Educate 40,000 employees about Social Media? No Problem!

That Was Then

When my employer (Telstra BigPond) decided to foray into the world of Twitter to extend our customer support options, I was delighted as at some point I’d suggested this could be a good idea, having read of the success of @zappos and others. My delight quickly turned to forehead slapping on watching the promising launch unravel itself amidst the scornful jeers of the Twitterverse which knew just as well as I did that we were ‘doing it wrong’.

I flagged some of the glaring issues with someone on the project team a day or so after the account went live (I think it was a Thursday from memory) but the response was underwhelming. So I went to the top. Our GM at the time knew a thing or two about this stuff and I had confidence that he would give my very concerned Saturday morning email some thought. Next thing I knew, I was yanked into an 8am Monday morning focus group with a couple of like-minded Telstra tweeps to help us get on the right track, with the right people and the right foundations.

This Is Now

That was in October 2008. Today, the guys in our @bigpondteam and @telstra Twitter teams are doing a fabulous job of supporting our customers, answering questions and generally just doing what they can to reach out and assist people, and even have a bit of fun.

And since then, Telstra now has a policy to help our staff know what’s expected of them when it comes to participating in online communities. The 3Rs of Social Media Engagement, put together by Telstra Public Policy & Communication, was made public in the spirit of transparency, but also with the hope that it might be a useful basis for others to start thinking about their own policy.

So that’s how I became ‘officially’ involved in ‘Social Media’ although in reality I’ve been into it ever since I sat fawning over my very first modem (56k!), building r.e.t.r.o.c.i.t.y in 1989 (link via wayback machine), and spending long hours on DreamWeaver forums.

Spreading The Word About The 3Rs

During one of many chats while the 3Rs were being formulated and discussed on an internal Wiki, @M_Hickinbotham, our main Social Media dude, raised the topic of creating a supporting introductory training guide. If we were to make it part of our mandatory curriculum, a short online module seemed most appropriate, given the large number of staff and the fact they are located right across Australia. This could then be followed up with more specific workshops and accreditation training when required.

‘Ahem’, said I, ‘I just happen to be an eLearning developer and might be able to help, you know –  provide a bit of advice and what not.’ Silly me…

Why Online?

We wanted something different from the usual internal corporate courses, which quite frankly are usually boring and text-heavy. It was also important for it to be flexible and easy to update to accommodate possible revisions to the fledgling 3Rs policy, as well as cope with the rapidly changing Social Media arena. A full-on video production with real participants, or even using an external developer would have made this difficult and costly. It also needed to suit a wide range of people, with varying levels of online involvement, from none to highly active.

To cut to the chase, I ended up developing the training package based on the 3Rs policy, from drafting the content to creating the graphics and animations and even being the ‘voice’ of Lilly, our friendly CodeBaby avatar. A bit of tweaking and editing to keep legals and others happy, some guidance and advice from Mike and @danmikhael and it was done and dusted in a couple of weeks. (And no, it was not driven by HR, nor did Marketing or IT have anything to do with it).

How’d We Do?

At this point, we have around 40,000 enrolments with 15,000 35,000 completed so far; 6000 people didn’t wait to be added via the bulk enrolment process but actually signed themselves up after viewing a small intro snippet accompanying the launch intranet article.  We’ve had so many great comments from staff who really appreciated the ‘left field’ approach but my favourite piece of feedback from one of our employees goes like this:

‘I just wanted to say that this has to be the best format of online training that I have had in all the time I have been with Telstra.  I almost knew it would be which is why I did it early on a Saturday morning – I thought it might be fun and it was. Please pass this message on to the developers – Well done! And, I am not a Gen Y’er I am a Boomer :)’

Going Public

In December 2009, the package (minus the accompanying workbook(let) and assessment) was made available to the public. A scary moment for myself, however the majority of feedback has been very positive, not just about the content and presentation, but about Telstra’s bold move to both make the training mandatory and to host an external version.

Only one or two posts thought the delivery method corny or even ‘too radical for some‘ and the voice ‘cringeworthy’ (gee, thanks) ‘, but overall there have been some great tweets and comments:

‘That voice is pretty great. I’ve actually never seen a corporate social media policy presented this creatively. Like the digital characters too. All around, impressive job by Telstra.’

‘I love that they are making everything available online – transparency is great. Not only does it show that they care about the public’s opinion but it also helps those of us tasked with creating our own social media policies for our organizations! Thanks for posting this!’

‘This is brilliant! This is part of what social media’s all about, sharing ideas to help others while looking for ways to improve and, for corporations, providing a venue for transparency. Now that’s a company I’d like to work for!’

Behind The Scenes

We’ve had quite a few enquiries from around the globe asking how the module was put together – this post explains how I developed a previous course along similar lines. The main difference with the 3rs is that captioning is now available in the CodeBaby application but I wanted this feature to be optional in the animations. I ended up creating two versions of each animation (captioned/not captioned) and set up a variable within the flash interface to toggle these on or off depending on your preference.

Just a few of the related posts seen around the web:

• eGov.au – Telstra publishes staff social media training package
• Social Media Training Guide & Video: this is free yet priceless!
• Does your business get it? – lessons from Australia
• Telstra Makes the Social Media Call
• How Telstra trained 12,000 staff
• Impressive Social Media Training
• The 3 Rs of social media engagement – a model for corporate policy training
• Best Employee Training Program for Social Media
• ‘Not foul lousy PowerPoint slides and PDFs’ (Google translated)
• Australian Telstra is far, far out the window… and done well (Google translated)
• Social Media Policy: Telstra shows how it’s done! (Google translated)