Member Exclusive: Yahoo's culture hack to go beyond the Zoom happy hour

Yahoo’s Who We Work With shows that lighthearted rituals can make teams more connected

By Robbie Caploe, director, strategic initiatives, Ragan

At Yahoo, culture isn’t left to chance. For the 20-person global communications team at the Silicon Valley stalwart , small rituals play a big role in building trust and connection.

One of the most successful has been a simple, one-on-one practice called Who We Work With.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

“In remote settings, you can't look to your left or right to get to know somebody," said Brenden Lee, Yahoo's director of corporate communications. "It's nice to know something about the person you're getting on a phone call with when [it’s normally] so transactional.”

The process is simple, according to Lee, and has been taking place for about a year during the comms department’s regular catchups. The team rotates through new members who haven't spoken to each other yet, Lee said.

“So an internal person will interview an external person, asking them five questions," he said. "Or if you're new to the team, you might interview a team leader, or a team leader might interview a new junior person.”

Common ground builds culture

People are happy to find common ground, said Lee's colleague Allie Wickert, Yahoo’s director of internal communications.

“So the next time you hop on your one-on-ones, you can say, ‘I didn't know you went to this school or that's where you were raised.’ It's a really nice way to informally build relationships," Wickert said.

Wickert and Lee know this dynamic all too well. “I found out that Allie loves playing Mario Kart and drinking wine,” Lee said.

And when Wickert interviewed Lee, she discovered that he was a little bit of a local celebrity. “Before I landed in PR, I did some audio production work throughout college and voiced local spots for brands like Pepsi and Universal Pictures," Lee said.

These casual connections are a big boost as work gets underway.

“It helps when we're getting on the phone to talk about something like the Super Bowl and what our ultimate goal is for messaging, strategy, or what our CEO thinks we should be saying to internal or external audiences,” Lee said. “These types of routines, like Who We Work With, really help for bigger campaigns.”

Have a practice you use on your team to build and reinforce culture? Head the the Member Forum to share what you do.