Driving Employee Engagement through a Social Intranet

Kelly OsbornCommunity Manager, National ArchivesKelly.Osborn@nara.gov

January 16, 2014National Archives Office of Innovation and the Federal Communicators Network

THE PROBLEM

Facts about NARA:• Lots of people work in lots of different places

(more than 40 facilities nationwide)• Brain drain caused by retiring staff• Outdated technology• Risk-averse agency culture• Buried expertise• Shrinking budget

Also?

According to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Results, we’re consistently one of the worst places to work in the Federal Government, and we don’t trust our leaders.

THE PITCH

Can we make a positive change at the National Archives by empowering employees to foster communication and collaboration from the ground up, instead of the top down?

Internal Collaboration Network

Our Internal Collaboration Network (ICN) is a platform that uses social media-based software to enable staff to better communicate, collaborate, and build communities. Its features are similar to those found on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, but are used in a professional context.

But what is it, really?

Useful functions

• Profile pages• Contacts (“friends”)• Groups• Workspaces• Status updates• Discussions/Forums• Tagging• Project Management• Blogs (team and

individual)

• Wikis• Team calendars• Robust search functions• File sharing• Ratings and polls• Announcements• Flags for abuse• Social bookmarking• Mobile capability

(eventually)

Step 1: Find a champion

Step 2: Identify and clarify your objectives

• What is the business need? Determine this first. Then look at technology. Then think about design.

• What goals can reasonably be accomplished?• How do you measure success?

Explicitly state what you want your network to accomplish

• One NARA (transfer best practices/knowledge across NARA units)

• Out in Front (building our internal infrastructure with innovative tools)

• An Agency of Leaders (empower staff throughout the agency to lead)

• A Great Place to Work (opportunity to participate and collaborate, allowing for trial and error; encouraging creativity, using technology to empower staff)

• A Customer-Focused Organization (improve work processes, get answers to customer questions quickly)

• An Open NARA (make internal information, including decision making, accessible to staff by default)

Step 3: Research

• Talk to other agency networks, internal stakeholders, and vendors

• Find out about best practices and lessons learned

• Ask, “What’s the worst thing that ever happened?”

• Useful phrase to use for fellow govies: “Might you share that documentation with us?”

Define requirements by gathering input from EVERYONE

• Legal Counsel• Human Resources• IT Security• Records Management• AFGE (Union)• Acquisitions• Policy• Social Media• Web Programs• Knowledge Management• COOP (Continuity of Operations Plan)

Address “risks”

• What if someone says something mean or negative on the network?

• What if people waste their time on the network?

Best practices from other agencies

• Find out what your users’ “pain points” are and make sure the system addresses these issues.

• Usability is key. Make it “stupid simple” to use.• You can likely address most concerns about the network

(legal, HR, union, etc.) in the terms of use policy.• Recruit subject matter experts to serve as community

leaders.• Don’t allow anonymous postings.• Don’t spend too much money on the system, but do

carefully calculate the true costs of different options.

What have these networks done for other agencies?

• Revolutionized knowledge capture and transfer (“wikified” US Army field manual)

• Uncovered hidden talent so every staffer can fully contribute to the mission of the agency (State Department’s expert locator)

• Captured and shared “unwritten” knowledge (State department’s procedures for visiting dignitaries)

• Prevented duplication of effort (DoD’s Aristotle project search)

• Diversified working groups (NASA’s Spacebook expert/interest search)

Step 4: Get ready, because the rest is a long slog, all uphill

“Where’s the ‘real’ work?”

Steve Radick, “If You Want a Culture of Collaboration, You Need to Accept the LOLCats Too” (January 5, 2012; http://steveradick.com/2012/01/05/if-you-want-a-culture-of-collaboration-you-need-to-accept-the-lolcats-too/ )

It’s all just puppies and kittens!

It’s NARA, but it’s still not work, is it?

• 250 replies• 2400 views

Information exchange

• 56 likes• Almost 600 views• 20 comments including a follow-up from Micah

Collaboration

• 800 views• 34 comments• About a dozen different parts of the agency

Innovation

• 300 views• 46 replies• Input from across the country

The complex relationship between an "information" intranet and a

"collaboration space"

• Different audiences require different levels of access (employees vs. contractors, for example)

• Intranet as storehouse for official documents• This is a conversation, not a press release

Managing stakeholder relationships

• Make your critics early adopters• Encourage conversation• Share liberally• Write an “in case you missed it” every week• Help your users write content that people

want to read

Measuring engagement and using that to inform a broader strategy

Technology adoption lifecycle: Everett Rogers’ bell curve

1% rule of Internet culture

1% of the population creates the content that 9% edits or comments on, while 90% view and silently judge you.

Identifying issues preventing wider adoption

• Managers nervous that their staff will make them look bad

• “I don’t have time for that” (and neither does my staff)

• Work conditions and access to computers• Technology flaws

Separate the issues

• Technology problems are fixable!• So are training issues• But technology alone will not solve a culture

problem

Take your community seriously

Kelly OsbornKelly.Osborn@nara.gov@kellygo