I was recently involved in the launch of an employee engagement forum online on our intranet. While the initial launch generated a huge response, our challenge was to keep the momentum going. Considering our workload and commitments, we arrived at some interesting ways to keep the buzz alive. It leveraged both technology applications and ideas for employee engagement.Â
There are 4 methods which I recommend and I am hopeful it will work well with any organization.
1. Incentivizing involvement: Having regular online and offline contests with freebies which will get associates to contribute. The catch is not to make it frivolous but engaging. Too many freebies can also make the events lose their meaning.
2. Providing tools for content uploads: The back-end self-uploading mechanism – some intranets have content management systems…our does not have one! So we are working out a killer application that covers this handicap.
3. Getting associates to evaluate content which is placed: Just like the way Wikipedia is organized, we should ensure employee weed out content which is not good…so by having a ‘Rate the Page’ application or by having a ‘Rate the recipe’ option. Once associates start realizing they cannot post junk, we will get better content.
4. Highlighting good content and contest winners by having a message board offline in the cafeterias and common meeting points.
