Future of Communications

“We are living through the largest increase in human expressive capability in history.” – futurist and author Clay Shirky

Social media is having a transformative effect on internal communications. As the media landscape is further democratized employees empowered through social media – will want to share and communicate their opinions and experiences, mobilize support, and advocate a specific point of view through blogs, video and other content sharing tools.

What it means ...

1. Unprecedented Exposure

2. Heightened Risk to Reputation: The Google Effect

3. Loss of Command and Control

4. New opportunities to Engage employees

Why do we need to change?

•We no longer ‘control’ the message

•Employees have become ‘unintended guardians of the brand.’

•Today’s knowledge workers are so much more than the title on their business cards. They are skilled, experienced and well versed in many of the tools available to them in their personal lives.

4T’s: Factors driving transformation?

TECHNOLOGY: Barriers to entry no longer exist

TRUST: “It’s harder to distrust a person than it is to distrust a corporation.” Deloitte

TRANSPARENCY: Being imposed from within and without

TAKING PART: Desire to “speak up and be heard”

People before technology: social media activities should first consider the impact on the activity on the individual, the need it addresses, the action it is looking to create, the issues that could arise, and the roadblocks to participation.

Canada Post cannot afford to ignore social media tools and technologies. If we do, it could result in long-term or permanent damage to the corporation’s reputation, or harm management’s relationship with its workforce.

Social Media is organic…

Successful adoption of social media requires an approach that supports organic adoption (bottom-up) enabled through meaningful management endorsement

and involvement (top-down). Whereas bottom-up emphasizes peer-to-peer recommendation and grassroots adoption through a more organic and viral manner, top-down ensures that appropriate oversight is in place, but also to

strengthen the legitimacy.

Lead by example…

Our Priorities

1. Engage and Connect Employees

2. Strengthen Employee Relationships

3. Support and Advance Innovation

4. Safeguard and Build Corporate Reputation

Blogs | Facebook | Crowdsourcing | Twitter | Video

Strategy – Must support / align to one or more priority

Policy – Must adhere to policies/guidelines re. Risk Management

Execution – Tools & Process by which to deliver on strategy

Engage & Connect

Employees

Support & Advance

Innovation

Strengthen Customer

Relationships

Safeguard & Build

Reputation

Target Audience | Objectives | Metrics | Risk Mitigation | Resourcing

Community Guidelines | Engagement Protocols | Employee Policies etc.

Measurement – Set against Defined Benchmarks / Objectives

PROGRAM REVIEW & APPROVAL (COMMS)

“Why are we doing this? How will it benefit

Canada Post?”

“How are we going to deliver on our

objectives? What’s the plan?”

“What happens if something goes wrong? Have we considered the

risks?”

“What tools and processes do we need to

deliver on our plan?”

“How do we know that we’ve delivered? How

are we defining success?”

Communication: communication platforms are those that allow people to converse with others

Collaboration: collaboration tools encourage people to collaborate with each other

Cooperation: sharing software enables people to share content with others in structured and unstructured ways

Connection: networking technologies make it possible for people to make connections with and between both content and other people.

Focused on the 4C’s to identify which social media tools best suits the type of interaction we would like to have with our employees, stakeholders, and customers.

Objective:To facilitate connections, communications, collaboration, knowledge transfer and improve productivity.

Metrics:Qualitative: Engagement / dialogQualitative: Higher engagement scores / rankingsQuantitative: Level of usage

Each employee has their own personal pageThis puts a human face on the old school “employee directory” model by encouraging people to search out others and talk to each other.

Messaging between profiles (Whiteboard)Employees share ideas on colleagues’ whiteboards, fostering innovation, collaboration, and social bonds.

Employee Marketplace (Classifieds)This is used to facilitate connections between all employees nationally. It will also entice employees to return more often from home.

All employees are able to “Tag” each others profilesTagging a colleagues profile builds a true picture of the knowledge, skills and expertise inside the organization.

Employees have the ability to create Work groupsThis provides employees with an efficient way to collaborate as well as communicate their group’s mandate with others.

Employees have the ability to create Social groupsThis can help employees find colleagues with similar interests, lifestyles, etc., and increase employee engagement and retention.

Employees are able to create their very own blogSparks innovation by making it easy to share ideas and opinions among all levels in the organization.

Role Based Messaging

Role based messaging was developed to better streamline corporate communications so that all employees will receive messages regardless of where they work or what position they hold. That means RSMC, CPAA, CUPW, Letter Carriers, PSAC, Management and Exempt alike would receive the same information as each of us and through the same channel

Features available:

ConfirmationCommenting (Public & Private)Quick PollsDiscussion Forums

The results…(first 100 days)

• Usage has increased from 22,635 employees to 32,067 (30.5%)• Total groups (Work & Social related) = 162• Total Blogs = 168• Forums (Message based and group related) = 311• Whiteboard Posts (Wall) = 1061• Photo Galleries = 987• Employee Tags = 522• Items for Sale, Sold, or Wanted = 200+

“The strongest opinions – good or bad – about a company are shaped by the words and deeds of its employees, and that a company’s true character is expressed by its people.”