This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.

The good. The bad. And the ugly

by Deborah Hinton

The good

Some organizations are doing interesting, innovative and effective things with social media inside their organizations. Thanks to Montreal’s Third Tuesday gang, I saw an inspiring case study presented by Nathalie Pilon about her experience introducing Intranet 2.0 at Canam, a very conservative 50 year old business in the construction industry.  She and consultant Claude Malaison have over the past few years successfully transformed Canam’s Intranet from a something very basic to facebook to a fully integrated Intranet 2.0 that is still evolving to better serve the needs of their 3,000 employees in 18 factories delivering 12,000 projects a year.  Her presentation is in French and available on SlideShare or on webcast.

The bad

Some organizations are not according to a head line in today’s Montreal Gazette: “Companies put leash on social media”.  The article reported on a study of Chief Information Officers by Robert Half Technology which found “…many companies are tightening their grip on how employees use these channels at work.”

The ugly

Most stand squarely in the middle.  Neither in or out.  Strange.  In Nathalie’s presentation she referenced a study that found 92.9% of organizations either block or do not have policies for social media.  Blocking social media is one thing [discussed frequently and at length by Shel Holtz and others].  Not blocking and not having policies to guide employees behaviour on the web is clearly irresponsible.

Even more strange is that many of these same organizations are experimenting and successfully using social media to advance their goals and build relationships externally.  To be clear, I’m not advocating the mindless introduction of web 2.0 tools and tactics internally.

I am wondering, if social media are now being built into external strategies, why aren’t they being built into internal strategies?

Are web 2.0 tools and tactics part of your internal communication strategy?  If not, why not?  If yes, tell us more.

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Deborah Hinton Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Permalink Communication, Internal communication 1 Comment

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1 Comment to The good. The bad. And the ugly

  • Michelle Sullivan says:
    April 23, 2010 at 4:46 pm

    I think that part of the answer lies in awareness: companies see and hear about how others are reaching out to communities online. They’re hearing much less about examples like Groupe Canam.

    Hopefully, internal communications specialists like you will start talking about it more, bringing interesting case studies to light and exchanging more often on how Enterprise 2.0 can become a reality.

    Thanks for talking about 3e mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal, Deb. Glad you enjoyed our last presentation. Other video archives are also available through Ustream.

    p.s. The theme of this year’s PodCasters Across Borders conference is relevance. Would be great to hear about how podcasting can be an effective internal comms tool (in case anyone is looking for inspiration ;)

    http://www.podcastersacrossborders.com

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