With the increasing diversity of business demands and shifts in consumer preferences in the digital disruption era, organisations need to speed up innovation, especially from millennial workers. One initiative that has emerged is that of an internal hackathon — a gathering place for millennial workers, developers, engineers, and industry professionals, with a focus on engineering and entrepreneurship.
An internal hackathon involves intensive and in-depth sessions to explore various challenges and find solutions. Generally, in a hackathon a group of people ranging from designers to experts gather together to find solutions quickly and effectively when coming across a problem. One of the aims of a hackathon is to create products that are worth testing in the market.
Nonetheless, today more and more companies are also turning to internal hackathons to streamline business processes and improve employee skills. This is a highly collaborative way of working to encourage innovation from everyone involved, particularly millennial workers. Internal hackathons can work differently to an organisation or hierarchy’s normal way of working as everyone’s input is important. Everyone is deemed to have the expertise or knowledge to provide whatever the solution may be.
Representing the voice of young people in the company, the Youth Council at Telkomtelstra was inspired to hold a hackathon for millennials to promote collaboration, innovative thinking, and creativity among young people who can make a positive contribution to the company.
In addition to strengthening ties between employees, the hackathon is also intended to improve business processes. This is also an opportunity for young employees to expand their knowledge beyond their regular roles. Meetings between specialists of various different levels and departments make it possible to create new solutions and help companies from a financial, product and organisational perspective. On the other hand, these hackathons enable the creation of solutions by diagnosing problems that might occur in terms of communication, decision-making processes and customer service.
At Telkomtelstra, around 25 young employees under the age of 35 across a range of business units gathered at the one-day Hackathon event held on 5 March 2020. Employees participated in the process of exchanging opinions and ideas to solve real business problems, presented by Telkomtelstra’s Director, on a variety of topics, such as employee productivity, internal communication, talent gathering, and cost savings.
Participants were provided with a number of frameworks of thought before discussing the creation of solutions and submitting proposed ideas on their chosen topic. The top three teams will be recommended and supported to continue implementing their proposals in Telkomtelstra’s innovation challenge in June 2020. The committee receives feedback from the audience and follows up on a list of solutions that will be carried out in business and daily work processes.
Telkomtelstra’s young employees really enjoy collaborating in teams to jointly create fresh and different solutions. This process is empowering because they are all able to disregard any barriers as there is no hierarchy in the decision-making process.
Through this work innovation scheme, the freshest and most creative solutions are able to be presented. Coupled with this young and passionate spirit, the internal hackathon truly inspires a group of young colleagues from various departments, who may have never worked with one another, to be able to work together effectively to create some very strong ideas. The energy and excitement created by the process is tangible and contributes positively to the working morale of the company. Of course, the internal hackathon is only a small part of what young people can contribute to the organisation. It is a small step to fast-tracking innovation by having so many new and fresh ideas, and close cooperation to create positive solutions.(*)