In continuing to explore Enterprise Social Networks after my Beyond Blogs and Wikis post I came across an an article by Toby Ward: Employee social networking ? Sabre Town case study.
“We humans are social creatures. With rare exceptions, we strive to relate, converse and connect with others. Social networking promotes online communities of interests and activities that promote connections between users in a more open and robust manner than simple e-mail. While best represented by the quintessential MySpace and Facebook, social networking has made significant strides into the corporate intranet where employee networking is becoming a valuable asset to leading organizations that covet the new breed of employees. This young, web savvy employee cohort desires – if not demands – a more social and dynamic work environment that uses the best possible Web 2.0 (Intranet 2.0) technology.”
Sabre runs most of the world’s airline flight reservation systems among other systems, with nearly 10,000 employees. They rolled out an enterprise social network called Sabre Town. The employee profile is more casual and friendly than your standard employee directory. The profile includes the following, if answered by the employee:
- Shared photos
- Blogs
- User commenting
- Network connections and feeds
- Enterprise question and answer functionality
- What’s your hometown?
- Where do you live now?
- What do you really do for a living?
- What are your corporate gigs and contacts?
- What are your skills, expertise or things you rule in?
- What is your favorite lunch spot or watering hole?
- What are the sports you can’t live without?
- What are your favorite hobbies?
- What’s the music you put on continuous repeat?
- What celebrity are you most like?
- Places you’ve traveled
- Places you dream about going
Sabre is able to show an ROI from the system’s question and answer feature.
Thanks to James Robertson of Column Two and Step Two Designs for pointing out this article:
Employee social networking at Sabre .
