For people around the world, Valentine’s Day is an annual celebration of romantic love. But, for those of us at SAS, Feb. 14 has the added significance of being “Love-the-Hub Day.”
My last post described the Hub as our internal social networking platform and one of the many reasons why we continue to score high in Great Places to Work surveys. As today marks the second anniversary of the Hub's launch, I want to tell you even more about why we love the Hub.
Just like any other form of social media, the idea is to bring people together and help them make connections they might not otherwise make. On the Hub, those connections are made among members of the SAS family, and they’re made in a variety of ways.
One way is the Twitteresque “stream” function. Comments, announcements and questions – though not limited to 140 characters – can be viewed by all Hub users on the stream. And, these streams use all standard social media functions, including trending hashtags, stream following, liking and sharing. Hub streams are really handy during live events, such as CEO Jim Goodnight’s executive update webcasts, business conferences, management town halls and so on. In these cases, virtual attendees can submit questions and comments real-time for presenters to field. We can also create custom streams filtered by topics or people.
What's really cool about this platform is that our executives are bought into it, too. For example, when Dr. Goodnight sent a companywide message to employees to announce our most ranking on the latest FORTUNE list of "Best Companies to Work For in the US," he didn’t use an email blast. No, he posted the announcement on the Hub. And an interesting thing happened – Hub membership spiked!
When we want to focus on something specific on an on-going basis, we create Hub groups. These can be SAS-public (open to all Hub users) or private (invitation-only) if it's a topic that touches only a smaller number of employees. We can create groups on any topic, professional or personal (within reason). A quick perusal of our groups directory might give the impression that we have. But, they all are good for SAS.
It’s easy to see how groups that are directly related to our business help the company, and we have more than 200 of these (not counting the private ones). Hub groups on our various products and technologies, as well as development, sales and marketing practices, extend beyond the boundaries of our corporate headquarters. Employees from all around the world can find one another and share their expertise. We also use temporary “project” groups, focused on short-term initiatives. Plus, we have many groups where employees can discuss technologies or business practices that aren’t currently used at SAS but might have potential for future use or just for individual professional development.
Perhaps not so obvious is how personal-interest groups benefit SAS. We are widely-known for our unique corporate culture and how it helps drive our business success. I know it sounds cliché, but we do feel like a big family here at SAS, and finding coworkers on the other side of the globe who share your love of animals or interest in needlepoint certainly strengthens those family ties. We even had a couple who met through an auto enthusiasts group and are now engaged to be married!
And besides, someone with whom you just shared your mom’s chicken soup recipe with might have an answer to that puzzling business problem you’ve been working on!
So why do we love the Hub? It gives us a voice and the freedom to use it as we see fit … and it’s good for business! Find out more about the Hub in this IDG CITEworld feature.
