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Gig Economy Employee Engagement Case Studies
Lyft community hub, Airbnb Meetups, and Etsy survey are three examples of gig economy employers that have adopted initiatives to measure and improve employee engagement.
Lyft
- Through The Hub, Lyft created an open and inclusive platform for the measurement and improvement of employees (drivers) engagement. Drivers can share their experiences both positive and negative with their colleagues and the company. Lyft also encourages its drivers to attend special events that are organized to improve employee engagements and make them care about the job.
- One such special event was a female-only get together for female Lyft drivers in Las Vegas. The event was organized to build a connection between drivers in the city. They share their stories and their dreams.
- Lyft drivers share their stories, experiences, achievements, and others on The Hub.
- Furthermore, Lyft recognizes and honor special acts of service such as a Las Vegas driver — Paloma — for saving the life of a passenger during the Las Vegas mass shooting in October and other achievements from drivers.
Airbnb
- Airbnb created the Airbnb Meetups platform to measure and improve the engagement of its employees (hosts). On the platform, host in a particular city or state creates a meet-up event in order to connect with each other.
- An example is a meetup for hosts in Miami and Broward areas. They converge at the property of the particular host of the event each month to "chat, network, and exchange ideas."
- They put aside any form of scheduling or presentation talks and just tour the property of the host. The community portal has 687,042 members were hosts explore new tips and tricks of hosting a guest and share advice with other hosts.
- Furthermore, they created the One Airbnb which is a company-wide conference or meetup that was developed to create a sense of belonging among their employees.
- At the conference, they get to discuss the future of the company, the people and their development, and also understand and learn about how to work with each other. They get to experience "what it’s like to belong anywhere, through the eyes of the host and the guest."
Etsy
- To measure and ascertain the engagement level of its company, Etsy created a completely anonymous engagement survey which allows its employees to comfortably express their feelings.
- With about 85% of employees participating in the survey, Etsy was able to know what their "hot spots or problem areas are."
- The results of the survey are "presented in an all-hands meeting where the themes, participation, and main takeaways are discussed." The result is also accessible to every employee on an online portal which helps to encourage the employees to participate in the survey in the knowledge that they are being heard.
- Based on the feedback from this survey, Etsy gets a clear "insights about their collective challenges and successes."