Corporate Communities: Where We Left Off

In the February 2022 article “Networking and Knowledge Exchange in New Business Contexts: The Value of Business Communities,” we referred to three types of employee needs (being informed, feeling part of an internal network, having all the elements to grow and work better) and a tool that many organizations deploy to meet these needs: Communities.

Whether engagement or practice communities, entirely digital or hybrid, supported by platforms like M365 (Teams, Viva Engage) or custom CMS, Communities represent a vital means of collaboration and engagement. In the business context, they enable organizations to design and support true cultural evolutions, promoting participatory logics of inclusion, innovation, and exchange inspired by social networks.

Corporate Communities help build and strengthen valuable relationships at various levels, forming collaborative networks where teams are effectively interconnected. Through Communities, it’s possible to transcend role or function boundaries by activating peer-to-peer collaborative logics, allowing people to spread ideas, experiences, and best practices that might otherwise go unheard.

To provide an accurate snapshot of the present, avoiding reliance on partial views and ineffective benchmarks, we felt the need to tap into the experience of those who manage Communities daily and understand their potential and benefits within companies. OpenKnowledge, with contributions from several significant companies and the academic partnership of Alessandra Mazzei, Director of the CERC (Centre for Employee Relations and Communication) at IULM University in Milan, has produced a current state and future perspective of Internal Communities. Below are the leaders who participated in the joint reflection, with whom we had the pleasure of initiating an open conversation on these topics:

• Alessandra Cappello, Head of Internal Communication and Digital Workplace and Vittorio Verdone, Director of Communication and Media Relations at Unipol Group
• Giovanna Di Bacco, Head of Corporate Communication, Media Relations, Internal Communication, Employee Engagement at E.ON
• Valentina Uboldi, Head of Global Internal Communications at Eni
• Isabella Pacifico, Head of Internal Communications at Carrefour
• Marialaura Agosta, HR & Internal Communication Manager Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Champion at Danone Italy
• Davide Ciullo, Senior Manager Internal Communication & People Engagement and Ornella Castellano, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Expert at Snam

We listened to their ideas, content, and best practices firsthand, gathering virtuous experiences and insights that enriched our perspective and led us to summarize some “foundations” for a current reflection on corporate Communities.

In addition to fostering employee engagement and a sense of belonging, an internal Community can promote knowledge sharing, collaboration, and innovation, which are enablers for achieving business results. And much more. From disseminating corporate information to developing a culture based on values like care and performance improvement, it’s essential to initially define the “reason why” that allows a corporate Community to exist and thrive.

Outlining the goal and the added value to be provided to people from the start allows for better management of the subsequent support phase, which is vital for the Community’s growth. As Alessandra Mazzei points out, “engagement communities are very complex; we can liken them to continuously adapting and evolving organisms that need to be nourished (…) This underscores the importance of a strategic approach to their creation and management: defining an architecture, designing supportive actions, animating, monitoring, and measuring.”

In increasingly challenging and fragmented organizational contexts, recognizing the strategic importance of a shared culture and cultivating employee engagement is essential. Through social logic, corporate communities reflect the organizational culture and serve as a reliable thermometer of the company and a litmus test of how deeply the corporate purpose is permeating the organization and its behaviours.

Communities enable the development of internal networks and help companies build a “power of convocation” that allows leadership to truly promote corporate culture. As Alessandra Mazzei always says: “where a company has a good level of organizational well-being, the opportunity of communities could be a strengthening element.”

People Care within companies is crucial for fostering an inclusive and sustainable organizational culture. Investing in employees’ needs and well-being promotes trust, motivation, and productivity, creating a sense of belonging and connection with the company.

This attention to human capital, which materializes in the development of internal Communities supporting employees in areas beyond core business activities, not only improves the working climate but also fosters retention and stimulates innovation through the exchange of diverse perspectives.

Concrete examples are numerous: from internal communities addressing Diversity & Inclusion issues to colleague communities around topics like parenting, healthcare, social responsibility, where internal projects and initiatives are proposed directly by participants.

By offering a familiar and intuitive interface, corporate digital platforms can facilitate employee integration and engagement, promoting effective communication, knowledge sharing, and collaboration through formats and dynamics already established in the social online sphere. For this reason, many companies have adopted platforms like Workplace from Meta (Eni, Carrefour) and Viva Engage (Unipol) to build increasingly open environments for (free) dialogue and discussion.

In this sense, Communities must truly find the ideal space to grow and embed themselves within existing touchpoints, rightfully securing a place in the daily employee journey. With one caveat: technology must serve the organizational context and work models, not the other way around. According to Alessandra Mazzei, “the ideal would be to start with a clear strategy and, with the support of technology, give communities the most suitable configuration for the specific context.”

Over the years, in the numerous Community experiences we have designed with our clients, we have observed that all the most successful Communities shared certain critical success elements: the clarity and solidity of the perceived value proposition by participants, top management sponsorship, a clear governance definition, and ensuring the usability of the technological solution.

Being able to manage all the critical success factors, valuing the initiative within the organization, and overcoming prejudices and access barriers allows internal communities to grow organically and generate value. In Alessandra Mazzei’s words: “communities need spontaneity and authenticity, which emerge from specific actions. They must be seeded and cultivated.”

Virtual communities, often born in response to the need for connection during post-pandemic remote work, still play a vital role in the current hybrid environment of the “new normal.”

The combination of physical and digital interactions enhances engagement and cohesion of geographically dispersed teams, allowing for greater flexibility and inclusivity. However, the transition to “phygital” modes requires organizations to ensure that the tools used are accessible and inclusive for all, as well as the language adopted within them, maintaining an equitable and participatory workplace.

Concrete examples of hybridizing Community conversations are numerous. Virtual coffee sessions with real-time quizzes and polls, online call-to-actions that materialize in physical meetings during lunch breaks or coffee machine encounters, in-person workshops with remote participation options: in general, all actions that allow dual-mode virtual and physical participation, in as inclusive a logic as possible.

To value participation and contribution within an internal corporate Community, it’s essential to reflect on the sociological dynamics that foster engagement. Creating open and inclusive dialogue spaces, where members feel heard and encouraged to actively contribute in a culture of collaboration and mutual support, facilitates the sharing of knowledge and resources, ultimately contributing to collective growth. Expanding existing connections between the physical and virtual community, as well as creating new communities starting from virtual ones, further strengthens member engagement and involvement.

The levers to act on through Communities? Sense of belonging and group identity, recognition and rewards, empowerment, and ambassadorship.

Evaluating the impact and value generated by internal Communities on the Business requires a holistic assessment that goes beyond the mere usage data of the virtual platform. When we talk about ROE (Return of Engagement), we mean measuring the value generated through activation, interaction, and commitment of internal and external stakeholders: a high ROE indicates a positive working environment where employees are motivated, collaborative, and oriented towards achieving corporate goals.

It is crucial to consider the primary objectives of the Community and assess its maturity and health through the frequency and quality of interactions, in addition to the consistency of the content generated by these exchanges. Only in this way can we get a complete indication of whether or not its “reason why” has been achieved.

When discussing virtual communities, we cannot overlook the future developments of Artificial Intelligence and the potential benefits. The study of how AI can influence engagement and collaboration dynamics among corporate community members is an open topic, but several considerations are already being made.

There is certainly the theme of valuing tacit and informal knowledge, generated by experiences and practices learned in the field, then codified and formalized in corporate communities. AI can help synthesize and return such knowledge, creating a common and usable knowledge base within the company.

Artificial Intelligence will also enable achieving dual objectives of automation (of processes, analysis, information retrieval…) and personalization (of content, approaches, and interactions), significantly increasing the added value for the employee and the company itself.

Reflecting on corporate communities, we can now sum up some key elements. Specifically:

• Both during the launch phase of a Community and throughout its entire lifecycle, it is crucial to never lose sight of the purpose for which a community exists and the value it brings to its participants.
• Organizational culture influences internal communication and collaboration dynamics positively (or negatively) and consequently the company’s predisposition to embrace Communities.
• Having leadership open to change, which advocates values of openness and collaboration and takes on the role of an agent of corporate culture, is a key element in determining the success of a community and generating returns in terms of productivity and motivation.
• Community members must feel useful and important and must feel legitimized to share insights and ideas knowing that they will be heard.
• The supporting technology must primarily be an enabling factor, allowing people to participate in the life of internal communities in a hybrid mode.

To close the loop, after learning from the experiences of our clients and collecting valuable insights and academic reinterpretations, we try to answer the question of all questions: why should an organization take care of its internal Communities? As OpenKnowledge, the answer can start from a critical reading of the first pillars of our Open Manifesto, a series of statements that tell our corporate culture and our way of designing the future.

We refer to “Openness to others,” where the culture of inclusion, accessibility, and the promotion of diversity leads to the creation of environments where every person can feel welcomed and valued. In our Open Manifesto, we also emphasize how ecosystems are “drivers to Open new Opportunities”: for us, the creation and “nurturing” of synergistic relationships among people in the corporate ecosystem open up new opportunities for innovation.

Finally, we always propose an approach that we define as “Open Culture,” in which adopting a culture of dialogue prepares companies to embrace change and new perspectives, ultimately helping them achieve business results. Internal Communities, at least those born and grown under the auspices of the “foundations” outlined above, go precisely in this direction.

Driven by a clear purpose, enabled by technologies, fostered by hybrid connections, and by personal and cultural dynamics inherent in the company, the employee immediately perceives the benefits of participating in the community, recognizes a new sense of belonging to the organization, and makes their voice heard through the activation of cycles of continuous conversation and collaboration, assuming (as an individual and in their network) an active role in corporate life.

We again thank Alessandra Cappello and Vittorio Verdone (Unipol) Giovanna Di Bacco (E.ON), Valentina Uboldi (Eni), Isabella Pacifico (Carrefour), Marialaura Agosta (Danone), Davide Ciullo and Ornella Castellano (Snam) for valuable contributions.

Lorenzo Bruno