social media « Mark Morrell Intranet Pioneer

How discussion forums can help internal communications

May 9, 2012 at 9:17 am | Posted in best practice, collaboration, communication, community, engagement, intranet, social media | 1 Comment
Tags: best practice, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, social media

This is the last post in a series answering the question “Can collaboration tools improve internal communications?” covering the right culture needed within an organisation, the redefining of internal communicators’ role and how collaboration tools and features can help improve internal communications.

I now want to discuss how I believe discussion forums can add to the richness of existing internal communication channels and not be a threat that needs to be closed down. I’m going to illustrate this with three examples.

1. Reacting to discussion forums

The initial reason why most discussion forums first start is because employees want to, or organisations encourage employees to, share problems and solutions on work issues with other employees who can help or need the information. However other topics can be discussed for example what people’s views are on the latest corporate initiative? How does it change how they do things now, etc? This is an opportunity for internal communications to explain how it will affect employees. It helps avoid a vacuum which could be filled by rumours and conflicting information. It also shows the organisation is interested in what employees say and responds with a supportive answer.

2. Leading in discussion forums

Internal communications can take a more pro-active role with discussion forums. When an important corporate message has been announced a question can be asked on the discussion forum to gauge what the reaction has been to it. The important point is not to react badly to critical views. It’s no good responding “you haven’t understood the messages or “you just got it wrong” because that will stop future responses. You need to explain carefully and consistently to their views. Remember many employees will only read the conversations and not contribute. Think about that wider audience.

You may set up a separate thread which is dedicated to internal communications where only views and opinions that cover this area are raised, discussed and responded to. Be clear firstly whether it needs to be separate and how your approach will be before starting it.

3. Senior manager online chats

Consider having regular chats online with senior managers and employees. One way would be to have a different Board Member answer questions sent online for one hour each month. The topic could be on anything but it is probably best to concentrate on their area of responsibility where they will bemore comfortable. All the questions and answers given should be published on the intranet for employees to read through especially if they were not able to take part when the online chat happened.

Another way could be to focus on those senior managers who are the best communicators. Certainly if your CEO is keen and sees it as a good way to give a personal message that is different to what has been sent out through the formal channels it normally causes great interest with employees.

I hope this post along with the previous areas I have covered helps to show you how collaboration tools can help, rather than hinder, internal communications and communicators. How you plan to do this and manage this is critical. I can help you with my internal communications‘ experience and knowledge with:

a few hours help and guidance
a day’s training/workshop
a few days advice and detailed guidance
a few weeks strategic guidance, project planning and if needed, implementation

How blogs can improve internal communications

May 2, 2012 at 8:30 am | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, plan, social media, value | 4 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, social media, value

In my last post ‘How to improve communications using collaborative tools‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. I also gave examples of collaboration tools that can help improve internal communications. This post covers how blogs can help improve internal communications.

A corporate blogging tool can help employees share ideas and opinions. It’s not just used to comment upon internal communications. Blog posts can also help employees doing similar work or having a similar interest in different business units to save time and effort. Employees can find someone else’s views who they do not know to help them solve a problem or speed up a task.

And blogs are something employees are becoming more familiar with on the internet and expect to see on their intranet. For example in the UK many of the BBC reporters blog what they report on TV and radio. There are also many bloggers who post on subjects of interest to employees, whether work-related or of personal interest.

The main point for internal communicators to understand is blogs are established, accepted, and understood on the internet by the same people, employees, who are the audience within an organisation who receive news. So, I recommend a few points internal communicators consider:

Be accepting of this changing environment and welcome it as some progressive internal communicators have done successfully.
Don’t feel threatened and react negatively by asking for posts with different views to be removed.
Widen your scope to include blogs in your communications planning.
You communicate the corporate message but it is not the only message that can be communicated.
Treat employees as people with opinions and views they have a right to express, be listened and responded to constructively.
Take a wider, more strategic view, of all communications and communicators.
Engage with bloggers and comment on their posts and explain your point of view.
Posts on blogs can act as an early warning device of a small problem to be resolved before it becomes a much larger and difficult problem to resolve later.
Posting and commenting on blogs increases employees’ engagement. If they didn’t care, why would they blog?
Blog posts should help shape corporate values and future direction.

Contact me to find out how I can help you:

implement a blogging tool
have the right terms and conditions of use
communicate better using collaborative tools
improve engagement of employees
measure the benefits to be gained

If you want further help from me please contact me or find out more about me and what I can offer.

My next post in this series will be on discussion forums.

Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, social media, value

How to improve communications using collaborative tools

April 23, 2012 at 9:16 am | Posted in collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, news, research, social media, training, value | 5 Comments
Tags: collaboration, communication, content, engagement, intranet, research, social media, training, value

In my last post ‘Should collaboration tools redefine internal communications’ role?‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. But which collaboration tools can you introduce and improve internal communications too?

I recommend researching employees’ needs to find which are most needed and likely to be adopted. Some contact with senior managers to understand the corporate values will help too. Let’s start by increasing employees interaction with existing communication channels before we move on to new collaborative tools.

When a new article is published on the intranet employees normally have no easy opportunity to show how valuable it is, what their views are or the effect it has. Introducing a few features can help to change that.

Rating

Employees are able to rate how useful the information has been. The higher the rating, the more useful it is. It helps show internal communications what is most valued by employees and encourage similar messages to be published. More importantly it shows what is not useful and could be reduced or stopped. This information helps plans for future communications that have the best impact.

Comment

Employees are able to comment on the news item. A comments feature gives freedom to express positive and negative views. It also enables other employees to see these comments and show if they dis/agree with what has been said already. This helps internal communications to understand better how useful, complete, and relevant it has been. It helps internal communications to improve future messages and empowers employees to influence these by expressing their views.

Like

Employees are able to show they like the news item. This helps internal communications understand how valuable and useful the message has been to employees. It is a simpler approach to rating content (see Ratings) and gives a basic indication by the number of employees who how liked the message.

Employees are able to share news items with other employees who have a similar need or interest. This helps spread news more quickly using the channels that employees prefer to use rather than the formal, existing, internal communication channels with other employees.

How I can help

I have several years’ first hand experience improving communications and helping other organisations too. Please contact me if you would like me to help you:

decide on the right collaboration tools
communicate better using collaborative tools
improve internal communications
research employees needs and attitudes
train internal communicators

My next blog will cover how blogs can help improve internal communications.

Should collaboration tools redefine internal communications’ role?

April 17, 2012 at 12:26 pm | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, research, social media, strategy, value | 6 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, plan, social media, strategy

In my last post ‘Is your culture right for collaboration tools to improve internal communications?‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. Internal communications need to realise they are not the sole people who can communicate using the intranet. Neither are their official channels the only route to communicate with other employees.

To embrace these challenges I suggest redefining the role of internal communications. It is set in a model that is fast changing and risks becoming irrelevant. The days when only managers or CEOs communicated business news and changes to their employees using internal communications will become extinct like dinsoaurs. They need to adapt to the changes and recognise, like some progressive comms people have already done, the need to evolve and move forward and not resist until the bitter end.

I see the role for internal communications changing in this new world where employees want to communicate and collaborate with other employees as liberating and giving greater influence to the organisation. Why?

1. Strategic

Take a step back from the day to day activity of preparing communications, checking channels are operating OK, and which day to send out a corporate message. Think more about the value communications can have on the organisation, how employees perform, the direction it sets.

Encouraging employees to give their views on communications, even setting the agenda and starting communications on the organisation’s performance, ways of working can help encourage employee engagement.

Get more involved in the organisation’s strategy by influencing how communications in general, not just corporate messages, show the pulse of the employee’s attitude and engagement. Work with HR and the intranet team to use the information on blogs, discussion forums and online polls to identify hot spots that are important to employees – what is working well, what could be improved – and help communicate through channels that employees choose to use with helpful information.

This will show the organisation is listening rather than just talking all the time to employees. It also means employees use their time for more productive activities if their concerns have been accepted and acted upon more quickly.

2. Influential

Having a wider view of what is happening across the organisation brings a better insight to how its aims can be achieved from an internal communications perspective. A more accurate and complete picture given will mean other senior leaders taking notice and seriously considering any points or issues raised by internal comms.

It will mean more major business projects and change programmes will want to involve internal communications professionals at the start so the right priority and consideration is given to their views. It enables internal communications to start setting more of the agenda that will improve the organisation and employees’ engagement with it by its understanding of how employees communicate and collaborate to maximum effect.

3. Liberating

The main focus has been on the content of the communication being word-perfect and grammatically correct with the channels working fine for delivering it to the audiences on time. The focus shouldn’t be on just that, important though it is to avoid badly worded, confusing, messages. Instead it should widen to cover the wider impact of any communications.

So if you threw a stone into a pond it wouldn’t just be the size of the splash the stone made but the ripple effect that went as far as the edges of the pond. Instead of success being the perfect execution of the stone being thrown, it is also the number and size of the ripples and how far they spread across the pond.

This can be achieved by starting online polls to ask for employees’ views, raising new topics in a discussion forums, responding with contructive comments to blog posts giving different views. The aim is to explain and educate employees to understand better what has been communicated. It is not to tell them they are wrong and only the internal comms sponsored message is right.

4. How to do this?

All of this is easier to read about than to do. Don’t worry, I have first hand experience for several years of achieving this as well as helping other organisations with advice and detailed information. If you want further help from me please contact me or find out more about me and what I can offer.

My next blog will give more practical examples of how collaboration tools can help improve internal communications.

Is your culture right for collaboration tools to improve internal communications?

April 10, 2012 at 8:03 am | Posted in best practice, blog, collaboration, communication, community, engagement, intranet, news, social media, strategy | 7 Comments
Tags: best practice, blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, social media, strategy

I believe many internal communications professionals are not appreciating the benefits that collaboration tools can bring. Instead they are seen as a threat to traditional channels used for communicating corporate messages to employees. In my previous post ‘Can collaboration tools improve internal communications?‘ I disagreed with this attitude.

Changing this approach is not a simple task. Before you can consider using any collaboration tools you need to have the right culture within your organisation. I’m afraid the approach of “I’ll start a blog to change the culture” is doomed to failure. You need to have an environment where employees are:

comfortable using collaborative tools
encouraged to share information with other employees
maybe even incentivised to share knowledge online
able and willing to offer critical comments
relaxed about constructive feedback on their own views

To achieve this environment you need to have in place the following:

company values that should cover openness, honesty, and trust
endorsement and sponsorship by senior managers of the values
guidance on how employees should behave online
HR policies that support employee engagement

That means internal communications realising they are not the only people who can communicate using the intranet. Neither are ‘official’ channels the only route to communicate with other employees. To embrace these challenges could mean a redefining of the role of internal communications. How this can be done will be covered in my next post.

If you want to use my experience or help about this post please contact me.

Can collaboration tools improve internal communications?

April 3, 2012 at 8:57 am | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, podcast, rss, social media, wiki | 14 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, rss, social media, wiki

Intranets have developed over recent years from mainly being a channel for a few people to publish news to becoming places where any employee can collaborate and share knowledge with other employees. I find it ironic that it is internal communications who are hesitant, even resistant, to embrace these changes. Ironic because many intranet teams are located within internal communications. Doubly ironic as it is normally intranet teams who are involved with how collaboration tools are used.

Instead of embracing this chance to engage with employees using these new tools and integrate them into an enhanced communications framework, internal communications reaction is more often a knee-jerk one that results in more and more ‘official’ news to try to drown out other voices.

I think that’s very sad when it happens. It’s a bit like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. It has to face reality at some stage. The later internal comms leave it, the bigger the challenge it faces to use these tools to the overall benefit of the organisation, employees and internal communications.

Over the next few posts I want to cover how tools like blogs, video, rating and RSS can be used more effectively. I will also show how I can help you if you need more information and support.

Is this scenario something you are familiar with in your own organisation?

What is a digital workplace?

March 5, 2012 at 3:02 pm | Posted in application, blog, collaboration, content management, digital workplace, intranet, mobile, news, podcast, rss, wiki | 32 Comments
Tags: applications, blog, collaboration, digital workplace, intranet, rss, social media, wiki

Last week at the IntraTeam event in Copenhagen (Twitter #IEC12) there were many discussions about the digital workplace and what exactly is a digital workplace.

I thought it would be good to start a debate on what we mean when we say the digital workplace. Many intranet professionals want to find out more about the digital workplace. Here is my view for you to consider and comment upon.

What exactly is a digital workplace?

I define the digital workplace as “Work is what you do, not where you go to.”

In a digital workplace you are able to:

Work in any location. This may be at home, in your own or anyone else’s office, on the train, or ideally anywhere that suits you at the time you need to.
Do your work. This may making a room booking, checking a person’s contacts details, searching for information you need, or reading the latest news.
Use any device. This maybe your laptop, a shared PC, a smartphone (iPhone), or tablet (iPad).
Share information. This means being able to use collaboration tools to help other people.
Search across all places where information is and you have permission to use.

What is the difference between a digital workplace and an intranet?

An intranet has a more limited role. An intranet typically has corporate news and documents e.g. policies. Publishing will probably use content and document management systems. A digital workplace will also have:

Collaboration tools e.g. blogs, wikis, podcasts
Micro blogging tools e.g. Yammer, Twitter
Knowledge sharing/building e.g. team wikis and share workspaces
Applications/tools e.g. HR tools, online training, sales performance
Processes e.g. approving decisions, compliance checks

It will help me and other intranet professionals if you can comment to agree, disagree, amend, etc, to create a shared understanding on the digital workplace. Thanks in advance.

Help with intranets, digital workplaces, collaboration and SharePoint

February 7, 2012 at 9:19 am | Posted in benchmark, benefit, best practice, collaboration, content management, digital workplace, engagement, governance, homepage, intranet, mark morrell ltd, plan, publishing, research, SharePoint 2010, social media, standards, strategy, training, usability, user testing, value, wiki | 1 Comment
Tags: applications, benchmark, benefit, best practice, beta testing, blog, bt intranet, collaboration, content, digital workplace, engagement, governance, help, homepage, intranet, intranet applications, Mark Morrell, plan, publishing, research, sharepoint 2010, social media, standards, strategy, usability, user testing, value, wiki

Thinking about what is the best way to implement SharePoint 2010?

Are you looking for good examples of managing intranets?

Are you planning how to transform your digital workplace?

Maybe you want to use collaboration tools to increase employee engagement?

Now you can find helpful information on all these areas in one site. It combines my first-hand experience managing BT’s intranet with my knowledge and help improving other intranets to show how you can improve your intranets and digital workplaces.

If I can help you further please contact me whenever you want to.

Stopping knowledge leaving with the person

November 16, 2011 at 9:19 am | Posted in career, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, SharePoint 2010, social media | 5 Comments
Tags: collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, social media

How do I engage employees and improve collaboration? is a question I have been addressing in my posts Make a newbie welcome and more engaged,, Integrating and engaging a newbie , How an engaged newbie can become a top performer, A top performer’s career development and 3 steps to making it easier for top performers to share knowledge.

My last post in this series will cover what happens to the knowledge of an experienced top performer when they leave an organisation.

Physical and digital assets

It is a common problem as I know from personal experience. An organisation will closely track all the physical assets that you hold – computer, phone, car, etc, – and want them returned before you leave.

But your digital assets and your intellectual assets are rarely managed so the knowledge about how your work is carried out – processes, priorities,etc. – and the right contacts are lost to your successor (if your replacement has not been recruited), your manager and other people you work with.

How can organisations retain your knowledge better?

Leslie has decided after many years excellent service that a career move outside the organisation is the next step to take. Leslie has many years experience of how the organisation works. Leslie has worked on many projects. More importantly there are many nuggets of knowledge Leslie has learnt and used to perform so well. Who are the ‘right people’ to contact when you need help on different subjects? How is the best way to get approval for a project when you are not certain you have all the information to support you? What are the best shortcuts that cut out some of the worse processes? (we can all think of at least one can’t we!)

The main aim of the organisation is to have Leslie’s knowledge already stored in its digital workplace and have a governance framework to manage that knowledge so it continues to be available after Leslie has left. This means Leslie leaves but not Leslie’s knowledge. Bingo!

SharePoint 2010

There are many examples of how this can be done in a practical way. I will use SharePoint 2010 because I am familiar with it.

You need a knowledge management strategy that is aligned to your organisation’s values that knowledge is an important asset.

The governance framework that SharePoint 2010 fits within helps to separate personal from business information.

MyProfile contains all the personal information about Leslie – contact no., home address, manager, reporting lines, personal blog.

MySite contains other information that is personal to Leslie but is available if people need to find out more about Leslie to see if Leslie is in fact the best person to ask about a subject or not.

TeamSite has all the business information contained in the various projects, discussion groups, policy sites and functional areas of responsibility Leslie is involved with. This is where the rich knowledge is managed.

The governance framework ensures all the TeamSites are clearly owned and the information is reviewed in line with an Information Retention policy. Permissions are set so employees can see or not see the content, perhaps edit some or all the documents or even create new documents. SharePoint 2010 is very flexible in how you can configure it.

Good knowledge management

When Leslie leaves, Leslie’s MyProfile and MySite will be removed. This has personal information only.

All the TeamSites that Leslie has contributed to remain and will continue to be managed in line with the needs of the business.

This ensures the knowledge that Leslie has does not leave as well but is kept for future use.

3 steps to making it easier for top performers to share knowledge

November 9, 2011 at 10:46 am | Posted in blog, career, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, plan, social media | 6 Comments
Tags: blog, career path, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, plan, social media, training, wiki

Leslie has been a top performer for some years as Leslie has moved from one role to another. Leslie has agreed to mentor people as part of their career development.

There isn’t one standard way to mentoring. From my experience as a mentor and running a mentoring programme, it is the personalities of the mentor and mentee (protegé), the needs of the mentee and the ways and frequency of contact between them which can create a dynamic, enriching and long relationship or quickly fizzle out to nothing.

Leslie has the right characteristics to be a mentor. Leslie has broad experience, is a natural collaborator – willing to share ideas and listen to different views, and deep knowledge of many areas of common interest with the mentee to explore.

There are three steps to make it easier for Leslie.

Digital workplace

A digital workplace helps to give the relationship more opportunities to develop successfully between a mentor and mentee. Before it could be a combination of email, texts, calls or face to face meetings that helped nurture and grow a budding relationship into a strong friendship which can last for many years and extend into their personal lives.

The digital workplace means a blog post of interest can be shared with each other for comment, collaborating in a shared workspace on a subject with each other or with other trusted people that can help is easy to do. Using micro-blogging for direct messages as well as re-sending useful comments is great. Having a video call instead of a face to face meeting takes less time, effort and possible delay to fit with other commitments.

Most importantly is the degree of subtlety that a true friendship needs. It means a quick tweet or micro-blog comment helps keep the relationship ticking over when previously no response could chill things for a while and need more time and effort to repair……………..or even worse, lead to a terminal decline and end of the mentorship.

Use the full range of options that a digital workplace offers for how you communicate to find out what works best for a mentor and mentee.

Performance management

You need a framework that rewards a mentor and mentee for their time and effort and value that an organisation gains from helping accelerate the career development of a potential future top performer. While some mentors will be happy just to have some informal recognition, maybe meet their mentee in their own time, for the majority some formal reward is needed.

A performance management framework enables this to be given in an appropriate way. For the mentee, a personal development plan, reviewed regularly with their line manager, can include the progress with the mentor (without breaking any personal confidences). This helps to plan future development and work that maximise the mentee’s engagement to the organisation.

For the mentor it gives a more subtle choice. It may not be a promotion or pay rise but a formal recognition award could motivate the mentor and with publicity encourage other top performers to consider being a mentor. It may help with the future career path of the mentor who wants to progress into a new field of work using the skills learnt mentoring.

Culture

None of this will be possible without the right strategy, values and behaviour for the organisation the mentor and mentee works in. Creating the right environment for collaborative working; feeling we are all part of one big team; seeing the bigger picture and how everyone contributes to the overall success; being clear what is the direction the organisation is moving in; all of these help mentoring.

Without the right culture a performance framework would focus only on individual performance and what is being done now, not in the future.

A digital workplace wouldn’t happen. The old view “if you are out of my sight I don’t know what you are doing” would stop it dead in its tracks.

Combining these three key factors will mean you have a very good chance of many strong mentorship helping the mentee, mentor (like Leslie) and the organisation.

My last post in this series will cover what happens to the knowledge when a top performer leaves an organisation.

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