Smart tools for internal communication
Posted on February 7, 2008
Filed Under Blogging for Business, Resources for Managers, Social Networking / Media |
Blogs, wikis and in-house social networks are the new ways companies are communicating internally. Interactivity and collaboration being the key to these forms of open conversations, the quarterly newsletter may just be passé.
Want to win five hundred rupees? Predict the television rating of the next test match between India and Australia. The qualifier: You need to be on the media planning team at Lintas to have access to the internal blog this contest is run on.
This is just one example of what you may call ‘Internal Communications 2.0’ – the tools of new media are now being employed by companies to enable its people to converse openly and freely. These work for start-ups and big companies alike and in situations where the workforce is under one roof or spread across many locations.
There are many platforms one can do these on, four of them being most commonplace for their respective advantages.
1. BLOGS
Simple to set up and manage, blogs allow discussions to be initiated, commented upon and archived for future reference. “Our internal blogs are a storehouse for all that is happening within the organization. Staff are alerted when something new is posted from them to read and comment. The contest to predict ratings is also a part of it; we have an software to predict this for us and a contest like this encourages media planners to use this system,” says Lynn de Souza, director of media services at Lintas.
“We had set up blogs in one of my previous companies Innoviti Embedded Solutions, the idea being to brainstorm ideas and evolve consensus spanning over days and weeks. It was a start-up and there was a need to document processes, share the management’s vision with employees and share ideas. Different functions – sales, engineering and finance – posted important events, updates and problems for more efficient coordination and finding solutions together,” explains Mohit Garg, a software professional at Dilithium Networks. For new employees, going through the blog can be a fast track to getting oriented.
“Infosys, TCS, Mahindra & Mahindra and many other leading companies already have a successful blog strategy implemented for internal communication. These have the additional benefit of increasing employee bonding and team building. It is also an indirect platform to get your point across in a subtle way without offending anyone leading to higher motivation levels,” says Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO of WATConsult, a Web 2.0 strategy consulting firm.
Blogs beat the more intrusive instant messaging and emails. “There is already an overload of email, and it does not work to send these back and forth. Blogs can be read at a time convenient to you and give you time to think before responding,” adds Garg.
For a CEO this works as a good platform to talk to the workforce anytime, anywhere. Says John Mudie, country head for CSR India, “Our CEO makes use of an internal blog to update the company on a multitude of issues being confronted by the senior management. Highly informative, topics covered include strategy, major development milestones, important customer news, investor opinions and company policy announcements.”
2. WIKIS
A wiki can be defined as a website enabling users to add new content and amend existing one, the most famous example being Wikipedia.com. It is thus a collaborative site, best used when teams want to work on a single project or document. “Wikis can be used quite effectively when collaboratively building an idea,” says Rakesh Vajpai, director at Prosares Solutions, an IT firm focused on custom solutions for its clients.
Wikis can often negate the need for meetings and conference calls, and even enable agendas to be set online. “We use Wikis for many purposes, including allocating task lists,” adds Dingra. “The analysts who write our programs use wikis for their work,” says De Souza.
The originating author relinquishes ownership of a document on publication as others can modify or add to it. This is its main differentiator from a blog where others may only comment.
3. IN-HOUSE SOCIAL NETWORKS
If social networking sites like LinkedIn and Ryze are enabling professionals to engage with one another, why not adopt the same principles to get them to do so with their own colleagues? Realising the merit in this thought, large companies with employees usually running into thousands already have or are planning to start their own in-house social networking sites. “One of clients, a large publicly listed financial services company, is considering such a site for professional and not friendship purposes. They want to know who their employees know. Not only will this be for staff, but the customers and vendors they work with; the latter can join only when invited by a company employee,” divulges Dingra.
It may be early days yet for Indian companies, but many in the US are already gaining in traction covering not only current employees but former ones too. An analysis by SelectMinds, a leading consulting firm in this space in the US, has shown such networks lead to enhanced productivity, higher retention levels, increases in new business and greater rehiring of people who had left the company.
4. SHAREPOINT
Now integrate all of the above into one, and you have a powerful platform like Microsoft’s SharePoint allowing one can mix social computing and collaborative computing in the form of blogs and wikis. You may even call it a Intranet 2.0 where employees can also set up their profile pages like on social networking sites.
“It is a highly flexible tool, where you can pick from pre-coded services to custom developed ones. Examples of the latter include birthday reminders, sending in stationery requests, seeking approvals for leave or even changing the look and feel. It integrates easily with your Office suite, leading to powerful document management, collaborative work and serving as a repository of all company policies and information,” says Vajpai.
SOME POINTERS
It may be natural to expect open systems like these to be open to abuse. Fortunately, they all come with an ability to set permission levels determining who is authorized to do what including posting, editing and commenting. To ensure relevance and quality, companies usually take care to appoint moderators to approve or reject any content that goes up. And to ensure no one misses an update, RSS and email alert to all intended recipients in generally the norm with these applications.
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
“All these tools allow for lateral and bottom-up communication, not just top down. But companies are still not comfortable with open conversations like these; they have very low tolerance levels for even minimal instances of the wrong message going out,” says Vajpai.
“Managements have to develop a mindset which says they are just providing a platform; they cannot control nor be responsible for everything exchanged on these. As long as some basic rules are adhered to, there should not be a problem. Having said that, it is just a matter of a few years before such forms of internal communications becomes the norm,” adds Dingra.
Where is your company headed? The next time a message from your CEO pops up on your screen, will you be able to respond to it? Not only for him to read, but everyone else too.
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3 Responses to “Smart tools for internal communication”
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e-Administration, an e-Platform for e-governance, can help the entire vertical and horizontal hierarchy of a multi geographic, multi functional organization including Government organizations to communicate top-down, bottom-up, side-to-side, etc.
It can integrate the entire vertical hierarchy of any organization into one entity, creating internal customers to satisfy external customers. Thus the “I don’t know” and “Pass the buck” syndrome would stop.
Mobile phones (SMS and voice) can be integrated for urgent and field communications, not requiring to be at a computer for accessing information and even to respond back in brief.
Very well-written post, Ajay.
Internal blogs/ wikis/ social networks — or even employee presence on external social networks like Facebook — can indeed help employees to connect with each other better.
By the way, you should add internal microblogging networks to your list of tools. Wordpress Prologue allows you to set up such an internal microblogging/ messaging network inside a firewall.
This post brings up a very interesting possibility. Companies could use internal networks as platforms for company-wide performance competitions. Any kind of performance indicator or statistic that can be quantified, can also be incentivized by way of a competition on a company intranet.