inDay: When Professional Connections Transform the World

Once a month at LinkedIn, we set aside a Friday for employees to think creatively, work on inspirational and innovative projects and focus on investing in themselves and their community. It’s a day to spend time outside their daily task list.

In the past, this has meant a series of inspirational inDay Speakers, a ping pong tournament and raffle to benefit charity, financial education classes, LinkedIn Olympics and hosting eighth graders from an underperforming school to show them how doing well in school translates into getting a great job at a great company.

As the Head of Employee Experience, inDay is a huge opportunity for me to ensure our employees are inspired and pursuing their interests outside of their day job. There’s always a theme to drive ideas and employees are encouraged to host projects that they are most passionate about.

On May 20th, this past week, our inDay theme was “Connections Changing the World” and these are a few projects that came out of it:

  • Charles Best and Oliver Hurst-Hiller joined us from DonorsChoose.org, a place where you can connect to teachers from your neighborhood or across the country and fund projects for their classrooms. Check out a video of their InDay presentation.
  • The launch of Women at LinkedIn, a group organized to connect women who work at LinkedIn with opportunities for personal and professional growth through leadership, education, networking and recognition. See pictures from our global teams participating in this initiative.
  • Another global initiative was the launch of a skilled micro-volunteering opportunity via sparked.com where employees can connect with nonprofits all over the world offering advice or assistance representing a huge value to the organization.
  • Our team in Dublin spent part of their day, connecting over ice cream and hosting a FunDay to raise funds for children in Ireland with Down syndrome.
  • In Mountain View, Adam Barker and Sang Luu, brought their hobby to work and hosted a photo session to take headshots for people to use on their LinkedIn profile.  Almost 200 employees smiled for their cameras!
  • And every inDay is also a LinkedIn Hackday, where innovative projects like TextIn and all the other creative projects on LinkedIn Labs come from.  This InDay was no exception. We’ll profile the winner of this month’s Hackday soon.

These are the things inDay is made of – a day to take a break from the “to do” list, think outside the box and create connections to transform our communities and workplace.

For me, every day is like inDay is as I work with our employees to identify their passions, keep my eye out for things I can bring to them for inspiration and help realize the visions of those around me.