Tried and tested: this company built an app for employee communication

31 January 2018 -

Remote working is a challenge for organisational culture: here’s how one company addressed it

Heidi Pitt-Cramman

We have 330 staff based in the USA, UK and Holland and welcoming our full workforce into a one-week company event hosted near Rotterdam was always going to be a challenge for managers.

As a software platform that can create mobile apps, the obvious choice for how to engage our “Mendixites” was for the operation side of the business to collaborate with IT to create a Mendix app for employees to download.

WHY YOU NEED AN APP

The app contained an event schedule for the week at a glance. It was tailored for each individual employee and included details of department talks, locations for hotels, conference venues and travel arrangements.

We gave each employee a profile too. Colleague and key stakeholder information included pictures and biographies. The app enabled employees to comment on a bio depending on memorable conversations they had during that week.

Our data told us that out of around 300 attendees, 289 downloads were made.

WHAT YOUR APP COULD LOOK LIKE

We also created a game, which was designed with the goal to help people get to know colleagues they may not interact with on a day-to-day basis.

Each employee was given a unique QR code which when scanned selected three random questions. Questions included ““what is the first thing you do in the morning?” and “what is your hidden talent?” These were conversation starters to get employees to interact.

Each question answered was worth one point and those points were doubled if you interacted outside your department.

The feedback we have received has been outstanding, we couldn’t be more proud of the teams working within Mendix to help breed a culture determined to feel part of something amazing.

COULD YOU HAVE AN APP TOO?

Previously companies would find creating engaging apps time-consuming and costly. Keeping up with innovation – from concept to creation – used to be impossible, but a platform such as ours enables those difficulties to no longer exist. As a ‘low code’ platform, it empowers business users to participate in app creation through continuous feedback, or direct participation in development with visual models.

Heidi Pitt Cramman is a talent acquisition partner at Mendix.