Dentsu international launches Common Ground to pair its employees across Asia Pacific offices

To better connect its 11,000 employees from 17 markets in Asia Pacific, dentsu international launched a new internal initiative “Common Ground”, today. 

According to a statement by dentsu, Common Ground is a way for employees at dentsu to make connections in other markets and regions based on their common interests, whether that’s food, sport, music, travel, books, film or as obscure as stamp collecting. By using common interests as a way to reflect diversity, dentsu believes its people will shine through.

“Common Ground is a beautiful and timely initiative because despite working from home for a year, we are social creatures and socialisation is integral to our wellbeing — everyone has a chance to make a friend from another dentsu office and learn about a different culture, place, and working environment,” said dentsu Malaysia’s CEO, Kien Eng Tan. “Everyone, no matter where in the organization, deserves at least one good friend they can let their hair down with.”

In attempt to understand how the dentsu network could get its people to see through different windows and expand their perspectives, the team behind this initiative piloted the program with eight volunteers with incredible outcomes and have scaled it to the rest of the region. 

Employees at dentsu Malaysia are able to participate by applying through a matching form, where ‘dentsu twins’ are matched for a surprise 30-minute phone call. 

“Our talent is as ingenious as they are diverse (and) dentsu has always bet on the serendipitous connections across regions and fostering that kind of networking in such an organic manner is going to take us to new places,” said CEO of dentsu APAC, Ashish Bhasin. “In a data-rich world, I’m proud all the pairings will happen based on actual interests and actual people, the team has asked me to be patient before I get to meet my dentsu twin!”