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The average millennial generation 20-30 With memes posted on a daily basis, it’s no surprise that companies quickly jumped into the mix. New business cases are on the rise as more brands use memes to connect with their customers.Memes are a valuable but underutilized way for businesses to communicate with their employees. yeah.
Whether woven into company meetings or sprinkled into company-wide newsletters, memes don’t just make people laugh. Strategically deployed memes can be a tool companies can use to build a stronger and healthier culture, democratize feedback channels, and even support the mental health of their employees.
RELATED: 9 ways memes can fuel your business marketing
1. Strengthen corporate culture
The beauty of memes, including those shared on platforms like Yepit is that people can share experiences and connect and see light and humor in difficult situations. These aspects can also be great tools for building community in this era of remote work. increase. 8 in 10 US employees Work in a hybrid or fully remote work environment.
Because after-work drinks, impromptu water cooler chats, and the nuances of non-verbal and face-to-face communication no longer conducive to co-worker interaction and shaping culture, find new ways to foster a sense of belonging across organizations is becoming more and more important. Employees who do not meet face to face on a daily basis.
Some of the world’s largest companies including Google, has already reaped the benefits of integrating memes into internal communications to the point of creating a dedicated internal platform where employees can create and share memes. By allowing them to gently tease everything down to self-satisfaction, employees feel like they belong in something bigger than the hub they work in, share, and have unrestricted commonalities. can be discovered. by geography. As Gen Z continues to enter the workforce, memes are becoming an increasingly important tool for connecting with younger employees.
Memes humanize co-workers. Of course, professionalism is still important, but there is real cultural value in channels that allow teams to form connections with each other through humor. Judicious use of memes can help you recognize and reduce the burden of stressful situations. Both output and morale improve when teams get to know each other better.
As companies grow and mature, they also develop their own in-house language that is often baffling to those unfamiliar. Companies are increasingly replacing three-letter acronyms (TLAs) with memes that employees understand or that have a specific context for them. This makes memes a powerful tool for onboarding and helps explain how things are done at that particular company.
2. Detect employee burnout
Memes can also be used as a powerful tool for detecting employee burnout. In a corporate environment where employees often feel uncomfortable talking about sensitive issues such as difficult personal situations they face or overwhelming workloads they face, memes are often used by employers to ask employees to address these issues. It acts as a bridge to help you confide in a topic more easily.
and funcorpSo, I’m Group CEO, and I’ve already integrated memes into my HR processes to identify moods across teams, identify potential internal conflicts, and identify early burnout among employees. it helps me to Before the meeting, HR shares a selection of memes representing different emotional states and asks employees to choose the one that best sums up their mood for the week. You can also choose or create your own meme and submit it if you don’t think it applies.
Team members then open up to discuss why the meme was chosen and how to fix any underlying issues that may be causing the problem. Exercises like this not only bring the team together, but also help legitimize employee feelings and build trust within the workplace. This is an integral part of business success.
3. Feedback to top management
With their unique ability to accurately capture and articulate moods, reactions, and unspoken thoughts, memes can be uncomfortable to meet in person, making them a valuable tool for providing feedback to management. It is
For example, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, recently encouraged employees to start sharing desks as its offices shrink, sparking employee activity within the company’s internal meme platform Memegen. One popular meme shared by staff is aimed at the “corpspeak” used by senior management, saying, “Not all cost-cutting measures have to be good for employees. Simply say, ‘Cut costs down. We are reducing our office space to do this,’ and leadership becomes more effective.” Believable”.
The company’s hasty release of ChatGPT rival Bard An equally frosty receptionone employee received many upvotes for the post, “Dear Thunder, Bird’s launch and layoffs were rushed, botched and short-sighted. Get back to the long-term outlook.”
Unless the meme was integrated into the company’s internal communications, these messages were unlikely to reach management directly. In these cases, memes can help democratize feedback channels and act as advisors for management decisions. Such initiatives are especially valuable in cultures where directly questioning management decisions can be viewed negatively.
Using tools like memes can remove personal conflicts and self-confidence barriers that can prevent you from generating innovative solutions and critical feedback that saves your business.
Related: Did the Market Overreact to Google’s Bard AI Presentation?
4. Make internal communication fun
Who likes to sit through a 30-page presentation and listen to monotonous speaker drones about the company’s latest developments? Answer: No one. Memes are a fun and effective way to spice up your internal communications by injecting humor, creativity, and empathy into mundane messages.
However, more than just providing laughter, memes also help retain knowledge. research Cognitive research revealing that humor systematically activates the brain’s dopamine reward system and demonstrating that dopamine is important for both goal-directed motivation and long-term memory.By incorporating memes into company presentations , can add some laughter while helping employees retain better retention of shared information.
5.Improve mental health of employees
Research in this area is still in its early stages, but some studies have already been published that support the theory that memes can help people feel better and better withstand the daily stressors of everyday life.
One of the largest of these studies was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic. Researcher at Pennsylvania State Universitya meme that boosts positive emotions, revealing that individuals who viewed memes with Covid-19-related captions reported lower levels of COVID-related stress than those who viewed COVID-19-related captions proved the value of
Incorporating memes into corporate processes can boost employee morale and overall team morale. As I like to refer to it, “One meme a day can keep you out of retirement interviews.”