The British company uses blogs, podcasts, social networking, wikis, forums and user-generated content to drive its communications—and its business

At the recent IntraTeam Intranet Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, BT (formerly British Telephone) communicator Richard Dennison blew the room away when he showed his organization’s intranet—which uses just about every social media tool available to allow employees to talk to each other, and to leadership. Here, Richard sits down with Crescenzo Communications and tells us how and why the company such a social-media friendly internal Web.

Crescenzo Communications: In the beginning of your talk, you mentioned how the intranet is the hub of the company—that without it, the company couldn’t survive.  Could you elaborate on that? What do you use it for, and why is it so crucial?

Richard Dennison: We do EVERYTHING on our intranet. All our processes are on-line, from ordering pencils and claiming expenses to accessing customer data. We have virtually no operational channels or processes that aren’t online and only a very few communications channels that are not online and these target sections of the workforce that don’t sit in from of PCs all day—but even those people can access the intranet.

CC: What Social Media tools do you have on the intranet?

RD: Pretty much the full range of tools: an enterprise-wide wiki, BTpedia, which is a kind of internal Wikipedia; project wikis; a central blogging platform; a podcasting platform; a social network, forums and discussions.

CC: I know you allow all employees to blog and podcast and do social networking. How did you get your managers past the fear that it would all dissolve into anarchy?

RD: I think that you can use mechanisms like tagging to create structure from perceived ‘anarchy.’ We position all these tools as business tools and they are used to meet business needs. By mixing user-generated content and more formal/static content you increase the value of both by seeing the context which is hidden behind the scenes normally. Our experience is that having user-generated content makes it easier to find the information you need to make great business decisions, not harder to find.

CC: With everyone communicating like mad via the social media tools, what is the role of the communicator?

RD: Internal communications has always been about managing the relationship between employees and the company … really, just a form of macro relationship counseling. This is still true, but takes different forms in the deregulated information space of a company using social media. In this kind of environment it is even more crucial for communicators to make their corporate content more compelling and engaging than before by deploying the communication skills we have. To make corporate content stand out, communicators have to write well, plan well, design well, use the right channels and engage with employees in new channels. Corporate communicators are much more accountable in this kind of environment, so you can’t get away with sloppy comms anymore.

CC: How stringent are your rules for behavior? How much freedom do people have to speak their minds, complain, bitch, etc.?

RD: BT people can say anything they like in our channels as long as what they say doesn’t break any policies and they are prepared to be accountable for what they say, because there is no anonymous publishing in our user-generated tools. We want an open culture where people take responsibility for what they say even if the company doesn’t like what is being said.

CC: You said in your presentation that you sold these tools to management as business tools. What business value do you see from all these social media tools?

RD: Potentially, HUGE. From greater levels of employee engagement (the more employees invest in relationships and personal brand within an organization, the less likely they are to move on somewhere else and the more likely they are to feel that they can make a difference) to reduced duplication, better sharing of knowledge and information, greater agility, increased innovation … using these tools to complement our processes and focus on delivering business objectives is what it’s all about.

CC: As you worked toward this wonderful 2.0 intranet, what were the biggest hurdles you faced? How did you overcome them?

RD: Mainly technical, surprisingly enough. I had imagined that policy people in HR, security, and legal would be the biggest barriers, but they were very open to the ideas when we engaged with them early on and explained what we were trying to do. Social media practices, such as trying stuff out quickly and cheaply, challenges many traditional IT processes in a large organization.

CC: Any new or exciting plans for the next phase?

RD: We’re really trying to bed the tools we have into the organization now and get the greatest levels of adoption that we can. The users will dictate what happens next.

CC: What advice would you offer communicators who would like to implement some of the cool stuff you’re doing . . . But are running into executives who are scared of employees communicating unfettered online?

RD: Start small, experiment, don’t say you are trying to change the world, don’t necessarily wait for permission. If you don’t spend much you can do quite a lot before people start asking questions—and by then, it will probably be too late! Proceed until apprehended!