problems became clear just in the course of life and as a result of a simple audit that we conducted to clarify the question “How to improve the reports?”
How did the audit
We decided to just ask the people in Google-forms. The results are not shocked and even pleased in some places. The editors knew about the problems that the colleagues identified in the survey, and so, but that the percentage of positively perceiving reports was so high, she did not guess and was pleasantly surprised.
In the survey participated 54% of the company's employees. 92% of respondents consider the report useful:
What we will do according to the results of the audit
Apparently, we give in to the fashion on the redpolitiki and (with the help of Maxim Ilyakhov’s advice ) we prescribe our own, with reference to the report specifically. It is necessary to formulate the idea of a summary (again and taking into account the results of the survey), to determine the topics and headings, their sequence, the structure of notes depending on their content, the rules of illustration. Based on the fact that many people do not understand from the reports, what goals are set for their departments, it is necessary to figure out how to convey this.
In addition, we will solve the problem of a small kitchen, we added several comic options:
- Copies of reports in strategic places: above the printers, in front of the sofas in the hallway.
- Snapshot system: a new report sheet appears in the same place for exactly 24 hours, then it disappears and the next one appears. Who did not have time - he was not informed.
- Promoters in the morning hand out a summary in the corridor, shouting the most interesting news into a megaphone.
- Let's get the second kitchen, finally!
This is all, of course, a joke, but we seriously think about every component of the truth in them.
If this post seems interesting to the audience, we will publish the second part and tell you how they improved the readability indicators and what they did for it. Participate in the survey!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/336360/
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