How important is building an internal social network for an organization? What are the major benefits that a business would derive out of investing in building an internal social network?

Building an internal social networking platform for today’s modern workforce has become a necessity and is a business imperative. Today, majority of the organizational workforce is spread across different locations, therefore there is a huge need to bring them together onto one common platform where exchange of ideas, thought processes and viewpoints can take place seamlessly. Organizations are increasingly realizing the need to make the most of this evolutionary technology that enables faster communication, greater collaboration, and larger outreach. By integrating social media tools into its work space, an organization essentially aims to gain clarity in communicating with its employees, and increasing transparency thereafter.

Please tell us about HCL’s internal social network — the HCL Meme Platform? In which year was the platform launched for the employees and how many HCLites are using this internal social network currently?

HCL’s professional networking site called Meme was launched in April 2011 with the objective of aiding employees to connect, share, learn and grow by exchanging information. The platform provides an opportunity to employees with diverse functions, age-groups, nationalities, locations, etc., to connect with each other and feel part of the HCL family.

From a functionality perspective, Meme allows users to create pages, send invitation requests, and post statuses and pictures — it includes all the popular features present in the social networking platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

We used PHP and Drupal Technology to develop the platform. Drupal is an excellent blend of CMS and Framework, and it has been rated as the best Open Source PHP CMS in the last couple of years. It took us six months to develop the platform and was initially launched for 150 employees, only for six months. Post sedulous enhancement Meme was launched for all the employees and till now the response has been overwhelming.

What were the key drivers that motivated HCL Technologies to build an internal social network?

HCL firmly believes that the value created for its customer base emanates from its employees. Hence, the company envisaged a platform, that enables faster and transparent communication among employees, irrespective of the location, job role etc. Employees in a collaborated mode reach a solution much faster as compared to each member looking at the query independently and then coming up with the solution. It also propagates the concept of a virtual workforce, which has now become a trend in most organizations. The need for facilitating simultaneous, real-time dialogue, discussions and collaboration across individuals necessitated the birth of Meme.

Meme serves as a great platform for employees for exchanging information and ideas, learning through each other’s experiences (professional or personal), and knowledge upgradation by participating in discussions/forums across domains. The introduction of Meme has enabled our entire workforce to collaborate more efficiently by making information across the organization accessible to all. This platform has assisted employees in interacting, sharing views, and exchanging information and ideas on everything related to the organization. In a short span of time, Meme has become a reservoir of ideas, collaboration and common interests that fosters innovation.

How are the employees at HCL Technologies using Meme Platform in a way that is improving collaboration vis-à-vis the previous scenario when Meme wasn’t in place?

The core benefit that Meme as a social networking application offers is instant communication and collaboration. This trend of using social networking platforms to communicate instead of e-mails is more visible with the Gen Y workforce as they prefer instant responses when it comes to tackling work-related issues. With this trend, in the near future, employees will not be required to go through standard workflow systems to raise capital expenditure (CAPEX) requests, recruit skilled resources, make travel requests for business and look at policies anymore.

Also, our senior leaders are using the social networking platform to post queries for employees and share their ideas on facing certain professional situations. This two-way communication instills a lot of faith in our employees and gives them a sense of inclusion, making them realize how their contributions impact the broader picture in terms of the company’s overall performance.

Meme is also being used by employees to hold discussions on several topics. For instance, in a discussion related to environment friendly initiatives at work, an employee recommended organization-wide “no printing days”. Today, this is being implemented and we have “printer holidays” where the printers remain unavailable for use, except for a few departments wherein the printers are absolutely essential for important operations.

Apart from this, Meme has proved itself as the platform of the future — by accessing the employee information available on the platform, developers are writing several useful applications. For example, one of the applications allows employees to search for the nearest B+ blood group donor. Another application informs employees about an internal job post of matching skills — it runs in the background, and pops up on the employee’s screen when custom criteria are met. Then, there’s an answer finder that enables an employee to send a question to specific groups of individuals based on a criteria, and a resource finder that enables the company to find a resource with matching skills to solve a particular problem.

Additionally, Meme is playing a key role for the global workforce to synchronize itself with the latest engagements on organizational, as well as personal front. For example, a group on Meme enables women to access a career coach who assists women employees plan work before and after maternity leave and a life coach to provide counseling.