How Big Companies Use Social Media
San Francisco | June 23, 2009
Hilary Weber
Kaiser Permanente
“Harvesting the Low-Hanging Fruit of
Internal Social Media Channels”

Harvesting the Low-Hanging Fruit of
June 2009
Internal Social Media Channels

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Why and How Are Companies Using Internal
Networks?
Nissan: NSquare
 Increase effectiveness of communication and collaboration
 Avoid bureaucracy
 Create new partnerships and cross-functional alliances
Best Buy: Blue Shirt Nation
 Reduce turnover
 Increase employee engagement & satisfaction
General Electric: SupportCentral
 “The Gold Standard”: Connect 400,000 users in 6000 global
locations, using 20 languages (25 million visits per DAY) http://
www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/ge-nails-the-internal-
social-network/?cs=11657

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Overview: Kaiser Permanente
• Largest integrated health care provider in U.S., with
largest active electronic medical record system on
the planet (out of 8.6 million members, over 3
million have active access)
• 160,000 employees plus 14,000 physicians across
• 9 states spanning both coasts and Hawaii
• 35 hospitals and 431 medical office buildings

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Opportunity: Make Connections and Increase
Collaboration
 Departments and regions work independently
 Subject-matter experts are geographically
dispersed
 Travel is becoming more limited
 Technology and innovation is “in our DNA”
 Motivated to gain work efficiencies via better
connections
 Hope to leverage Web 2.0 internally to help inform
what we do externally

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Social Networking and Collaboration Tools
@ Kaiser Permanente
• Used heavily externally to support
primarily PR efforts (youtube, Twitter,
Facebook, etc)
• Internally, social media and collaboration
tools are a key component of our broader
employee portal strategy

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Social Networking and Collaboration Tools
@ Kaiser Permanente
Branded to integrate within Employee Portal
User friendly & simple tools (Jive software)
 Blog
 Discussions
 Polls
 Wikis
 Polling
 Profile

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Social Networking and Collaboration Tools
@ Kaiser Permanente
 Create communities for: short or long-term
projects, newsletters, shared interest, or community
of practice
 Colleagues can work collaboratively across
departments, regions, and time zones.
 Connect with those of similar interests or look for an
inspiration or a helping hand by searching for
colleagues by expertise, biography, past/current
KP projects, and personal interests.

Social Networking and Collaboration Tools 8
@ Kaiser Permanente

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Challenges
• Web 2.0 is a second language for us.
• How do you transfer the organic nature of
social media to a regulated corporate
structure?
• These tools makes Legal and Compliance
departments very nervous!

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A Case Example

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Where We Started: Grassroots Networking
Like everyone
else, we cut our
teeth on email;
then individual
blogs started
proliferating in a
viral, organic
fashion.

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Opportunity from Digital Marketing’s POV
As Director of Internet Marketing Services (part
of Brand Marketing), my team functions as a
consultative internal digital marketing agency
and “R&D” shop (producing 800-1000
projects/ campaigns per year)
I often hear: “We don’t know what you’re
working on” – even within my own team – so I
was motivated to find a way to share our
plans, programs and projects more effectively

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Opportunity from Digital Marketing’s POV
To share our programs and projects more
effectively:
 I used to write marketing plans (no one ever
read them)
 Email became an unwieldy, abused channel
for communication (plus it’s hard to sort by
importance, relevance or content)
 I decided to get “my own house in order
first” for my own team’s connectivity and
sharing, so we set up a WIKI
 I think of the Wiki as the equivalent of the
“Family Tool Shed” (where we keep our
Stuff)

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Wikis for Teams

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Case Study: Need a New Tool on the Intranet…
But my team has no developers, page designers or
techies…
• We built a quick
“mock-up” in our Wiki
• Content is real
• Has links leading the
user 6-7 pages deep
• Result? The Intranet
team has direct
access, and knows
exactly what we want
without requirements
meetings, wireframes,
etc.
• Win-Win

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The Wiki Can Shape & Centralize the Team’s
Processes

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Each Subteam Can Have Its Own “Micro-site”

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Opportunity for Increased “Visibility” with Others
The Wiki is a great resource for a team, but not
so good for sharing & collaborating outside of
the team…
My team is a part of the National Marketing &
Internet Services department, with over 500
employees
Then add many additional colleagues, e.g. Web
Development partners in IT, internal “clients”
in numerous departments and regions, etc. –
this takes our “internal target market” into the
1000s, so…
 How can we find subject matter experts – the right
contacts?
 How can we connect and stay connected to our

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Goal: Innovative Collaboration Across the
Organization
Find
Connect
Organize
Collaborate

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Introducing KP Ideabook: The “Town Square”

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FIND People, Groups and Information
“Tags” on Profiles Allow Us to Find Who/What We’re Looking For

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CONNECT with Key Contacts and Groups
Step One:
Click to Connect
Step Two:
Connection Made

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ORGANIZE the Content You Need to Access

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COLLABORATE with Others Instantly

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Added Benefits of Internal Networking
Interactive E-Work Environment:
• Custom Group Set-up (either Open or Private discussions
and invitations)
• Blogs for individuals and groups
• Document Sharing
• Polls – ask groups you belong to or everyone in the
network
Consolidation of your work, teams, partners,
new ideas and resources in one place

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My Team Can Share Updates Anytime

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Promoting the Channel
Sample Instructions:
Ideabook.kp.org is live now and ready to try out…
Step 1: Go to ideabook.kp.org and register (it’s easy!)
Step 2: Enter your “bio” information and your photo so people will recognize you
in a meeting or in the hall (no dog or kid photos, please!)
Step 3: Do a search using tags (keywords, e.g. email marketing or Web 2.0) to find
the people/teams/skill sets you seek
Step 4: Start “friending” people to collaborate with them
You can set up a Group with people you would normally share
meetings, information, decisions with – you can start to see time
savings and meeting reduction right away

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Tactical Takeaways
Searchable TAGS (keywords) connected
to people’s Profiles – this is the
“Crown Jewel” of Findability
Recommendations:
• Come up with 20-25 tags for your team/group, publish them and
use them consistently
• Train others (e.g. your team) to use the tags on their own profile
and in their posts
• General searching on the networking tool takes zero training –
we all learned it on Google (and Friending we learned on
Facebook)

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Final Thoughts
Consider a wiki for your team as a “Tool
Shed”
For broader sharing/collaborating, make
the most of your “Town Square”
network:
• Tags, Tags, Tags!
• Lead by example (robust profile, etc.)
• Play with the available features – learn what works for you
• Go where you could not go before! New discoveries await…

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Wrap-up
Thank you!
Contact info:
Hilary Weber
• hilary.weber@kp.org

How Big Companies Use Social Media
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