Moving Employees to Action

Posted by admin on Oct 4, 2012 in Communication | 0 comments

Employee communications tactics for an ADD world: How to engage, collaborate and motivate employees
Caitlin Duffy (@duffycait), Managing Editor of MSW, Microsoft

MSW is Microsoft’s internal portal site, includes news and information, as well as links to company resources.  They have a five person editorial team, and a vendor who built the site and manages placing the content.  They handle enterprise-level topics, and localized information is handled separately.  Their sections include – Articles (1 daily editorial story and external story responses), employee submission of stories, snapshot (employee submitted photos), and a few others.  They let people choose their own homepage/portal and don’t force this site on them.  They still have a very high awareness and readership rate.

5 lessons for employee engagment:

1. Skate to where the puck is going
   
   

   Microsoft’s MSW is their internal portal – a source for news and links to company intranet resources.

   People want information wherever/whenever, want shorter bursts of information, and they expect to be able to interact.  They created “The Pulse” as an extension for their MSW internal brand.  It’s a place for microblogging and interaction in order to engage in conversations.  They can use this to monitor employee sentiment and change internal perceptions around certain issues.

   Similarly, mobile is critical – there’s often more participation due to accessibility of content whenever/wherever – so they’ve developed all these tools on a mobile app.  Mobile is so critical, they’ve eliminated their mass email program to free up resources to implement the mobile aspect of the site.

   What didn’t work – “Submit a Question” – surveys revealed people wanted to ask executives questions.  So they developed a tool to let people post questions and vote them up based on popularity.  Failed because questions that came in often related to secret information that wasn’t ready to be discussed.  They failed to work together with departmental communications managers to be prepared for the questions coming in.

2. Make it Easy for People to Act
   Infographics make it easy to explain content in a simple way, and can be utilized both internally and externally.  What doesn’t work: A complicated call to action.
3. Make your Events Social
   Utilized their social platform to socialize events.  There were some minor issues with employee submissions, they were prepared and acted on it.
4. Make it Real
   Don’t force participation, highlight events, meetings, employee retail deals, etc. to give them what they want and may not be aware of them.
5. Involve them in Big Moments
   This includes product launches, acquisitions, company meetings, and other big changes impacting the company.  This can be used as a focus group to determine employee sentiment and engagement.