A Wall to Bring Employees Together

André Sollitto

SAP, a software company now offers cloud solutions. For this reason, a new culture in the company needed to be transmitted to employees. In an effort to optimize the relationship between the finance team and the sales team, Paulo Mendes, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) appealed to the communications department to create an internal campaign.

The initiative was organized in four stages. First, a financial site was created within the JAN, the internal social network of the company, which provided access to a systematized structure of information. “The sales team no longer had to constantly ask for information from the finance staff,” said Luciana Coen, director of Corporate Communications at SAP and member of the Board of Aberje. The second step was to announce the launch of the site on the various internal TVs mounted throughout the company.

Following this, a wall was created which contained information about “digital transformation” and also a space for placing messages. The strategy of the communication team was to ease the stressful environment in the finance department by providing a space to communicate important information in an entertaining way.

In addition, every two or three months the director of finance invites ten staff members from the sales department for lunch. As host, he pays for the meal, which is served in nice little bags, providing an informal meeting for the employees. Today, there is even a waiting list to join.

The main challenge for the communication department was to use creativity to meet the demands of the CFO. “We had to think of new things to improve communications between the  two areas,” said Coen. “The lunch and the wall were novel and engaging.”

The campaign had a positive result, according to Coen. In addition to providing a more informal environment for the finance team, it also improved communications between the two areas and will set an example for other departments in the company.

The wall was a success, and the employees not only use the space for work-related notices, but also for friendly messages as well. Thus, it is likely that this kind of initiative will be implemented in other areas of the company.