It's a trying time, and the pandemic is anything and everything that anyone can talk about.
But you can always count on the Early Talent community at SAP to turn things around and still have some fun.
So that's what we, the Early Talent Ambassadors at India, did as we hosted the first ever virtual
Early Talent Kick Off. This event is aimed at getting the community acquainted with the programs and offerings, and creating a networking platform for all the ETs.
Weeks of effort went into the planning to ensure that the experience is seamless, the content is engaging and the collaboration is interactive. And with this, we started the morning of April 29 on a super energetic note, geared up to meet the community from our virtual desks, with interesting backgrounds that MS Teams is so thoughtful to have created. Super office feels!
With 120+ participants, the event was already a hit right from the start, and a challenge at the same time. Being able to hold people's attention, ensuring the activities run uninterrupted, and handling queries and conversations, it was a daunting task. But we were up to the challenge.
First up, we had the ice-breaker called Word Party. Participants and ETAs all picked an adjective starting with the initial of their names, and shared these along with their hometowns and phrases from their work from home experience.
(The map shows a glimpse of the locations where the participants hailed from, captured in real time.
Indeed a lot of diversity!)
There were some really hilarious and interesting responses, clearly brought out in this word cloud that we created live, during the session, and before we even knew it, the chat was abuzz with people interacting with each other over common cultures and similar ideas. Collaboration? Check!
This was followed by a session on the topic of Diversity and Inclusion - the need and rationale, the global strategy and focus areas, and the specific areas of impact for early talents. The wide range of offerings under Inclusive Career Journey, such as the Job Fair, Global Women in Tech and Nascent Leadership really interested the participants as they are still new to the organization and finding avenues for developing themselves.
There was also an insightful discussion on the programs under
Inclusive Culture. To name a few, we talked about the
Business Women's Network,
Pride Circle,
Autism @ Work program, and many others.
Then came the time to unveil the detailed charter planned for the ET community in India, and with activities packed in each month, the participants were excited and already looking forward to knowing more and participating in the events.
And the final cherry on the cake was the super quick and super fun virtual contest!
With questions on various interesting aspects of SAP, the participants were on a roll with their funny responses and chat battles!
The enthusiastic and zealous participation by the audience made the experience so much more enthralling for us.
With our first virtual event of the year completed successfully, there are various things to appreciate. From the amazing preparation on the part of the hosts, the noteworthy presentation by the leads, and awesome content creation by the team, to the smaller bits like sanity checks and chat monitoring, sourcing links to answer questions, housekeeping activities to keep the experience uncluttered, collaboration on other channels to stay in sync while still being available in the meeting, and finally, the live social media updates across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, all of us had our hands full, and we still came out with flying colors, as was clearly depicted by the real time feedback via chat and the overall survey rating of
4.33/5.00. Here's a sneak peek into the topics that interested people the most!
At the ETA India team, we strive to showcase excellence in everything that we do. Cheers to that spirit, and to the year, filled with opportunities, that lies ahead of us.
Wishes for a healthy and safe life to all the readers, from all of us at ETA India.