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Welcome to the Melcrum Social Media Newsletter.
A government agency, whose focus is mainly on legal and justice
issues, may not be the first organization that springs to mind
as potential early-adopters of social
media tools.
But, the New South Wales Attorney General’s Department (AGD) in Australia recently overhauled its intranet, adding tools like wikis, web polls, RSS and personal blogs.
Benefits of change
What was the catalyst for this overhaul? According to AGD's then
director of communications, Adrian Kerr, there were several:
- To improve communication and dialogue with senior leadership.
- To prepare for and communicate around a major office relocation.
- To create a personalized intranet space for employees.
- To increase engagement levels via trust.
- To have a communications-driven rather than an IT-driven tool, subsequently cutting down organizational silo problems.
- To prepare for an influx of younger, “Generation Y” workers who will automatically expect social media tools in the workplace.
By using a software portfolio from IBM, and forming an intranet governance group that gave joint ownership to the communications and IT teams, with Kerr as chairman, the project was driven forward to conclusion. The result is an intranet site that has gone from one filled with typical one-way, top-down communications, to a social, personalized space that employees want to use.
Top tips and advice
Here are Kerr’s
top tips for a successful social media intranet overhaul:
- Don’t make the implementation of social media formal. Present the benefits, not the risks.
- Get buy-in from the top. Don’t go out on a whim but aim to demonstrate where these tools can benefit the business.
- If IT asks, “Why do we need blogs?” a good answer is simply to say “to communicate better with staff”.
- Opening up conversation and dialogue presents you with valuable feedback and acts as a pulse check. Acting professionally on this feedback improves trust in an organization.
- Realize that disengaged employees will waste days anyway, whether or not they have social media tools to play with.
- Staff are people. Treat them as such. Give them a voice and trust them more.
- Consider existing guidelines: at the AGD there were no changes to the existing policies on public and internal discourse and the use of IT equipment.
- If you need cultural change and improvement, these tools can provide a catalyst for that change and help to demonstrate that.
Best regards,
Alex Manchester
Editor
alex.manchester@melcrum.com
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