Our experience of launching Internal Communication Platform

Posted on | May 28, 2010 | 3 Comments

We  (The Actualize Group / @actualizelabs) are a 130+ employee company providing IT services to premium banking, insurance, telecommunication and technology customer based in London, Spain, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.  We believe that communication inside our organisation is a key aspect of developing a healthy environment and working relationships. Further the more the company’s employees speak and interact, the greater are the opportunities of building a positive vibe and giving/receiving more out of employees.

In addition to creating a positive impact within the company internal communication is also the first step to building a sustainable innovation strategy. Without having an internal community it’s almost impossible to build an external community around the organisation. Having an external community would help push the concept of developing products, getting feedback on products/service, innovation etc to the next level. A bit like Twitter, where once 70% of it’s usage was seen from applications built by other developers.

Experience of building Internal Community

Considerations

From the word go, we knew that developing an internal community will not be easy. Given that we are multinational, speaking upto 5 languages in various countries. We also know that developing a paper based communication platform wouldn’t work for us as it is slow, expensive and not nearly as interactive as the online version. Further, we didn’t think that email was ideal for communication as they often get lost amongst the piles of other emails. Further it’s not a systematic way to respond to comments. Hence we decided to engage an online social media platform, where we could manage all the communications at a central point, accessible via web, mobile or tablet.

Result

I am glad to announce that we recently launched our internal communication tool. Within a matter of 18 days we managed to get more than 25% (28% to be precise) of the company on the communication platform. All members have explicitly chosen to join the platform, i.e. they have signed up voluntarily. 70% of all members are actively commenting, suggesting and interacting. Although 20% of members are contributing to 80% of the content, hence the 20-80 rule applies. What’s more impressive is the fact that many of the new messages on the internal communication platform are new ideas and concept for future products and services.

It is fantastic to see that everyone in the company is pushing to re-innovate and rediscover the organization. I must be completely honest and mention that it hasn’t been easy, to get people on to the internal communication channel is rather challenging and requires an internal campaign, but it seems the experience is worth it. Especially in unifying communication and giving employees the opportunity to change the fortunes of the company.

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