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Alignment & Engagement
July 26, 2021
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5 min.
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7 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement with Live Streaming

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According to Gallup, “When a CEO [..]. decides what they want to achieve -- organic growth, profitability, agility, diversity, productivity, you name the goal --it can best be accomplished by engaged workers.”

In today’s world of global companies and deskless employees, how do companies create an engaged workforce? CEOs are the most effective driving force behind a culture of engagement, but it isn’t easy and, as cited in the 2021 EdelmanTrust Barometer, “CEO’s credibility is at all-time lows [...], making the challenge for CEO leaders even more acute as they try to address today’s problems.”

How can CEOs communicate the company vision, goals and initiatives in a way that feels authentic, creates a sense of immediacy and keeps employees feeling connected and motivated? In a word, video. Live streaming video to be exact.

The Power of Live Streaming Video

Almost six years ago, ServiceRocket founder and CEO, Rob Castaneda, shared seven ways he uses Workplace from Meta's live streaming feature to stay connected to employees across eight offices and five continents. With Workplace, ServiceRocket has a communications system that promotes dialog, rather than monologue, and encourages employees to become active participants in the communication process.

Forrester research shows that employees are 75% more likely to watch a business video than read the written document, and video makes it easier to deliver complex messages.

Here are Rob’s favorite, tried-and-true ways to use live-streaming video to create a shared sense of purpose, improve connections, and encourage real engagement.

GROWTH FY22Q1 7 Ways to w livestreaming Workplace

1.  Big Announcement

Communicating a big announcement (or any important announcement, for that matter) is critical for CEO communication. Too often, executives send out overly-wordy emails devoid of connection between the announcement and its impact on both employees and the company. Live-streaming announcements is a way to speak directly to people in a more personal and accessible way.

In just one example, Rob used live video to announce our partnership with Workplace while standing in front of the Facebook sign in Menlo Park following one of his meetings there. Everyone at ServiceRocket could watch the video, ask questions, and otherwise engage with the announcement. It was also a way for him to explain the partnership in the context of the company's mission and values and what it means for teams that will and will not be directly involved.  

Since live-streamed videos are saved on Workplace, they are available to anyone unable to watch at the time it aired.

2.  Prepared Meeting

One of the most overlooked video streaming opportunities is the prepared meeting.  Meeting invites are often extended only to people deemed necessary. This might be a good standard to follow most of the time, but there are times when the subject and discussion of a meeting would be useful to others or would be more effective with participation from others.

One example of this is a brainstorming meeting. Our product teams often live stream meetings as they talk through product roadmaps and prioritize what they should be working on. People closest to customers (sales, support, customer success) can join the live stream to offer ideas, ask questions, and share customer comments. Ideas shine and the product team gains a new perspective on a problem by including people in their meetings who otherwise might not be able to participate.

3.  Ask Me Anything

An Ask Me Anything (AMA) is a scheduled session during which employees ask Rob any question they want. To collect questions ahead of time, Rob creates a poll in Workplace and employees suggest and vote on questions. Questions with the most votes get moved to the top and prioritized. Very little preparation is needed and the questions employees care about most are the ones that get answered. People watching live can comment on the video to ask follow ups, and those who could not watch it live, can watch it later.  

GROWTH FY22Q1 7 Ways to w livestreaming Workplace screenshot

4.  Hallway Walk

To put their finger on the pulse of the company, leaders have used the tactic of walking the hallways to talk casually to employees for years.  Today’s CEOs embark on ‘whirlwind tours” of multiple offices to stay connected. Sharing these moments with other offices can create a greater sense of unity for dispersed teams.

Rob uses his phone to live-stream these encounters and asks a mix of business and personal questions. The point is to make a connection, get to know the person a little bit, and share the experience with others as a live stream.

    1. A Few Professional Questions

           a. Tell us your name, role and team.

           b. What are you working on?

           c. What can we do better around here?

           d. What is one thing you’re learning now and why is it important

           e. What was your first job?

    2. A Few Personal Questions

           a. What’s your favorite way to unwind after a busy day?

           b. If you could snap your fingers and be an expert in something, what would it be?

           c. What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?

           d. What fun things do you have planned this weekend?

GROWTH FY22Q1 7 Ways to w livestreaming Workplace break (1)

5.  Interview

One of the best (and perhaps, easiest) ways to use live streaming at work is to do interviews. Interviews can mean a lot of things. During a customer visit, you could interview a customer and stream that video to your Customer Success team's group in Workplace.

You could interview partners, suppliers, employees, or any other interesting people you meet on business travel or at conferences (more on conferences below). In one example, Rob visited the Workplace team at their London office. He live-streamed his meeting with the Workplace engineering team because we wanted to share the experience. Rob added language to his post that the conversation was for internal purposes only to ensure the team would use the information from the meeting properly.

Not only did the ServiceRocket engineering team get to watch the video live and post questions in the comments in real-time, but the people who weren’t able to watch it live watched the video later because it was automatically saved to the group. Finally, Rob did not have to take any notes. The video was saved automatically for anyone in that Workplace Group to watch later.

Imagine the high-quality onboarding that can occur for new engineers who join the Workplace project at ServiceRocket. They can watch this interview to understand the background and the "why" behind the Workplace platform strategy.

6.  Field Reporter

Live streaming video is a great way to report (in a positive way) on people and events around the company. Many things that merit attention are best appreciated by video. For instance, at our office in Kuala Lumpur, a glass door slammed shut each time people went in and out. To see and hear it, would make anyone think, "That slams hard. It's gonna break one of these days."

One of our employees live streamed the door being opened and slamming shut, tagged our facilities team who saw it and had it fixed by mid-day. Any other form of communication would not have shown the severity and urgency of the problem, especially not a help desk ticket. But a live video did. When you can see and hear the problem, it energizes a rapid response.

7.  Conference Event

One of ServiceRocket’s core values is Share the Knowledge. So when employees attend conferences there is an unstated expectation that they share what they learned with the rest of the team. But sharing is not so easy. It requires a lot of work to type up your notes in a format that is consumable. Then there is the matter of how to share it. Do you send an email? Create a presentation? Schedule a meeting? More than one meeting? This is beginning to feel like work...and I have actual work to do.

Sound familiar? With live video, you can share what you learned at a conference, in real time, eliminating all of the follow up work. Here are three examples:

  1. Our CEO/Founder, Rob Castaneda gave a talk at the “Business of Software Conference”, and Peter John Marquez, ServiceRocket’s Chief Customer Officer live streamed it from the audience for all ServiceRocket employees to watch. (Move video embedded in this blog above to here)
  2. At that same conference, Rob live streamed a talk he found interesting.
  3. After an Influitive Advocamp event in Palo Alto, I posted a live video to the entire marketing team about what I had learned.

In these three examples, no notes were written up and the sharing happened in almost real-time.

GROWTH FY22Q1 7 Ways to w livestreaming Workplace break (3)

Live Streaming Is Easy, Authentic, and Engaging

In a highly distributed, mobile world, live streaming is a critical communications skill that CEOs, leaders and aspiring leaders need to learn to engage employees and create connections between staff and the company mission.

Live streaming is just one of the many features of Workplace designed to improve company communication, team collaboration and employee engagement.  At ServiceRocket, we achieved 100% employee adoption within days of implementing Workplace - we can help you do the same.

Learn more about how Workplace from Meta and ServiceRocket can help you drive employee engagement and collaboration.

Learn more about how Workplace from Meta and ServiceRocket can help you drive employee engagement and collaboration.

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