Virtual Social Connections Programme supports early careers colleagues

[Maninder_R]

Hannah Munden | Channel Sales Analyst Intern for Pointnext

Daniel Myers | Client Services Channel Account Manager

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With a firm focus on the future, and what the office of tomorrow may look like, staff around the world are starting to put the last year behind them. The sharp shock of moving to home working may have eased, and the home office may have become a familiar place for daily work, but as we move forwards, there are some lessons we can learn from looking back.

Communication became a challenge to the workforce, and many found innovative ways of maintaining links with colleagues. However for new recruits with no existing connections, there was a challenge to create and grow new relationships virtually. Our interns, apprentices and graduates were particularly affected, having little or no experience of a working environment.

Hannah Munden, Channel Programme Analyst in our UKI Client Services Team for HPE Pointnext Services noticed that a group which joined the organisation at the start of the pandemic may be experiencing less contact than usual. With no in-person contact, the normal office chatter and passing conversations were lost, making it more difficult to build a close social support network of like-minded and similarly-positioned colleagues, despite HPE team members’ naturally welcoming nature.

Hannah explains:

“Our Early Careers Lead, Maninder and I wanted to create a platform for the apprentices and graduates to continue to socialise from their homes to help to combat the hurdles that Covid-19 had put in our way. As an intern myself, I was able to recognise just how isolating working from home can be, especially having never been able to meet those that I work with daily in person.

“With this in mind, I created the Virtual Social Connection (VSC) Programme and decided to use the new virtual working environment to our advantage. This became a stretch project for myself outside of my day-to-day role as an intern in sales, all overseen and mentored by Maninder. The VSC Programme consisted of scheduled social calls for over 200 apprentices and graduates across UKIMESA stretching across an eight month period. On each call, teams of early careers members would have the opportunity to network and socialise with others from different geographies and job roles, meeting new people each time. Guided discussion points were provided as icebreakers as well as rotating captain roles to keep the sessions guided. However not surprisingly, the conversations flowed where similarities in team members were found, leading to the natural social conversations we were after all along and had all been missing from before.”

The success of the VSC Programme has seen colleagues meet, chat and get to know each other, providing vital support in a challenging time. The early careers workforce faces a range of personal, social and professional challenges as they discover the industry and their place in it, and Daniel Myers, Client Services Channel Account Manager, HPE Pointnext Services UK&I has seen the benefits of the calls, reporting:

“I’ve found that the VSC Programme has really strengthened my day-to-day working experience, allowing me to feel more confident with the people I speak to and what we discuss surrounding our own roles and socially too. This is great especially as we are yet to meet in person. This has grown my confidence and inspired me to network as frequently as possible to try and gain new opportunities and learn new things. 

“In addition to this it helped me become more educated in cultural contexts allowing me to use the correct greetings for people who are in different regions when I do speak to them. 

“For me, the best part of the VSC calls was the community aspect of them, being relatively new to HPE, starting as an apprentice at the beginning of 2020, I’ve been working from home for 90% of the course, not allowing me to have as many informal conversations and building friendships. These calls allowed me to construct relationships and feel an atmosphere that is as close to having a chat whilst getting a coffee in the office!

“As we are coming to a time where normality is drawing closer, I, like most, hope to be able to get back into the office as soon as possible, but also hope that the connection between the teams stays strong. Talking to new people and learning new things has been extremely gratifying and I hope to continue to do this for as long as possible!”

The benefits of the VSC Programme have been seen across the workforce, creating strong links that will be reinforced as colleagues return to the office. This programme has demonstrated the importance of maintaining communication across the workforce, whoever and wherever they are, and highlighted the significance of recognising opportunities to create innovative solutions.

Maninder Randhawa
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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