CDC employed a number of research initiatives (done in-house) to determine the nature and scope of the intranet). Among the learnings[1]:

• Employees want more information:
• Email announcements provided some information
• Many didn’t know “what’s going on"
• Wanted a formal channel for CDC communications

Comments:

• "I want to know more about people here and what others are doing."
• "Many times I find out things first in the newspaper."
• "I would like to see the news stories about CDC."

• Employees felt disconnected:

• They’re connected to their group/area/program
• But disconnected from the agency (enterprise)

Employee Comment:

"The fact that CDC is geographically much decentralized… speaks to the importance of having one place employees can go to get regular, detailed, up-to-date information…”

Driving the intranet are CDC's employee communication goals:

- Create a recognized and valued system of employee communication that helps improve communication… across employee groups

- Create a well informed employee public that understands CDC’s health protection goals, other public health initiatives, and business and employee services.

- Enhance trust and community between and among CDC leadership and employees.

- Prepare and encourage employees to serve as ambassadors for CDC among external audiences.

CDC’s macro approach was to combine the models of the online newspaper with intranet home page (traditional):

• Intranet best practices:
• Alerts & notifications
• Most useful links
• Employee connections
• Newspapers
• Fresh content (2 feature articles per day (4x per week)
• Interesting photos
• Feature stories

Despite the fact that their business is health, wellness and public safety – and they’re a federal government agency – CDC encourages employee blogging. In fact, the employee blog has been live for two years:

• Launched October 2006
• Evolved from infancy to a 14 or 15-year-old… and growing
• Conversations are happening anyway
• Blog allows respectful, open conversations
• Safe forum for tackling controversial issues or bad news quickly and openly
• Blog can lead to problem-solving across the agency
• Great employers demonstrate trust in employees (Fortune magazine’s 2006 100 best companies)
• Blogs self-policing (the occasional post has to be cleaned)
• Governed by “rules” that allows for instantaneous posting if its attributed by person’s name (anonymous postings are allowed but moderated and reviewed)
• Powered by WordPress

“People were blogging anyways on the Internet… people were airing dirty laundry anyways so lets give them a channel to do so internally,” says Golan. “It’s not a CEO blog, its for employees (occasionally its contributed by executives and guests).

Blog learnings (51 posts, 2400 comments later):

• Most active discussions: on topics that affect daily work life
• Least active discussions: on scientific or programmatic topics
• Many managers are reluctant participants
• Discussions easily wander off topic
• Appreciated by bloggers
• Let it evolve and mature

Challenges:

• Governance
• Content Mgt.
• Further Branding
• Templates and standards
• Budget……ROI

Parting thoughts from Golan:

A key challenge continues to be security: “The more we open with communications… the more security wants to close down. (e.g. There’s not enough bandwidth to open YouTube to all employees).”