Sticky Jam social network is engagement bread and butter for Grant Thornton
- Summary:
- Grant Thornton spreads Jam enterprise social network throughout its employees and it's proving profitably sticky in terms of engagement.
IT has got to be easy. That’s a thing I’ve learned in my time as a CIO. If you make it easy, people will use it. If it’s hard, that’s when you get resistance and that’s when you get shadow IT.
Few would argue with the sentiments of Greg Swift, national director of information systems at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, though many so-called simple IT projects have drowned in complexity.
But Grant Thornton’s implementation of an enterprise social network (ESN) from Jive Software evidently passes the easy-to-use test with flying colours. A year after its official launch, 90% of the firm’s 4,500 employees are regular Jam users, as Jive’s platform has been rebranded internally.
Jam is a great name for the ESN. The social network is sticky – encouraging people to return and to get involved in groups and making posts. It’s also somewhere for them to hang out and ‘jam’ with their co-workers over new ideas, both professional and social.
Ultimately, linking people across the organization is a bonus for employees and the business, points out Swift:
With a business of 4,500 plus people, we have to try and connect people because it’s good for engagement, but it’s good for our clients too.
The Jam journey sprung from a leadership meeting about three years ago. At that time, the organization was using Lotus Notes and Domino, implemented in the 1990s. It had been a big investment, but things had moved on a lot since the 1990s. So, Swift explains:
As a leadership team we sat down and said: is this really what we want? And we decided it wasn’t. We wanted something different. What it was, to be honest with you, took us nearly 12 months to decide.
Part of the reason the decision took so long was the project needed the right sponsorship in the business. The firm put together a sponsorship team, which included the head of people and culture, head of marketing and business development, the social media team, head of comms and Swift.
Together, says Swift, they set out the requirements. Swift notes:
This was a big investment for us in terms of the pounds spent for technology, but also the cultural piece and if you get that wrong, it’s very difficult to have a second go.
Finding a supplier with a proven track record in enterprise social networks was vital – but it was a somewhat lonely field three years ago. The fact that Jive already had a long list of customers willing to talk was a key element behind Grant Thornton’s choice.
The internal IT team had enough to do maintaining the organization’s existing legacy systems – it didn’t need to add to that complexity. So it was important that Jive was available in the cloud. Another major consideration was integration. Jam needed to coexist with other technology in the company. As Swift adds:
We were keen that Jive would not exist in its own bubble. It needed to be a hub and it needed to co-exist with technologies in use. So it was very important that there was a focus in Jive around integration and how we can have that seamlessly surface through Jive as the hub, but at the same time still have other systems of record if that’s required.
Jam fits into Grant Thornton’s wider vision of “boundary-less working”, where workers are connected but not hidebound by a particular location or technology. Says Swift:
Everything we’re doing technology wise and people wise is really to support this. Why are we doing it? Because people are better engaged and if people are better engaged we can attract the best talent and we’re going to do the best work for our clients. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle really.
Jam is very much a part of this shift towards boundary-less working, not only in the way it isn’t tied to location, but also in the way connects people who wouldn’t meet under normal circumstances. It also helps breaks boundaries between the hierarchies of the company.
From the top
Swift is clear that the fact that the CEO elect, who officially takes up the post on July 1, was one of the top 10 bloggers has done a lot to promote a more open culture and make the leadership team more approachable. Using a platform like Jive is not just about leaders communicating with staff, but being able to listen to what employees are saying.
It’s a view that resonates with Jive chief executive and president, Elisa Steele:
It changes the way people connect. It’s not about level, it’s about content. Everyone has the power.
Opening up those channels of communication is a positive step, but it’s not always an easy one, admits Swift. Feedback after recent IT implementations have been mixed, admits Swift:
Some of that feedback is difficult. It’s good to have feedback, it’s constructive, but it’s out there and it can be a little uncomfortable sometimes for me and my team.
But it is important for the leadership team not just to sponsor but to actively participate and listen to what’s happening on Jam, he adds:
If we didn’t have leadership as active within the communities would we be as successful? Possibly not. But we have had that all the way through. I think that’s one of the toughest challenges, because ultimately it comes down to what’s in it for me, that’s the question everybody asks.
Jam has also been used in ways that the company could not have foreseen. During the recent Mental Awareness week, one of the partners posted personal comments about his/her experiences, which promoted other people to share their experiences. Swift asks:
Would that have happened anywhere else? Not sure it would.
As well as the personal, Jam is working for mass corporate communication. When the company announced to its employees last month that it was shifting to John Lewis-style shared ownership set-up, the move was announced over Jam.
There was live blogging and videos and questions at the event. Although there were obviously other communication channels used to spread the news, 3,500 employees choose to access Jam about the announcement.
Another area where Jam is useful is helping new hires to feel welcome. They have full access to Jam before their official joining day. That means, says Swift:
When they come to a location for the first time, they already feel part of the organization.
More to come
With 90% usage rate and 672 groups, Grant Thornton can rightly declare the initiative a success, but is still striving to increase number. There’s a weekly online hosted JAM session and a number of coaches and social media advocates to help those people who need a bit of coaxing to use Jam.
Grant Thornton is looking to build on its early success. Current initiatives include looking at ways to improve integration between its Workday HCM and JAM and it’s aiming to close down its internal intranet by next year and move everything to Jam.
The initiative has gone smoothly, but if he were starting out now, would Swift do anything differently? He says:
I think some of the use cases we started with and thought these were great, weren’t. They didn’t actually ignite people and didn’t touch them as we thought they would. But our culture now is to fail quickly.
What we probably should have done then was rather than divert resources to try to make those use cases work, we should have done what we do no, which is to say, it may be a good idea, but it’s not for now, so let’s just park it and move on. I think we invested quite a bit of time in some of those things and it wasn’t the right time for them.
There are quantifiable benefits using Jam in terms of less travel. The ability to find experts in the company and connect them with people across the company has also directly led to winning more business and more fees. Says Swift:
From an ROI perspective there’s a reduction in churn because people are more engaged and winning more business these are the two reasons why it works for us.
My take
Grant Thornton has had terrific success using Jive/Jam to improve collaboration and communication between peers and between leaders and employees. But its success owes as much if not more to the work it put into the cultural changes in the organization. That's the bit that too many organizations forget about.