Table of Contents 6 2012 OVATION Awards Winning Entries

OVATION Awards Winning Entry
Communication Management
Electronic, Digital and Interactive Communications
AWARD OF MERIT
Entrant’s Name: Jeff Rohrer
Organization’s Name: TVO
Division/Category: Communication Management / Category 12: Electronic, Digital and Interactive
Communications
Title of Entry: myTVO 2.0: Transforming a static intranet into an engaging tool for two‐way communication
Time Period: July 2011 – December 31, 2011
Brief Description: The myTVO 2.0 project transformed a static intranet site into a vibrant hub for communication,
engagement and collaboration across the organization. Today’s myTVO allows everyone in the organization the
ability to blog about accomplishments and upcoming projects, post status updates, contribute by “liking” content
and to be a brand ambassador by having easy access to TVO’s social media channels.
Business Need/Opportunity
Internal communications is a key priority for TVO. It contributes to making TVO a “Great Place to Work”,
one of five Effectiveness Areas by which TVO measures its success. For over five years TVO’s intranet
site, myTVO, has been a tool to disseminate information to the organization. The site allowed for oneway
communication of organizational updates (e.g. news, new hires, accomplishments, event
information).
Through TVO’s 2010 Employee Survey (which measures TVO as a “Great Place to Work” by asking staff
100 questions about all aspects of their work life), and subsequent follow‐up sessions with staff, we
heard clearly that there was a desire to “improve internal communication” and to use myTVO as a
mechanism to “provide feedback”. On this basis, the Executive Management Committee (EMC) decided
that it was important to improve the site and to make it a more robust tool for two‐way communication.
As Ontario’s public educational media organization, TVO recognizes the power of digital media to
empower and educate people. Given that our intranet site is an important reflection of TVO and our
corporate culture it was apparent more could be done to make the site a more effective tool for
engaging staff, building a stronger sense of pride in the organization and increasing work productivity.
Building an intranet site that utilized two‐way communication was a significant step for TVO. It provided
a learning curve for the project team that required a significant amount of research in order to move
forward. We started by assessing communications best practices for intranet sites in the social media
age. Jive, the software platform on which myTVO operates, had just released a software upgrade. The
upgrade added a number of new features including the ability to blog, comment on and “like” content,
provide status updates, and embed a Facebook and Twitter feed into the site. It was clear that many of
the features could create governance challenges (i.e. what would we do if inappropriate content was
posted?) that required further research in order to develop appropriate solutions and to build a comfort
level with internal stakeholders.
We used a research firm to review best practices for intranet governance and terms of use agreements.
We produced a stakeholder analysis to assess who was using the site and how. We then met with
various departments and working groups to determine their needs and wants for the new site. We
developed a situational analysis for every new feature of the site – did the benefits of the features
outweigh the possible risks? We decided, with buy‐in from EMC, to move forward with all of the new