PepsiCo engages employees in discussion, learning

PepsiCo, headquartered in Purchase, NY, is one of the world’s best known companies. Sharon McIntosh, director of global internal communications, tells us: “I believe the future of employee engagement centers around both collaboration and personalization. Collaboration is critical to innovation and productivity, while personalization helps cut through information overload to get employees what they want, when they want it.”

PepsiCo uses various social media tools to engage employees, including blogs, an idea network, and other tools. “Creating tools that allow employees to engage with the content – and having internal communications begin to mirror their external tools – is key,” says Sharon. For example, she points to a simple change they made with their daily electronic newsletter and intranet stories. Every story now has the ability for associates to comment on and rate the articles.

Another way PepsiCo has changed the conversation is through its innovative podcast program, “Sound Bites – Big Ideas, Small Portions.”

We normally think of a podcast as a one-way channel. But Sharon’s program cleverly integrates with social media – giving employees the unique opportunity for some interesting two-way discussion about the podcasts’ content.

One example of the two-way nature of the podcasts is that PepsiCo puts them on a blog. One international executive spoke about global strategy and both salaried and hourly employees listened to the audio and then commented online about the content, noting their own perspective on the company’s international growth. The conversation expanded in the following days as employees added their personal insights.

Sharon gets employees involved in podcasts in other ways, too. For the last podcast with PepsiCo’s CEO, she invited employees to ask the executive questions on a conference call. “After all, in many ways,” says Sharon, “communicators are evolving from crafting the content to facilitating the discussion.”

Social media takes employee engagement to a new level at Best Buy

Some enterprising employee communicators are galloping forward on the new frontier of social media – leveraging web 2.0 technologies to make a difference in employee engagement.

In our Ideas for Employee Communications newsletter, we’ve chronicled the creative and impactful work going on at companies like Dell, Kraft Foods, Rogers Communications and Finning.

Another company that deserves special mention is Best Buy, the successful Minneapolis-based retailer of technology and entertainment products, where communicators are on the cutting edge of the online employee engagement revolution. “Most companies have communicated at employees, but that’s not what works anymore,” said Jennifer Rock, director of employee communications for Best Buy. “We had to get into the web 2.0 environment.”

And have they ever. The flagship of Best Buy’s social media program is its highly acclaimed online discussion forum called Watercooler. When employees participate in Watercooler, they can choose to engage in conversations cross-country, within a store, or with employees who perform similar work.

Topics include everything from company loyalty and product merchandising to “Off The Wall,” where employees dialogue in a purely social, fun and supportive way. Since the introduction of Watercooler in 2008, more than 1.5 million posts have been made on the site, with 10,000 unique visitors each week. The technology used to create the Best Buy social media program was a custom platform built with PHP front-end and hinged on MySQL back-end logic.

Senior leaders like CEO Brian Dunn help keep the momentum going for online discussion through blogs like “Brian’s Whiteboard,” which touches on goals, strategy, and anything else on Brian’s mind, including his impressions as he travels the world on behalf of Best Buy. There's also an external version of “Whiteboard” which you can view by CLICKING HERE.

Since Motiv8 Communications considers focus on idea-sharing as one of the most important methods for achieving high performance results, we really like Best Buy’s IdeaX internal/external idea generation and discussion site. Since its inception in May 2009, employees and the public have submitted over 6,500 ideas to IdeaX. CLICK HERE to see what IdeaX looks like.

Wikis are catching on as a vital communications and performance management tool in many companies and Best Buy is no exception. Wikis are used in a variety of ways at Best Buy. “Any employee from corporate headquarters to part-time warehouse employee has access to read, edit and add content,” says Andy Hokenson, Best Buy’s senior specialist for Dialogue and Intranet.

“In its current state,” says Andy, “ Wiki has been a great source for local store employees to learn details about their specific location’s business goals, see what the competition is up to, find information on company strategy and learn and share best practices. The wiki is most effective when it’s used as a content source to supplement a greater communication plan, i.e. ‘For more information, check out Action Plan on the Wiki.’”

Best Buy practices what it preaches about social media, and listens intently to what employees say. For example, when the company announced a reduction in the employee discount, there was a huge amount of discussion about it on Watercooler. Within a few days, company leaders retracted the decision, telling employees: “We heard you. We made a mistake on that one.” That kind of two-way dialogue has helped build trust and solidify social media’s role in the employee engagement process at Best Buy.

What advice does Andy have for employee communicators: “To truly embrace and have success with the concept of a social media platform, your company needs to understand the value in social networking and how to integrate it with business needs.”

Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corp. helps employees see the big picture; MBWA plays a role, too

At Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corp., Idaho Falls, ID, Tim Reading, director of communications, has begun a product line awareness program for administrative employees to help them see the company “big picture” and acquire a better idea of how they fit into it. “Based on the feedback I was receiving, it became clear to me that administrative employees didn’t understand our product line goals because they didn’t understand the product lines themselves,” says Tim.

Probing deeper, Tim conducted a survey among all employees, including the administrative employees, that asked two very simple but important questions:

1. Do you understand all of our product lines?
2. Do you think that having an understanding of our product lines would make you feel more connected to the work we do?

Roughly 20% of the workforce responded and 75% said they would feel more connected to their work if they understood all of the product lines.

Motiv8 Communications believes Tim’s assessment is right on target. The recent Gallup survey in employee engagement reported that employees’ understanding of how their roles fit with the business is one of the prime indicators of employee engagement. Motiv8 Communications sees the same thing in the communications focus group and survey work we conduct.

Tim also knows the importance of building relationships and trust in employee engagement and one of the programs in use at Bechtel is Management By Wandering Around. MBWA is a communication method that gets managers out of the office and walking the floor to connect with employees in more personal, informal ways. MBWA is another tool frequently used in high performance organizations.

“One key item is to instruct managers to do MBWA alone – ask managers not to bring their entourage,” notes Tim. “In our manufacturing facility, we recommend to managers that the best conversation starter is a simple, 'How’s it going?'" It’s an open question; they are free to talk about work, their personal life, whatever. If a manager doesn’t fully understand the details of a job the employee does, ask them about it! The employee will appreciate the interest and the manager might learn something.”