I was reading about Terry McKenzie, Senior Director of Employee Communications at Sun Microsystems, and how she uses blogging for internal communications with Sun’s employees. Granted, Sun is a very “blog-friendly” company with over 4,000 blogs running on blogs.sun.com, so it’s no great surprise that they also see the value in blogging for employee communications. What’s interesting is that her blog is publicly viewable too. From both a media and recruiting standpoint, those of us on the outside can easily peer into the culture as Sun. Terry is able to comment on corporate events in a very personal way. Terry is, after all, an official spokesperson for employee communication so her comments do carry some weight. Additionally, employees comment on her post (some anonymously), so it also functions as a valuable tool to get candid employee feedback too.
While every company might not be ready for such a public exchange of information, the benefits of an internal blog can’t be overlooked. An internal blog can help your employee communications by being “real” (employees will know otherwise!), providing employees with a way to connect on a personal level with corporate goals and contributing to an honest and open exchange of ideas.
