Social Media for Internal Communications

1. Social Media for Internal Communications Lauren Baer, Katelyn Cozzi, Sara Goldfarb, Danielle Shaffer

2. Overview • Project Management • Information Sharing • Relationship Building • Employee Networking • Policy/Technical Feedback Case Studies: Avenue A/Razorfish Bell Canada Best Buy

3. Collaborating on a Wiki “ [ A colleague] just sent me an email asking me to post my favorite guitar solo of all time … The quick and easy answer: I still get chills when I hear Cream play Crossroads live. But after thinking about it for a few minutes, I’d have to say that the ONE guitar solo that still surprises and amazes me every time I hear it is Main in The Box by Alice In Chains.” – Clark Kokich

4. Benefits of a WikiCase Study: avenue a/razorfish • Connects over 1,900 staff in 19 offices • Project pages • Reference point for future work • Promote collaboration • Allow for more efficient job training • Ease a crisis • avenue a/razorfish wiki

5. Getting employee's on the wikiCase Study: Organism • Employee profiles similar to social networking sites • Information and prior work lead to new opportunities • References from other Organism “friends”

6. The Groundswell Inside your Company:Bell Canada: Driving cultural change from the ground up • Rex Lee, director of collaboration services at Bell Canada, had been receiving many complaints and criticisms from employees. • Needed a better way to corral the problems/solutions and put them where appropriate managers could see them  • “ID-ah!”: allows anyone in the company to submit an idea and then have the employees vote on it • Inspired by “American Idol”

7. Results of “ID-ah!” • Goal was to generate ideas, as well as change employee attitudes. • “We wanted each person to be personally invested in Bell, to feel a sense of accountability.” – Rex Lee • Employees felt empowered by the internal groundswell. • Sense of company ownership and responsibility permeated throughout organization. • After only 1 ½ years, employees submitted more than 1000 ideas, and shared more than 3000 comments. • 15,000 employees (out of 40,000) have visited the site, and 6000 have voted. • Over a 6 month period in 2007, 27 of the top ideas had been harvested for review, 12 have been successfully implemented.

8. Takeaways from Bell Canada’s “ID-ah!” • Companies should deploy social technologies internally only when organizational change is both desirable and possible. • To nurture groundswell power of employees: • Promote listening culture from top down. • Ease and encourage participation with incentives. • Find and empower the rebels in your organization. • Internal groundswell is about creating new ways for people to connect and work together. • About relationships, not technology

9. Blue Shirt Nation • Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt • Realized the company could to better with employee feedback • Created a social network for all employees

13. BLUE SHIRT NATION (start 0:44 sec)

14. Blue Shirt Nation • Started the site on Drupal- later moved to MIX • BSN no longer exist https://mix.blueshirtnation.com/ • New platform in the future?

15. Importance • Employee morale • Idea sharing • Problem Solving • Eliminating Bureaucracy • Creating Community • Multidimensional relationships: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing • Time Management (project collaboration) • Participation

16. Future Trends • Standardization of internal transparency • Down-up communication becoming equal to top-down communication • More cross-functional communication • More employee input into company matters • Faster elimination of problems, bottlenecks, or imperfections in company operations

17. Questions?