Working within a leading United Nations Agency presents unique challenges and opportunities, particularly when managing a diverse and distributed team of young professionals. Many of these team members have grown up in a digital-first world. A significant aspect of the team structure involves cohorts of interns who typically join for about six months. The team is mostly remote and doesn’t often come together physically, usually only for major events. This environment necessitates innovative approaches to communication, collaboration, and learning.
Problem
The traditional methods for knowledge transfer and team integration proved challenging in this dynamic setting. Engaging cohorts of interns effectively from the start of their onboarding journey through to completion was a key concern. “You can’t just bury new colleagues in PDFs and cluttered share-drives and expect them to succeed and thrive”, says Theadora. Standard handover documents, such as PDFs or Word documents, were “not going to cut it”. There was a need for interns to not only absorb information about the team and processes but also to contribute their own learnings and “leave behind something that can continue to grow” after their six-month term ended. For remote interns, feeling truly part of the team required hearing “the voices of their colleagues” and their stories, something difficult to achieve with static documents. The shift from traditional top-down training towards a more peer-to-peer model in this tech-distributed world also required a suitable platform.
As Theodora, team leader, noted, “we were very interested in having… a technology tool that we could use to really engage cohorts of new hires”. She highlighted the limitation of previous methods, stating, “relying just on PDFs or word docs as handover documents wasn’t going to cut it”, particularly emphasizing the need for connection for remote team members: “especially if you’re working in a scenario where remote employees really need to feel part of the team. They need to hear the voices of their colleagues. They need to hear their stories.”
The agency adopted Slick+, a technology platform levering short-form video sharing embedded in a collaborative learning design, which Theodora found to be “perfect” for engaging interns. The platform offered specific features that addressed their needs. One notable feature, “meet a team member,” created an “informal place where we can introduce each other” and get to know each other on a “bit more of a personal basis”. Slick+ provided a secure environment where sharing personal stories and professional content felt safe, shared only with team members.
This user-experience and functionality effectively turned the platform into a “repository for everything that they’ve learned,” allowing interns to “leave it with us so we don’t forget about it” when their internship concluded. The platform’s ability to enable remote team members to “share that piece of yourself with your teammates” was a significant benefit.
Theodora also highlighted the integration of AI within Slick+ for functions like building content and search. Seeing AI integrated was exciting, particularly from the perspective of improving efficiency. “I was using the Slick AI prompt feature to quickly draft my script, in my style and tone of voice, that was then quickly used to create a training video”, she said and emphasised how “we need to start integrating AI into all sorts of processes to help us to be more effective, more efficient”.
The implementation of Slick Plus yielded significant positive outcomes for the UN Agency. The platform successfully engaged interns throughout their journey. It allowed Theodora and her team to observe the interns’ “evolution… We see them learn and grow, contribute to ongoing projects”. Crucially, it enabled interns to contribute their learnings and create assets that “continue to grow after they have left”.
The peer-to-peer knowledge sharing facilitated by the platform meant that the agency was also learning from the younger team members. As Theodora put it, “They helped us learn as well”, and it was a “really interesting way for us to learn from them”. The platform served as a lasting repository for this shared knowledge, preventing valuable insights from being lost when interns departed.
Beyond just process improvements, Slick+ fostered deeper connections within the distributed team. The “meet the team member” feature encouraged sharing personal details and stories. This led to the emergence of “cultural content”. Sharing these personal, purpose-driven stories enabled remote team members to connect with each other and share a part of themselves. This outcome was a “really great and unexpected outcome for us”. The platform allowed those driven by purpose and passion, common among UN staff, to share that in a safe and secure space.
