This document discusses employee-to-employee (E2E) communities and their importance and benefits. Some key points: 1) E2E communities allow knowledge sharing and collaboration between employees, improving engagement and productivity like companies IBM, Cisco, and Zappos have done. 2) Benefits of E2E communities include increased learning, reduced training time, improved reputation and productivity for companies, and stronger skills and morale for employees. 3) Creating successful E2E communities requires senior leadership buy-in, training employees in social media, and connecting internal communities to external customer communities.

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WHITE PAPER
Building Employee Communities
About the Author
Lauren Klein partners with organizations that are designing conceptual
models for creating vibrant and sustainable social business, leadership,
talent or affinity community models in strategic and highly
collaborative ways. She's published several papers in top knowledge
management trade journals and magazines, and lectures on KM and
communities. This content is © 2011 Lauren Klein, All Rights Reserved.
What are E2E Communities and Why Are They Important?
Employee‐to‐Employee (E2E) communities vary from company to company. IBM is an example
of a company that supports initiatives to increase openness, ranging from their early adoption of
wikis and blogs to the notion of jams and social network analysis. Today, many organizations are
thinking about the impact of social networking, collaboration and sharing as a core part of their
business. Cisco, for example, has been doing work in this area for years. Zappos not only lives
this, but is also giving back through Zappos Insights. IBM, Cisco and Zappos are improving
employee engagement and productivity through this transparent and open model that mirrors
the consumer world in which they operate.
What is Their Purpose?
Most communities I’ve been involved with are structured around a problem that needs to be
solved, such as a Community of Interest in a domain where members want to solve
organizational, cultural or social problems through knowledge sharing and innovation. Today’s
organizations have communities based around geographies, functions, roles, products – many
different domains. It’s like a library: the more books on the shelf, the more possibilities
available. While many of today’s communities encompass customer or prospect feedback, there
is a great opportunity to connect these communities with online communities of employees.
What Are Some of the Benefits?
Investment in fostering a sense of community within employee groups leads to greater
commitment, loyalty and productivity. While these benefits can be difficult to quantify, they are
touted almost universally by managers of companies that have implemented E2E communities.
It can be useful to look at the benefits from two perspectives: that of the employer and the
employees.
From the employer’s perspective, having engaged, community‐oriented employees can result in
the following benefits:
 Learning and development, including increased skill, knowledge, morale and retention
 Reduced time bringing new employees “up to speed”
 Brand Ambassadors and enhanced company reputation, helping with talent
management and improved customer perception

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 Improved organizational productivity based on knowledge‐sharing, silo removal and
empowerment
 The above benefits lead to increased sales, business activity and competitive advantage
From the employee’s perspective, benefits include:
 Increases in morale, self‐confidence, empathy with colleagues
 Stronger knowledge of company’s products and services
 Improved communication and collaboration skills
How do E2E Communities Compare to B2B and B2C Communities?
B2B can be a business‐to‐business, an association with other groups within an association or an
NGO with a shared commitment to solve problems, share information and/or learn together. In
B2C, or business‐to‐consumer communities, we often see individual consumers and partners in
the supply chain participate and partner to solve or share problems, discuss new products and
innovations or receive support. It depends on the charter or mission of the community. In an
association community, you may see that the sponsoring community provides a space to allow
all their supporters and fans to innovate, share and learn together. For some people, a twitter
conversation with a celebrity is considered another form of a B2C community.
The opportunity for E2E is for leadership to encourage marketing channels (typical B2C channel
sponsors) to innovate and invite all employees, consumers and partners to learn and engage
socially in conversations to drive business imperatives. We have an opportunity with new media
and other community‐building tools to open ourselves up to model new behaviors, as IBM did
with their BlueTwit product, where executives can microblog around a variety of topics. They
are now allowing employees to feel connected with their executives in a new way. For some
people, this can feel inspirational and drive new commitments. It can also break down silos and
foster new forms of open communications.
Are Companies Connecting Their E2E Communities With B2C?
Today, employee‐to‐employee communities are closed and private, which provides a safe space
for employees to communicate, innovate and give feedback ‐‐ a virtual sandbox for online
communications. Where organizations can really transform themselves is by thinking about flow
and openness within and outside their organizational structures and cultures.
Many organizations have adopted new media and have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and
marketing campaigns using social media. However, what I’m hoping to see is the energy and
translation of these into possibilities among employees inside the firewall and with consumer
and partner channels outside, which will drive business imperatives and transform cultures.
Best Buy had a grassroots effort which created Twelpforce, yet personally, I’ve experienced both
Twelpforce success and the absence of this interaction and passion at the local big box store
culture level. The culture of operating openly hasn’t filtered throughout the organization. Many
organizations have stand‐alone channels for B2C that are amazing and stand‐alone E2E
programs. The power will be greatest when we are able to connect and weave them together.

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What Does it Cost to Create an E2E Community?
It depends on the scope of your plans and size of your organization. If you have an existing
infrastructure for online communities, you can invite your employees into an area which is
private at very little incremental cost at the other extreme; I’ve seen success with a million
dollar budget and several FTEs who travel the globe as a team offering educational training,
research and connection services as well as community leadership workshops. It’s important for
executives to invest time in understanding the strategies around social computing guidelines
and education.
What are the Critical Success Factors for Creating an E2E Community?
 Be deliberate about investing in community as part of your company culture. What does
this mean? Invest in these concepts as the foundation for all programs in your culture
handbook: competency, leadership and performance management programs. Don’t
view culture as an expense. Instead, think of it as a critical talent and retention engine,
which will create a stronger company and allow you to plan for the future.
 Set up accountability programs for senior leaders in “social engagement.” Create a
blueprint for your culture and help your senior leadership be accountable. Encourage
your staff to blog, tweet, update, livestream or livecast in an interactive and
collaborative manner with employees, partners and shareholders. Ask product
management to open up road maps and innovations, to open multiple channels for
dialogue and real time feedback. Encourage leaders within organizations to tweet, blog
or use video clips as a real time approach to sharing their day‐to‐day experiences,
thinking and how they are evolving their thoughts based on input from the various
channels. This will allow customers, prospects and employees to experience how their
input and commitment matters.
 Invest in “social” talent, training and programs. Consider offering sandboxes where
people can practice, “walk the talk” and learn together around the notion of “Social
Digital Diplomacy’. Embed new media approaches in your executive and leadership
development programs. Bring in the X and Y generation from other companies which
talk to your senior leaders so that they can understand what makes them loyal
employees, what motivates them and/or how they want to engage socially.
What are the Common Missteps and How to Avoid Them?
 Setting up E2E communities for an exclusive line of business. Avoid creating community
or social channels only for a specific function in the business, such as marketing. E2E
programs foster new opportunities, so why not invite employees to create their own
community and collaborative structure to help break through their perceived set of
barriers to the vision or business imperatives.
 Slapping new media solutions onto an old process. Implementing these changes can be
costly long‐term if you don’t spend the necessary time up front to do business planning
that includes social media and product or service innovation to drive new possibilities
through this new media.
 Lack of cross functional “team think” can be helpful only if you want to get something
out the door quickly. However, it does require governance or cross functional thinking
to innovate and find new possibilities that wouldn’t happen without multiple

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perspectives. How would you go about structuring a team think? Engage people that do
network mapping to find individuals in your communities who are influencing others.
Bring them into the product and service discussions to help broker new thinking and
ideas. If this is an employee‐only conversation, why not bring in customers, partners or
supply chain into the discussion for the full 360 to help you look around the corners?
 Not engaging your customers, clients or shareholders into the discovery process. This
can be costly long‐term as you might fail to identify what your customers really need,
expect and/or want. People are already interconnected, they are the network that
nourishes us today and needs to be part of the counsel to help you understand what
works and makes a difference today and what could work and make a difference
tomorrow. That isn’t to say we don’t look outside our eco‐system, but certainly they are
all customers. Many of the best products on the market were directly related to
customer input, so we need to embrace this and not fear it. Apple is dominating the
tablet market due to their listening to their customers and incorporating that feedback
into their strategy, despite what Wall Street may have told them. It takes courage to
consider new ways of behaving.
Conclusion
Social business has been and will continue to be a part of our daily lives. This is especially true
when we think about how we interact with our co‐workers, the people with whom we spend
most of our waking hours. As leaders, we must ensure that we invest time in our employee
communities and corporate communication so that every member has a part to play.
Communities are game changers for organizations. With the right courage and commitment,
you can harness the power of these communities who hunger for purpose, voice and
connectedness.