To Connect or not to Connect

This year 2022 something pretty curious happened. We were faced with a reality in which we were immersed, but without knowing that we had a unique opportunity in front of us.

New challenges

Those of us in the corporate world and especially in innovation are aware of the number of trends that surround us, that lead the world and have an impact on today’s reality and shape the future. Volatility and virtuality, the influence of new generations and their demands in front of old paradigms are no longer new. The combination of these points, and many others, leads organizations to reconsider aspects that they previously took for granted or, at least, expected to maintain for a few more years. 

Offshoring allows companies to hire talent from all over the world, but what about organizational culture? How do you build remote teams? On the other hand, given the exponential growth in the demand for qualified profiles, how do we make them choose us over the diversity of options?  And finally, taking into account the speed with which information is generated and updated, how do we ensure that what was created and validated reaches other people effectively?

We believe that making the right questions, and analyzing reality, are the key to creating effective solutions. 

Our Pilot: what we did

During this year, a pilot experience was carried out with the Frontenders team of Mercado Envíos from Mercado Libre.

The challenge was to create a community of Frontenders to contain people and give them a sense of belonging. With that in mind, Say Hi! created a program called “FrontEnd Connect” where co-creation environments were developed, in which the collaborators themselves, as a team, developed solutions to their work challenges. 

All this happened in 4 months, in 4 different sites: BA – COL – SAO PAULO and FLORIPA and 104 people of different nationalities went through the program. The interesting thing was that we got to make a real cross team / cross product / cross site connection. Wow!🥲

But that was not all! After conducting an Impact Study, we were able to identify that co-creation environments not only succeeded in creating a community, but also left other highly relevant results. Points that were not mapped and bring great advantages for the development of the organizational culture. In short, based on these contexts: 

• A network of ties is built and serves as support, allows the company’s culture to be put into practice and therefore contributes to people’s sense of belonging. 
• The work of the teams and the transmission of the knowledge generated are optimized. 

• Ideas that transform the company and add value are generated.

“FE Connect allowed us to experiment again the magic of collective creativity to solve problems that improve the lives of our customers”  Mauricio Ferreyra – Mercado Libre.

We are convinced that the best way to work is with other people, as a team, sharing and growing together. That is why it makes us very happy to have planted this seed in MeLi where we have seen a community form, grow and strengthen, after lots of hours of work, commitment and passion. A seed that we know will not stop growing. 

See you soon!

Special thanks to:

Mauri for giving us the opportunity to create and run Connect. 

To George y Walker for being our team-mates.

To Nu for her perspective, interpretation of context and exhaustive study in measuring the impact. Thank you!

To Cami for her enthusiasm and support.