The BT intranet has been in operation since the 1990s and has enjoyed a modicum of success. However, the rise of social media at a time it strives for innovation in a sluggish, if not desperate economic climate has forced the English-stalwart to embrace intranet 2.0. However, the innovative embrace wasn't delivered without executive resistance.
BT's employee podcast center on the intranet, Podcast Central
Rewind the fibre optic 2-plus years ago and all but a handful at BT had any understanding, let alone acceptance, of social media. More than a few eyebrows were raised when it came to management's attention that 12,000 employees had joined a dedicated Facebook community for BT employees. While unaware here-to-date of the back-current of conversation flowing through the popular social media site, executives were forced to take heed: BT employees were using publicly available social media to discuss business related issues without the company's full knowledge or participation.
Now the Senior manager of Social Media at BT, Richard Dennison was quick to realize the adoption of social media by employees and the potential impact on the company. While the first Intranet 2.0 tool introduced to BT was a wiki on server under someone's desk (as was the case at Cisco and many others), Richard was an early champion that helped 'sell' the social media cause despite an over-abundance of caution and skepticism from management.
"Many believe that trying to stop social media tools seeping onto intranets is a futile activity anyway, so it is better to introduce them on your terms in a managed way,” says Richard1. “If you don’t think about what value you can deliver in an enterprise 2.0 environment, you are going to become irrelevant!!!”
What followed management's acceptance and adoption of social media can safely be called 'stunning' with little risk of exaggeration:
Wikis have grown at exponential rates to more than 750,000 wiki pages (the vast majority of which are dedicated to business issues, adds Richard)
Thousands of employees are blogging
Countless executives and managers are podcasting & webcasting (even vlogging)
Thousands are connecting on the intranet social networking site, MyBT
500,000 Team Sites have sprung-up using Microsoft SharePoint and Confluence (a service dubbed BT Collaborate)
BT
is quiet about the expense of these tools but Dennison says that most
of the social media tools were built on the cheap internally using
open-source or existing software (SharePoint and Confluence are
exceptions). Of course the business case to move to social media was
built on one of need, rather than ROI, and the value is self-evident.
“Using technology to break down traditional boundaries encourages a
culture that reaches out rather than locks out, and that is something
that the Digital Generation is ideally equipped to do,” adds
Richard2,
who told me himself on a recent trip to jboye08 in Denmark that ROI
is “overrated."Despite
the success, many naysayers openly muse about the deleterious affects
of social media on employee productivity. What if, for example, an
employee spends hours on Facebook? My response to this valid concern
is my typical response: “What if they spend hours chatting on the
phone? Or spend their break time snorting elicit drugs in the
bathroom?”
While
care and planning should not be thrown to the wind, employees should
be judged on results and not the clock. Results aside, Dennison is
quick to quip, “If we can't trust them then we have to ask
ourselves why we are employing them.2” Touché!
For
those with the temerity to pick-up the intranet 2.0 torch and to run
the extra mile required to adopt social media, Richard offers a
number of lessons that should be ignored at your peril1:
Focus on value not risk!
Start anywhere … start immediately
Start small and build slowly – follow the energy of yes through the network
We learn what works by doing the work … so …
…let users try as early as possible – ‘warts and all’ – succeed or fail quickly … and cheaply!
Engage legal/HR/security early… and emphasise evolution not revolution
Have realistic expectations … the intranet is not the internet!
Harness the enthusiasm of the enthusiastic … especially if senior
Sometimes … ‘the only form of transportation is a leap of faith’!
SEE THE BT CASE STUDIES & SCREENSHOTS:
Case Study: BT, digital generation, Career Innovation Group, 2008
BT Web 2.0 adoption case study
Read Richard Dennison's excellent blog on his work at BT
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1 RichardDennison.Wordpress.com, Richard
Dennison, Senior Manager, Social Media, BT
2 Case Study: BT, digital generation, Career Innovation Group, 2008
