Love is in the air! With Valentine’s Day coming up, that four-letter-word is on the minds of many Kintonians. Many of us wonder—why do we wait until February 14th to share our appreciation of others? What if there was a way to spread love 365 days a year? Well, now there is!
These are our top three business applications for sharing with your colleagues how you really felt after they converted that lead into a customer in record time or covered for you while you were sunbathing in the Bahamas.
1. Gratitude Bank
Kintone's Global VP Osamu Yamada believes that one of the keys to happiness is being grateful and expressing it by saying thank you. At Kintone, we practice gratitude via the Gratitude Bank app, an application where we can send either a kudos or congratulatory message to our colleagues when they do something we appreciate.
Kudos Messages: messages where you identify which of the company values a person has embodied in their work and how.
Congratulatory Messages: messages that praise a colleague for their achievements, such as a work anniversary or other notable achievement.
Messages from some of our Kintone team members to others for their work.
This app is primarily managed by our HR team, who sends notifications every time a Kintonian’s work anniversary comes up, with automated reminders to the team to send corresponding messages. This app is not only a wonderful way to recognize the work and contributions of team members, it's also a great way for individuals to look back and recall their achievements and team support over the years.
2. Inform App
One of the keys to a good relationship is open communication. At Kintone, our Inform app allows people to openly communicate what's going on in their lives so members can help or support them no matter what's happening.
A real message from one of our members after a night of company-approved karaoke.
The purpose of this app is to inform US team members of day-of breaking events, including things like sudden sickness or oversleeping. This app is one of the most used apps by all team members. To keep it handy for quick updates, many of our members mark it as one of their favorite apps (it makes it possible to access the app from the platform dashboard). Once open, an employee can fill out the details of their situation, including how they expect it will affect their team and what support they need from others to meet their work deadlines.
What the full Inform App looks like before you fill it out.
Part of being a good team player is being considerate of other people's time, and everyone appreciates being told in advance when someone cannot make a meeting or be available for a project. It’s important to be transparent about why you cannot make it to work.
Thankfully, Kintone as a company understands that life happens. Every so often we get an Inform notification that brings us joy, such as a team member announcing that he is at the waiting room as his baby is being delivered, or a notification about an impromptu on-site customer visit (we love our face time!). Those usually elicit a flurry of comments from other Kintonians. The Inform app's notifications are all public, so at any given time you can use the drop down view to see the messages of the day. Like I said, transparency at its finest.
3. Chit Chat
For Kintonians, if you really love your coworkers and want to save them the headache of looking for your last conversation in email threads and Slack channels, then you know that the Chit Chat thread is the place to go. With many of our Kintonians working remotely, Chit Chat is where we can have various discussions that take the place of water cooler convos and in-office chats.
Every department has their own Chit Chat thread within their department space, which exists in addition to our general Kintone U.S. Chit Chat thread for communications at the company level. Chit Chat is also incredibly useful for HR or admin-related inquiries. It gives the entire team a way to ask questions or skim old conversations (all past chit chat is visible to everyone) to see if their question has already been asked and answered. This is a really nice way to help people stay informed while respecting everyone's time and workload (so no one is repeating themselves).
Being thankful, considerate of others, and transparent is much easier to practice when you engrain these values in the very workflow of your company through apps like those we have on Kintone. I’m thankful for all of my team members, who embody the heart in the Kintone logo.
Also read: 3 Business Applications To Keep Your Customers Happy
About the Author
Malena is a Senior Events Specialist and Marketing Campaign Associate at Kintone, where she enjoys getting people excited about Kintone through events they host and creative marketing campaigns. You will find her sketching out new ideas for social media copy, drooling over event catering menus, and flipping through Kintone threads where all the project management lives. Born and raised in San Francisco, she is a natural at finding the best places to eat in the city and navigating towards the nearest Bart station. Malena graduated from UC Berkeley, with a degree in Psychology, roll on you bears!
