Dogfooding as a tool for employee engagement

Vishnu Santhosh S 1321341 IMBAL

Introduction
the act of getting employees to use/test the products the company builds Globally, most technology companies 'dogfood' their own products - for instance when they need to work the bugs out of their creations.

 Shomir Dutt, a product specialist at FBs Hyderabad office explains the three parts of dogfooding. "There is general dogfooding like testing the hashtag that Facebook introduced; another form is where employees get together and try and hack a product for a couple of hours, and finally, there is market-specific dogfooding - these are products that are released for the India market."

How Facebook is using Dogfooding

FB is also using dogfooding as a tool to engage and retain its employees, most of whom tend to be in their early twenties and impatient. Dogfooding provides instant gratification, makes youngsters a part of the decisionmaking process: both factors critical to retaining the young and restless workforce.

Example
Nikita Prakash, 24, joined Facebook a year ago. As a part of the ad integrity team her job is to ensure that ads on Facebook comply with company policy. But apart from the work she is paid for, Nikita spends hours on Facebook, voluntarily testing it. She has filed 150 bugs in the past six months almost a bug a day. "There is no bigger thrill than knowing that your work affects the end user," she says

 "Dogfooding is one of the best outlets that we can provide for young, enterprising intelligent minds. It binds them to the product and the company very strongly," says James Mitchell , head of the Hyderabad office, Facebook. "In the entire Facebook ecosystem dogfooding is a medium to let your voice be heard and for it to matter," he adds.

 At Facebook, 'dogfooding' gained prominence as it shifted towards 'mobile first'. It needed all employees to use the mobile apps and provide feedback. Facebook has 5,299 employees globally and a little over a 100 in India. Of its 1.15 billion global users, India accounts for 82 million.

 What works to Facebook's advantage is that its 20-somethings are already in the groove. "They love the Facebook platform and are active users. Dogfooding is up their alley," says Shweta Shukla, head of HR.

 One suggestion that resulted in a change while dogfooding was localising the registration for India users: DDMMYY format for India while for the rest of the world, it is MMDDYY. "Collective wisdom is very powerful," says Shukla. The way Facebook designs its employee roles is that classically, an employee will spend 50% to 60% of the time doing things that are predictable. The remaining 30% to 40% is not defined: employee involvement in dogfooding can well constitute part of this.

How it helps Employee Engagement

Binds the young employees to the company and the product strongly Works as a medium to let the employees voices be heard Helps satisfy an entrepreneurial and start-up spirit Keeps employees connected Globally Helps create internal people networks and foster connections Provides a well-rounded perspective to the product as people across all the functions dogfood