Intranet Connections Social Employee Directory Tools Boost Connectivity

By Steve Sechrist Jan 17, 2012

The success of social networking tools like posting to a Wall to help boost collaboration, is now being applied to intranets in the latest release of Intranet Connections Social Intranet Software, an out-of-the box solution that now includes a new Social Employee Directory.

Common Social Networking Tools

The idea behind Social Employee Directory is helping to facilitate employee engagement and collaboration at the corporate intranet level, using common social networking tools.

Intranet Connections from Intranet Connections on Vimeo.

Carolyn Douglas, CEO of Intranet Connections, said: “Our goal with the new Social Directory is to impact how employees connect and learn from each other on the intranet, and how social tools like the message walls can help bridge the gap between management and employees. We brought in common social tools that employees may have had exposure to outside of work, like the wall on Facebook, and the concept of personalization through widgets similar to iGoogle, providing employees an instant commonality and comfort level in using these tools to help them in the workplace.”

Like the social networking experience, Walls (Employee message walls) are at the heart of the employee social directory. But when applied to the business environment, the technology allows employees to tap the "collective intelligence" of the organization and promote the concept of people mentoring others in the enterprise. Douglas said managers and executives can use the wall to impart the corporate vision, support the culture, and receive feedback "…in a very easy to use and collaborative environment."

Share Content Feature

The Wall is also used to promote and elevate intranet content, as every page on the intranet has a “Share Content” feature that will share news, videos, documents, calendar events, forms, training, photo albums and new job opportunities through employee walls.

Other enhancements include the ability to group employees by projects, abilities, skills or interests through tagging. Employees can personalize with a private workspace in their social profile, creating widgets that will aggregate information from the site and external resources. Subscriptions, site and email alerts, bookmarks, online chat and status updates are combined in the Social Employee Directory.

Douglas said, "The heart of your intranet is the people who make up a company, and while our intranet software still caters to business tools, we wanted the people-centric power of social capabilities and felt the Employee Directory was the vehicle for that connection to take place.”

The company's Business tools will merge with social networking in this new release for Intranet Connections, which is available for a 30-day evaluation and tours through the company website.