Implementing social media features in intranet for effective employee engagement and internal communication #epem

Mikaela Terhil of Wartisila Corporation is on the stage. They provide lifecycle power solutions.
Wartsila recently allowed employees to access social networking platforms like Facebook from inside the company.
They started by integrating the intranets into one intranet. Then they added social features to the intranet, workspaces and office communicator.
Why social features? They wanted to help employees do their work, find the right employees, connect people together, bring expertise and different perspectives together, share knowledge, etc. In short: knowledge sharing and productivity.
So they now have:
  • People search > search over all profile information. Employees fill in profile info, blogposts etc are automatically related, you can also follow others
  • Compass profile > this is personal blogs, which is planned but not implemented yet
  • Personal site > collects and shows all your personal information on the intranet (not MySite, but MS profiles)
  • Poll > to get a feel of what the organization thinks of a certain topic
  • Workspaces > collaborate within a restricted group
  • Wartsila wiki > needs more promoting
  • We are the Doers blog (this is not personal blogging but news with comments, they’re working on that)
  • Discussion board > needs more promoting

All this is based on Sharepoint 2007. She closed off this section by telling stories about successful use of their platform. How it supports their employees to be productive.
They launched social features in June 2010 in the following way:
  • Highlight and banner on the intranet homepage
  • Global news, blogpost
  • Introductory site
  • Training and demo
  • Polling users

Mikaela also relates to how she finds that new culture can be enhanced. True employee engagement is gained through a culture of open internal communication. This should be reflected by the tools (e.g. profile is open to all).
She sees several challenges/opportunities. Adoption rate is not fast everywhere. How to get more on board? How to change the mindset of some senior management? They would like to link this platform more with business goals.

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