Get your employees to open up

Yesterday I talked to you about LivingSocial chief Tim O’Shaughnessy, who had a great suggestion for meeting the challenge of email.

Today I want to pick up on another tip he gave in a great article about how he works.

O’Shaughnessy is big on employee engagement and one regular event is the monthly companywide meeting.

Nothing revolutionary about that. But I did like the little add-on to the end of each meeting – a five-minute presentation from an employee.

“Any employee can submit one. Normally, the topic isn’t company related, though someone recently did a funny one called ‘How to Be a Successful Intern at LivingSocial.’ Somebody else did one about growing up in a family of six girls’.”

“I love these, because it highlights the real people who work here.”

It’s a really lovely idea that probably works even better in a small company. Your employees obviously have lives and passions outside business and getting them to open up in a fun way like this is really cool.

It also trains staff to talk on their feet – something everyone can get better at.

And I can’t wait to bore my staff with a presentation the great golf courses of Yugoslavia!

Get it done – today!