The Problem

NetEase is a rapidly growing game development company. They have a distributed team working remotely across North America, spanning four time zones. Nate LaMartina, the Technical Art Director at their North American ADC, started to realize that his team wasn’t feeling like a cohesive unit. His team members felt disconnected and isolated. Collaboration suffered and the company's earnings potential went down. Nate and his team used practically every kind of communication software. Some people used Slack, others used Teams or Zoom, and some also tried the chat program made by NetEase. They talked through more formal channels, resulting in missed opportunities for spontaneous collaboration.

“Days or even weeks could go by without talking to one another, which made it hard to get to know someone and cultivate relationships. Not only that, but when we did reach out to each other, it was sporadic and by text only. Nothing encouraged us to have real conversations, and I felt that we were missing a critical component in our remote way of working.”

Because productivity was down, the work that drives their revenue wasn’t being done quickly enough - this could be influenced by distractions or being blocked by other teammates. The best solutions aren’t discovered, and time was being wasted. Not having a singular place to work from led to siloed work practices and an unwelcome shift in team culture. Nate knew he needed to find a solution fast, and he turned to SoWork.

“It was easy to silo ourselves from one another - any other communication software would require us to first prompt a teammate with a message, wait for them to respond, then start a call, then wait for them to connect, etc. The entire process discouraged us from connecting visually or by audio because of all the steps involved.”

The Solution

Nate noticed SoWork’s impact on his team’s cohesion right away - they used their SoWork Virtual Office for their weekly reviews, 1:1s, standups, and would also break out into sub-teams for daily work. Feelings of isolation were being demolished. His teammates could come together, interact, and build relationships in real-time. Their efficiency skyrocketed - SoWork allowed for faster decision-making and problem-solving. Employees could quickly connect with colleagues, share ideas, and work together on projects without the delays commonly experienced in email threads or scheduled meetings.

Before they knew it, a domino effect was seen throughout their workflows - projects were getting turned over faster, and as their capacity increased, so did their financial gains.

“We can not only step into a video-based conversation easily, but can also see when other colleagues are interacting with one another, which gives us incentive to join the conversation too. It truly makes the team feel like we’re in an actual office.”

How NetEase Uses SoWork

Nate’s team enters the Office daily to sit beside each other. From there, he’ll hop around a bit to coordinate things for the day, and others will run over to his Workspot whenever they have questions about their tasks. For any internal meetings, they go to their Office’s main meeting room. When they want to signal that they’re free for casual conversation or on break, they put their avatars in the break room or in the bar area. They also enjoy hosting roundtable events with members of the international branches of the company. To prepare, Nate decorates the meeting room with posters and logos for each of their gaming studios to make the area feel warm and personalized.

“The biggest difference was the way spontaneous interactions came back to the team. With SoWork, we quickly adapted to a more "pop-in" friendly atmosphere that allowed us to talk and visually see one another without effort.”

SoWork Benefits

Customizations & Interactions

Nate prioritized making his team feel at home in their Office. They would spend time bonding and decorating the Office together. They added team logos and colors that matched the company motif, posters for games that they loved, and each teammate designed their space with items or images that showed their uniqueness. He also made a game testing room, a town hall area, break rooms, and embedded Miro boards. There was a welcome space for new recruits that included embedded links for job postings, welcome kits, and any current team news.

He found that this personalization fostered the relationships among his teammates and sparked conversations between them. Everyone could get to know each other better, and on a deeper level. Feeling more connected to the space set the scene for each teammate to get their best work done. All of this leading to saving company time and money.

“What I especially like about this format is that it allows us to keep information and links in one central, virtually physical space. No bookmarks to manage or links to send and/or forget - we can simply walk up to a wall with postered icons or special objects, and get access to our various company pages, documents, and links. There's something about actually seeing an object in a common place that makes the management of this data so much easier. It saves me countless hours - I don’t need to track down and email people these things anymore, they can just open it right from our SoWork Office.”

Productivity Tools

NetEase officially eliminated the need for back and forth meeting scheduling, and can maximize their time after meetings by using SoWork’s automated meeting summaries and action items, data analytics, meeting recordings, and in-app chat.

Nate's team benefits a lot from Sophia Bot, an AI Office Assistant in SoWork. It helps by summarizing meetings and tracking tasks, saving them time and energy. This makes problem-solving and decision making faster. As a result, their processes become streamlined, leading to better financial growth opportunities.

Conclusion

“More than anything else, SoWork has provided me with a space to effortlessly communicate with my team. I can pop in to say hello, they can stop by and ask me an opinion, or we can simply talk a bit without it feeling forced or planned. SoWork has given me a more intimate connection to all my direct reports, and I (as well as others) can see the positive results that come out of this, both in their attitude towards me and the work they produce. I am so happy to have found this app!”

SoWork brought about improved collaboration and communication, directly changing the NetEase culture for the better. Teammates were no longer feeling disconnected and isolated. Relationships between the NetEase team could be built and maintained more easily. Productivity increased, and more innovation and financial returns followed.