Meet Our Member: Natalia Sviridova, co-founder of HyWork
HyWork is on a mission to humanize organizational culture and employees' experience through exploring and co-creating the "new normal'' in hybrid and remote workplaces. Natalia is a business coach, facilitator, and remote work ninja and will be sharing her skills and tools for facilitating engaging online meetings and workshops on our Community Session on February 24. You don’t want to miss this!
Hi Natalia! Tell me a little bit about yourself. What is your background, your journey that led you to start a company offering online facilitation?
I am Russian, born, and lived in Moscow. I was managing marketing and communication projects and teams in global innovative companies for more than 20 years. Three years ago I moved to Sweden to my husband and, because of the job market there, I realized that I had to rethink my professional future. I enrolled in a year and a half long program at Hyper Island – one of the most innovative business schools in Sweden – to learn how to develop sustainable business in the digital era.
It was a breakthrough, both the education and the whole educational process were very reflective, so you really deep dive into your identity and values. It was a great journey, and I have found several areas of interest for my further development: accelerating innovations and the future of the workplace. I realized that I have experience that I can reuse as a consultant, so, even before my graduation, I started my consultancy business HyWork together with my classmate. We are humanizing organizational culture and employees' experience through exploring and co-creating the "new normal'' in hybrid and remote workplaces.
Why is online facilitation needed?
Facilitation in business, organizational development, and in consensus decision-making refers to the process of designing and running a meeting according to a previously agreed set of requirements.
The importance of facilitation only increased when we went online. Lots of organizations and teams are facing problems running meetings, discussions, events, and education now.
So I would say the role of facilitation is dramatically increasing. Now, it is one of the very important competencies for a very broad audience - from managers to the people who are working in education.
What is your company offering your clients?
We are addressing 3 main areas:
Remote team development. If your organization needs to launch a new team, onboard people, increase the level of motivation and productivity or if you need to have a retrospective of your project and celebrate your achievements - this is what we could do together.
Acceleration of innovations: facilitating different types of activities and processes from strategic sessions to product development workshops, and ideation.
Training: we are designing and running various activities to train your soft skills and online facilitation skills.
How is online facilitation different from a face to face meeting facilitation?
Being a project manager and team lead for 20 years in large matrix companies I was preparing and running lots of meetings, so I might say, I was using facilitation without knowing I am doing it. Just intuitively.
What changes when you move online?
Online facilitation needs additional skills on how to keep your audience engaged in online setup and how to choose and use the right platforms and tools.
What is your best advice to someone who is going to host their first online workshop?
Good preparation is the key to success. There is less room for improvisation when you run it online.
Think about the level of energy during the meeting - do not let your participants disconnect.
Plan your timing. Revise it. Leave some “space” - you will need it.
What will you teach us on February 24? What can the participants expect?
We will talk about the main principles, platforms, and tools to make your meetings, discussions, workshops more effective - and practice together.
Learn more about Hywork on their website.
Thank you Natalia! We look forward to the workshop on February 24*! 🌸
*The workshop is open to all members of the Social Innovation Booster’s Community.
Social Innovation Booster is a community for impact-driven individuals who share the passion of creating a positive change in society, on a local and global level. We love to highlight our members and their awesome social innovations! Join the community here!
