Yahoo!, which lags behind Google and Facebook when it comes to attracting youth, seems to have begun efforts internally and externally to win over employee trust and regain what it calls ‘mindshare’ (quantum of popularity, recall value) among users.

Ask anything!

Soon after Marissa Mayer took over as the CEO, the company has asked its 11,500 employees across the world to ask questions. The questions can range from the choice of juices the company offers to employee evaluation.

It has about 2,200 employees in India, including 2,000 in the R&D facility in Bangalore. “They can ask tough questions on the work environment, policies, products and processes. The idea is to motivate and encourage them,” he said. They can also pose questions on the products under development,” Hari Vasudev, Vice-President and Head of Yahoo! India R&D, told Business Line.

Such questions would be put to vote online instantaneously. Those questions that win a majority (of those who take part in the vote) will be addressed. “The company has so far resolved 500 production-related issues raised by the staff,” he said. Apart from this, the company has also introduced several measures to win over the goodwill of the staff.

“For one, we have introduced free Wi-Fi in the buses that ferry our staff,” he said.

Replying a question on lagging behind in terms of attracting the youth, he said the company is building mobile applications (such as weather app in the Apple application store) to catch the imagination of the youth.

Wooing youth

Hari Vasudev said the company was focussing on the mobile platform to attract the youth.

Globally, the company has 700 million users a month, including 300 million through mobile devices.

In India, Yahoo! homepage is accessed by 38 million users a month.

While its Flickr (photo sharing site) has 2.5 million users, e-mail has 20.5 million users. > kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in

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