“Enterprise Digital Collaboration is about integrating social features into the digital workplace, facilitating network dialogue and peer-to-peer communication across the organisation. It con- tributes to simplifying communication practices and supports and enhances ability to collabo- rate and share knowledge within the employees” (Nordea Intranet 2015c).
Instant messaging is widely and successfully used in Nordea, as well as blogging possibil- ities. Also the usage of the commenting option in news is increasing all the time. The most natural and relevant next step for expanding the social features is to include discussion forums and wikis, thus the recommendations in relation to social collaboration focus on these. Forums that offer users an opportunity to discuss topics that matter to them are a great way to get them to see the intranet as a place to make connections with colleagues. Social connections and shared interests form a great basis for business connections.
Employees are consuming and creating content in different ways than before, and have a new role in the organization as internal communicators. During the last few years employ- ees in Nordea have grown to have more courage in engaging in public dialogues and sharing opinions. The development for expanding the dialogue into a social collaboration
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forum is already underway and it is critical to formulate a plan for the implementation and engagement within the user group.
Strategic approach
One of the main challenges is to simplify the structures and channel distribution to make the organization understand what is the purpose and role of each communication tool or channel in the communication flow to avoid message replication. When planning for im- plementation of a social collaboration system, the first thing is to define the purpose, ob- jectives, goals, KPIs and possibly a cost-benefit analysis. The Nordea social media strat- egy can act as a background for internal social collaboration tools. The governance and definition of roles and responsibilities should not be too limiting to allow organic growth of the content. More important than control, is the support, engagement and creation of an open and innovative communication culture.
Psychological and motivational factors driving engagement on social interests should be understood. Elementary change management communication principles support mainte- nance of the social intranet. Social intranets can help build trust and influence transparen- cy, but it shouldn’t be expected they automatically change the organization’s communica- tion culture. Employees need tangible business reasons for using social collaboration tools. Employees need clear guidance on what to communicate in this environment. (Crin- coli 2015.)
Technology
The next step is to select the right technology and ensure sufficient technical security to avoid needs to limit usage because of partial availability of functions. For example usage of pictures, videos and files that might contain business sensitive information should be allowed in the posts.
The tool should be connected to the intranet, ideally in a comprehensive way throughout the structure. The most important technical integration is of course bringing the tool into the front page of the digital workplace through a widget feed. Naturally the feed should include flows of topics the user chooses to follow, but also there should be an option to follow a general random message feed. Since intranet has got a commenting option in the news channels, it might be a good idea to connect the commenting fields to the social collaboration tool. This doesn’t mean simple linking of items, but bringing discussions or comments from Yammer to intranet and vice versa, technical possibilities allowing.
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Also, recognising that intranet and its’ search function is the main tool for finding work related information, it could be thought of including the social platform in a visible way in the search results interface. If you don’t find what you are looking for on the intranet, you could easily click on a link, button or other visible item, which directs the user to the social platform, with the intention of “Ask a colleague”.
Content and organic growth
Organic growth is the key for a social collaboration platform. Employees are the users, and users are the communicators and members of the community creating collaboration and networking in practise. Use cases, topical categorization and examples can and should be used to some extent to encourage and support the start. A community manag- er, or a unit responsible for that, supports the management of the communication, struc- ture and practises, but they should not get involved in conversations or limit the organic growth of content in general, unless it is clearly against the company rules, interfering with the usability of the platform or endangering in some way the communication of other par- ticipants.
For definition of use cases and categorizing it is essential to investigate what users ex- pect, need, and what different stakeholders and collaboration units see are useful or prac- tical topic areas. In addition to the general community manager there should be a govern- ance set-up for specific topic areas as well, from units that have the special knowledge of that area.
Promotion and engagement
Communication in the traditional existing channels has to be planned as part of the change management plan, including promotion of the tool by email, newsletter, the intra- net home page, and other familiar marketing activities. Management, also on business area level, needs to be engaged and should act as an example, promoting the collabora- tion and helping to promote the new environment. Community manager is responsible for the overall tool management and support. The most influential members of the community should be recognized and involved as ambassadors. Technical training can be executed by the platform vendor in cooperation with Nordea representatives.
Ambassadors in Nordea could be the “Young significant talents”, which are based on HR information on the different career planning and capability levels according to the annual people processes. Empowered ambassadors are potentially the most important stake- holder in engaging colleagues especially in the implementation phase. Ambassadors can
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create active conversations, lead and promote the conversation with topical posts, act as an example for new blog posts or coach their colleagues on how to create wikis.