B.C. government turns static intranet into a community

Lessons from the 50-day revamp start with a vision of employee engagement.

Lessons from the 50-day revamp start with a vision of employee engagement

They came. They saw. They posted.

Within the first week of its launch in April last year, more than half of all public service employees in British Columbia flocked to their new, souped-up social intranet, @Work, logging 16,000 unique visits. By month’s end, double the number of staff had entered the online fray, leaving twice as many comments than they had on the previous site.

More employees visit and comment on BC’s social media-heavy intranet, @work. View larger.

The intranet, that oft-maligned hinterland of the Web, is usually associated more with dread than buzz by employees. But thanks to social media, employers like the Province of British Columbia can use Web 2.0 tools to transform their intranet from static to collaborative, from Monday-morning-meeting drab to watercooler cool.

“So much of communications is strictly push,” says Kathleen Walsh, B.C.’s Manager of Creative Strategies and the business lead on the revamp. “The intranet was a bulletin board, and we wanted ours to be more of an active community.””

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