By Elise James-DeCruise
Tech in training has given social learning a boost, and Snapchat can be embraced for this very purpose. For how to turn Snapchat into a serious communications tool (without all the seriousness), we present an article by Elise James-DeCruise, director of MediaMath’s educational institute, the New Marketing Institute.
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Slowly but surely, Millennial workers are taking over the U.S. labor force. In 2015, for the first time, they surpassed Generation X as the largest segment of the workforce. By 2025, they will make up nearly three quarters of the workforce.
In every case, Millennials want to work for organizations that support innovation and help develop their skills. Snapchat turned out to be ideal for our company, MediaMath, because 70% of our global staff is between the ages of 18 and 34, and we’re a global team, with members in six cities on four different continents.
Coordinating our team’s activities, sharing and celebrating wins, and introducing new team members are just a few of the significant communications challenges that we needed to address in order to work effectively and help our team believe in the mission of the company.
Enter Snapchat.
By introducing Snapchat to every member of our team and making it our go-to platform that each person regularly checks in on, we improved our ad-hoc communication, increased collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the team, and developed authentic personal friendships that have substantially changed how we work every day.
Team leaders in every industry should consider adopting Snapchat to keep communications immediate, casual, and sometimes a bit irreverent.
How Did We End Up on Snapchat?
Our move to Snapchat was not planned or required. Several team members already used Snapchat on a daily basis in their personal lives, and this crossed over into the work environment during a training session in the United Kingdom in 2015.
U.S. and U.K. members, some of whom were meeting for the first time, exchanged Snapchat information during this training and began using Snapchat to communicate with the rest of the team. This included photos of the venue they were training in, video snippets of their courses, shots of the branded training materials, and group photos with attendees.
Those who were not at the training were able to feel connected in a way that had not existed before Snapchat. The comradery that was created during that event had a lasting effect that soon spread to other teams as well. Within a week, the rest of the U.S. team downloaded the app and became active users as a means to engage with the broader team.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, James-Decruise elaborates on how to get started using Snapchat as a communication tool at your company.