Fostering connection when everyone is remote can be tricky. Wind back to four

months ago-- it was easy to high five a coworker, give surprise birthday cakes

outside of meeting rooms, and hop down to the juice shop downstairs for a walk

and talk. Shelter-in-place restrictions pose new challenges that inspired our

people team to think of creative ways to keep the team connected.

Our initiatives centered around the following dimensions:

Social Connection - How do we facilitate interaction
between people across different teams and departments?
Wellness - How do we encourage people to take care of
Wellness - How do we encourage people to take care of
themselves and remain mentally well during uncertain times?
focused on company-wide goals and objectives?
Alignment - How can we keep teams aligned, engaged, and
focused on company-wide goals and objectives?
20+ minutes of exercise
10+ minutes of mindfulness

For the purpose of this blog post, we chose to highlight and share our

social connection initiatives. We are happy to share these ideas with other

companies looking to provide employee social support.

Wellness Programs

The pandemic threw a curveball of new work environments, screen-focused

social interactions, along with uncertainty around the current economy. To

help our employees prioritize their health and well-being, we launched a

wellness program. We created a space for our employees to participate

together, foster camaraderie, and not feel alone in their personal wellness

endeavors.

April Wellness Program: Building Healthy Habits

Details of the Program

The program reminded employees to track key health criterias to build

healthy habits. In a two-week span, participants recorded if they met the

following criterias:

7+ hours of sleep
Drink 64 oz + of water
20+ minutes of exercise
10+ minutes of mindfulness

Social Interaction

We encouraged social interaction through a leaderboard, seeing how we stack

rank against each other. We also had a slack channel dedicated to this

challenge to share knowledge with each other and asking, “Does tea count

towards our water intake?” We could also commiserate on the channel about

how drinking a lot of water was difficult.

We ended the challenge with a virtual celebration highlighting winners for:

Highest consecutive points
Category leaders
stress and 15-minute meditation to regain balance.
Week 2 leaders (to motivate late joiners) while celebrating everyone who
participated
Scale’s Creative Time- we set aside time to hang out and work on something

Overall, the participation rate was 20 percent of the whole company.

Gabby Zetino, our

sales development representative, shares her experience with the challenge:

May Wellness Program: Bingo Board and Scale Sponsored Events

Details of the Program

This month, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we assembled a mental

health bingo board which highlighted a list of activities employees can do

at their own pace. If an employee completed ten of the activities, they were

entered into a raffle.

Taisia Karaseva,

our Pilots & POC lead, shares how the bingo board pushed her to reflect

on wellness habits along with the Scale-sponsored event:

Social Interaction

We had a column dedicated to social interactions: “Stay Connected.” Also,

Scale sponsored events on the bingo board’s first row:

creative together (paint, write, dance, bake etc)
Stress Relief Workshop + Guided Meditation - we brought in a self-care
coach and meditation instructor for a 15-minute workshop on how to relieve
stress and 15-minute meditation to regain balance.
Shelter-In-Place? … or baked if you’re a baker
What is your Go-To Quarantine Snack?
Yoga with Scale - we brought in a yoga instructor for a quick 30-minute
session in the morning
If they prefer one-on-one settings or groups of three.
In addition to donut integration
Scale’s Creative Time- we set aside time to hang out and work on something
creative together (paint, write, dance, bake etc)

Scale Themed Trivia Nights

Scale Trivia Nights were born out of shelter-in-place and is one of our

highly attended events hosted by our workplace operations team,

Monica Breton and

Eileen Ho.

Details of the Program

The program administrator prepared questions in advance, selected employees

into groups randomly and sent them off to their breakout virtual rooms.

Similar to regular trivia, each team had a lead and a team name. The trivia

administrator gave category questions to the leaders via slack and the teams

in their

breakout rooms.

Then within the breakout rooms, teams discussed and laughed about the

answers they’ll give and relayed the answers back to the program

administrator.

Social Connection

Hannah Moreno, our

marketing operations specialist, shares a few words on her experience with

Trivia Night:

Speed Scaling

To play on the words of “speed dating”, at Scale,

Margo Wheeler, our

people operations manager, hosted a networking event, “Speed Scaling” for us

to connect with employees across different teams with fun icebreaker

questions.

Details of the Program

To do this remotely, Margo broke us into different breakout groups and

posted the questions to us in real time. We popcorned around in a circle

answering questions. Our answers organically led us to unprompted

conversations. When we had all spoken and experienced just the right amount

of awkward silence, we moved onto the next question to continue learning

about each other.

For quarantine edition, we also included these questions:

What are you most looking forward to doing once Shelter-In-Place is
lifted?
What’s the best meal you’ve cooked (or someone’s cooked for you) during
Shelter-In-Place? … or baked if you’re a baker
What is your Go-To Quarantine Snack?

Social Connection

Guido Maliandi, our

engineering manager, had attended both the live and the remote Speed Scaling

sessions. He shares his experience with both:

Small Groups Scale Socializing

Socializing remotely could be difficult for a lot of people, especially in

larger groups. To foster a genuine connection, smaller groups of one-on-one

or groups with no more than four were scheduled by Eileen Ho, our program

manager for Scale Socializing.

Details of the Program

We sent a survey out to the company so that anyone who chooses to can opt in

to socialize. There are logistical nuances we consider such as:

Who they want to meet (new hires, cross functional team members)
How often they want to socialize
If they prefer one-on-one settings or groups of three.
In addition to donut integration
we’re already using, this initiative facilitates further connections for
employees.

Social Connection

Our field engineering manager,

Shaun VanWeelden has

participated in several of these virtual coffee chats. Shaun shares his

experience with Scale Socializing below:

Slack Channels and Prompts: Scalien Share

Slack is one of the main sources we use to keep in touch, so it only made

sense to take advantage of it when we started “Scalien Share.” Similar to

“Show and Tell” it is a fast way to take a step away from work and open up

about ourselves. In addition to “Scalien Share”, we keep track of our

interest-group slack channels for new hires to join. Most of these groups

are grassroots-led such as #thebookclub, #cats, and #scaleai-women.

Details of the Program

For Scalien Share, the Workplace Operations team wanted to kick off a series

of questions sent to our #social channel on Slack. Some prompts include

“What has been your favorite indoor weekend activity?” and “Share a photo of

your go-to mug!”

Social Connection

While our design manager

Jeff Hilnbrand is

taking an intentional break from design work and managing his team, he also

has been a facilitator of culture at Scale. We keep our interest group

channels engaging with prompts like “What did you cook last week?” in

#cooking or “What are you bumping?” in #music. Jeff shares his reflection on

social connection through Slack:

Learnings

While transitioning events to a remote setting, we couldn’t always smoothen

out every detail before launch of the program. We take some of the areas of

improvements as opportunities to learn and improve our future initiatives.

Balancing Competition with Participation

Our first wellness challenge emphasized competition over participation.

Looking back, in addition to the competitive aspect, we would ideally reward

those who were just participating. Focusing on competition only rewards the

top individuals. Wellness programs shouldn’t always be about winning or

performance.

Encouraging grassroots participation

As the people team rallies to foster connection, we could’ve also encouraged

employees or given ownership to them to drive some of these initiatives. For

example, asking an employee to lead a Scalien share prompt would potentially

ensure that these prompts are not always coming from the people team but

also inspired cross-functionally from other teams.

Finding balance between being structured and unstructured

Lastly, finding the balance between structured connections and organic

connections is challenging. For Speed Scaling, we messaged out the questions

in timed intervals to keep the group moving to the next question. In

retrospect, we realized that some groups want to stay on one question longer

than another question. Giving all questions in advance would allow the

breakout groups to talk more organically, feeling free to stay on a

particular discussion point that they were interested in lingering on.

Remote events and programs posed new types of challenges, but we’re grateful

for Scale giving us the space to experiment ways to keep our employees close

during these uncertain times.