Institute of Internal Communication

Ross Chestney, head of communication services at BT, is well known as an intranet pioneer. He leads the development of the BT Intranet - one of the largest and most successful in Europe - where his specific responsibilities relate to content management and channel development, rather than technology.

Steve Nichols, CiB ezine editor and webmaster, asked him to outline BT’s use of Web 2.0 tools and social media for internal communications.

What Web 2.0 tools do you use in BT?

We have a group-wide Wiki (MediaWiki), a team collaborative wiki platform (Confluence) and are about to launch Wordpress as our corporate blogging tool. We've trialled social networking inside (see below) and have been doing podcasting for some time.

How do you encourage staff to take part?

Almost exclusively viral marketing - now that some of the pilot tools are going enterprise-wide we will do more formal comms. We have proved the concepts and the value so we are confident about being more pro-active in their communication.

How do you deal with blog/forum entries that criticise the company?

This is not something new for us. We have always had a letters page in our employee newspaper, and people have been able to take part in discussions and express open and honest views on our online news site almost from the start. And for some years now, our CEO has held regular online chats where people ask very direct questions and get very direct answers.

Through this we've created a sense of personal responsibility.You can say what you like, but will be held accountable for what you say. In many ways this works in our favour.

For example, there have been discussions on internal blogs about some of our products. These discussions work really well because the conversations are between users of those products and the product providers (all of whom are BT employees) - so we can have a frank and open discussion about issues and shortfalls in a particular product between 'customers' and 'providers' behind closed doors and get things fixed without 'airing our dirty laundry' in public.

Which is the most effective medium for you - online video or online audio?

They both have their place, but there is still a barrier to entry for video. I'm very keen to try a YouTube Inside type of service, and we're looking at walk up video pods to help us reduce that barrier to entry.

Does Facebook have a place in the corporate workplace?

Yes. We may already be seeing the decline of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and so on in our personal lives, but I believe there is very real value in providing these kind of social network facilities inside and organisation. It enables connections to be made between people with common interests and objectives, but it'll be much more niche than what we've seen with Facebook outside. One word of caution though, although I refer to 'inside' and 'outside' I think those distinctions are breaking down in many ways

Would you consider/do you have a talent management tool similar to Facebook?

I think Facebook is much more than just a talent management tool. It's a community support tool that facilitates conversations and collaboration. We've completed a proof of concept stage and are now looking to launch an enterprise-wide solution in the next few weeks.

If you could invent a new corporate communications online tool, what would it be?

I'm not convinced we need any more 'tools'. What we need is to be smarter about how we link everything together. Over the next few years there are going to be fundamental changes to the role of employee communications people. We'll no longer control channels, make announcements, issue briefings etc. - we'll be taking part in conversations with people who know almost as much as we do. We'll need to build credibility and authority through what we say and how we say it, not by shouting loudly!

We'll also be working with a new breed of CEOs and senior managers - people who have been brought up with this technology, use it day in and day out, are natural communicators and may even question why we exist at all.

Do you train people to write their blogs more effectively?

We provide advice and guidance which wraps in our policies, but more importantly tries to help people write a good blog with engaging content.

How do stop forums stagnating/engage staff to take part?

I heard someone say recently that "conversation is king" and that "content provides the context for the conversation". In my experience, conversations are stimulated by creating the right environment and atmosphere within which they can flourish. If you don't get that right, no amount of 'encouragement' will work.

Similarly, once conversations are under way, it's up to the community to decide when the subject is exhausted.That may mean some collaboration sites stagnate and it's therefore important that you have governance in place to ensure stagnant content is dealt with appropriately.

What do you see as the next development in social networking?

See above. Social networking has the potential to make a huge difference inside an organisation. That's the next big thing people in the business world should be thinking about.

Ross Chestney is well known as an intranet pioneer. He has followed a career in communications, mostly with BT, where he has held a number of senior positions in public relations and corporate and employee communications.

He leads the development of the BT Intranet - one of the largest and most successful in Europe. His specific responsibilities relate to content management and channel development, rather than technology, and he has successfully steered the BT Intranet through the many stages of its development, and continues to do so today through leadership of programmes such as BT’s information management strategy.

Most recently, Ross has been in the vanguard of the deployment of social media into the corporate environment and is a sought after speaker at social media events.