Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance

92 SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK

BT Group: Ahead of the Curve

In 2007, a young new hire purchased a software server

with his corporate credit card and placed it under his desk.

The server was a way for him to improve his productivity.

Soon Richard Dennison, the senior manager of social media,

appeared beside him, not to chastise him for purchasing the

equipment through the company, but to share ideas with

him and explore ways they could improve productivity for

many. That’s how it all started at BT Group, the UK-based

telecommunications company.

Operating in 170 countries, BT Group provides com-

munications solutions and services to people around the

world. Its employees are located primarily across eight corpo-

rate offices throughout the United Kingdom, with additional

operations in more than twenty-five locations. That keeps

BT’s corporate communications group busy. That’s where

Dennison works, creating the strategies, policies, and gover-

nance for the company’s intranet. He saw that server—and

the employee who saw the need for it—as a great oppor-

tunity to begin experimenting. The first social media tool

BT put in place was ‘‘BTPedia,’’ an enterprise-wide internal

Wikipedia of sorts. (In fact, the software platform used is

the same one that underpins Wikipedia.) Dennison wasn’t

the only one interested. Many other employees, including

many college graduate hires, soon found BTPedia, and it

began to gain momentum with employees sharing anything

and everything that would help them do their jobs more

effectively.

Because that seemed to go well, the company launched

a pilot blogging platform using WordPress. WordPress took

off, too. Increasing numbers of people found the blog site,

initiated ideas, and contributed their thoughts. Up to that

time, no corporate communication had been issued, and no

TRAILBLAZER

WHERE SOCIAL MEDIA HAS AN I MPACT 93

promotional campaign had been launched. People just came.

Next, BT decided to launch a very small social networking

site. Suddenly, use went through the roof and blew up the

little server under the desk! So Dennison had to close the

social networking site and take the next step.

He quickly went to the IT group to request resources and

infrastructure. But because social media was not yet a part of

the company’s IT road map, a slew of conversations ensued.

In the end, IT saw that the platforms needed were free and

easy to set up. So, the department helped Dennison support

the social media craze at BT Group.

Nearly three years later, utilizing social media tools is a

way of life at BT Group. The company’s social networking site

is properly supported and no longer ‘‘burns up’’ the server.

BTPedia remains the most popular tool for employees to

cocreate useful information. For example, a common practice

that has emerged is the creation of ‘‘index pages.’’ Employees

create Web pages to catalogue useful links on a particular

topic, pulling the information that is currently scattered

throughout the intranet into one entry point. Incidentally,

the most popular index page is titled ‘‘Recognition’’ and lists

the five primary places where employees can give kudos to

their colleagues for valuable contributions. Engagement is

certainly alive and well.

The blogging platform continues to gain momentum.

Podcast Central is the tool with which employees load and

download user-generated audio files—important meetings or

self-made training modules, for example—that they want to

share with teammates. A discussion forum graces the front

page of the online Corporate Newsdesk, a professional news

e-zine managed by freelance journalists.

And one of the most valuable tools that B T Group

employees gravitate to is the project wiki called Confluence.

Project teams use Confluence as a centralized work space to

house all their thoughts, documents, and resources. They can

TRAILBLAZER