Wachovia, the fourth largest bank holding company in the US with about 120,000 employees, is rolling out web 2.0 tools to all 120,000 of their employees according to their presentation at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
Usage
- Wikis
- Blogs
- Instant messaging
- Social networking
- Video conferencing
- Corporate directory with presence awareness
Purpose
- Attract and retain Gen Y workers.
“Their engagement with the organization falls off if you bludgeon them with hierarchy and legacy systems. They grew up with a frictionless collaboration environment, and we need to give them the technology [to support that].” (Senior VP and project sponsor Pete Fields)
- Connect a geographically dispersed employee population.
“virtual communities are as real and relational as actual communities.” (Fields)
- Reduce travel expenses
- Retain knowledge as baby boomers retire. Pete Fields:
“It dwarfs what we have in our content management systems” (Fields)
- Increase employee collaboration
Approach / Advice
- On user adoption (Fields):
“we still underestimated the change impact” (Fields)
- In overcoming negative pre-connotations :
“Executives came to this topic assuming that what holds true on the public Internet today would also hold true for the corporation. Those really are faulty assumptions, in that context really drives everything. The context for the workplace is so different than the context of the home and the consumer market.” (Fields)
- Using younger Gen Y workers to mentor senior staffers on the tools and benefits.
“We’re still working like first generation enterprises. We are run by boomers who are very comfortable with that. [The next generation of workers] has grown up with reality television where they not only see themselves as involved with the programming but they all vote (on the outcome). In a traditional company there is no way for a new generation worker coming in to have a voice and to be heard.” (Fields)
- Spent about a year defining business processes to support these tools and building a business case. After a proof-of-business case, began rollout to 1,000 employees in Dec 2007 and complete rollout to all employees by end of May 2008.
- Established a wiki with a very specific purpose: to capture all 3 letter acronyms across the company. Captured 900 entries within a short time.
- Strategic plan is to engage customers and business partners with the tools.
- No specific rules on how employees can or cannot use the tools – employees must act within the same guidelines as other communication.
“They’re governed by our same codes of conduct that apply to written communications, voice mail, and e-mail. There’s nothing in the world that prevents employees from jumping on that stage and screaming something inappropriate, but they don’t do it.” (Fields)
Funding
- Managers committed 5% of their annual travel budget for 5 years to help pay for the tools.
Product
- Microsoft Sharepoint Server
Who says
- Information Week, “Enterprise 2.0: Wachovia Turns to Wikis, Blogs to Support Growth”. June 11, 2008.
- CIO, “The ROI of Enterprise 2.0: Four Ways Wachovia Justified Wikis, Blogs, and Other Social Networks”, June 11, 2008.
- ComputerWorld, “CIA, Pfizer, Wachovia and Sony Execs suggest options for adopting Web 2.0”. June 11, 2008.
- IDG, “Bank to give users access to wikis, blogs, social networks”. June 9, 2008
- Internetnews, “Finding the Enterprise Why in Wikis”. June 11, 2008.
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