Agreed! This is an evolving challenge for us and love to soak up any feedback or ideas! 

Time is the major challenge for our leadership - they are in high demand and meetings take much of their day. Our leadership team has little activity in our digital workplace and when a message comes from them, it's typically ghost written by us, the Internal Communications team.

That said, our CEO and other leaders have plugged our digital workplace several times in large meetings (warms my heart  )! 

To start, we implemented Igloo's Leadership Space solution, customizing it to our organization:

• A "values" page - or what we call our 12 Cornerstones
  
  
• A "strategy" page - which includes a timeline of our strategic journey as an organization so employees - new and old - understand where we were, are and where we're going. 
  • This includes an archive of Town Hall recordings.
• Added a "Boardroom" microblog that only has updates when the board is in session to help employees feel like they are getting real time updates while the meeting is going on.
  
  
• Although our Internal Communications team ghost writes a lot of the executive blog posts, we are beginning to include "Take 5" videos that feature leadership talking about a strategic goal or explaining a complicated framework. Other videos we've made are more personal "life" updates from our CEO to employees. These get SO MANY VIEWS - at least compared to other blogs.
  
  
• An "Ask Leadership" forum, which we want to make anonymous - here's why (CARE-I-23). I believe this would get more traffic if anonymous forum posting was an option.
  
  
• CEO's personal twitter feed

We hold small group meetings - "Book Talks" for employees to meet with leaders

• Our CEO shares what he is currently reading, then Internal Communications helps him host a "Book Talk" for discussion major points with employees in an informal setting. Before or after the event, employees can share/comment more in our digital workplace.

We created a Think Tank

• This is a Space made up only of a home page and forums - open to all employees to post in. Our Think Tank is a safe space to share ideas, debate, give advice, listen, learn, dialogue and build a globally connected conversation about the people, places and things that influence our daily lives at headquarters and around the world.
  
  
• While our leadership is less involved in this Space - they have contributed forums and answered comments from employees.

Chelsey Louzeiro‍ Thank you for your participation in the conversation! (A Starbucks Gift Card is coming your way.) 

I especially appreciate the details shared around how you used the Leadership Center Solution and then built on that to specifically focus on what's most important to your organization. The 'Take 5' video idea is absolutely brilliant - I can see how executives be eager to participate and why these get so many views. 

Everyone - Feel free to comment and share your thoughts! Do your executives blog? Or do you have ghost writers? Have you tried adding video to your Digital Workplace to gain views?

FYI  Andrea Gumz-Dietrich‍ ‍ ‍ ‍ and Doina Plesoianu‍ 

I agree with Chelsey on the challenges of getting executive engagement. We are lucky in that our leadership is invested in the value of our platform for our dispersed workforce and interested in having it succeed. Of course, they are pressed for time and we haven't quite made it to executive blogging yet. 

Our leadership does visit our community regularly and engages through commenting, especially when our content features clinician or support team recognition (either external or internal). 

We are working on a list of blog topics for ghostwriting for our CEO and striving to keep them as short (and valuable) as possible. 

I think the Take 5 short videos would go a long way for our organization's engagement.  

April Morris‍ It's great to hear from you! (I'm sending you a Coffee Gift Card as we speak!) I agree with you that your leadership definitely understand the value of your digital workplace. I think it's great that you are planning a blog series for your CEO - and keeping them short, with key messages at the top is key. 

Should you decide to proceed with the Take 5 video route please let us know how you make out. It's a great idea!

Andrea Gumz-Dietrich‍ 

We also went the Leadership Corner route where each exec got their own space and their Comms support person keeps the blogs coming (some more than other).  Where we measure exec engagement (and I use the word "measure" loosely) is when they reply to or like comments on their blogs - shows that they aren't just 'speaking to' coworkers but actively interacting.  It goes a long way to humanizing them to the rest of a large organization.

Andrew Jayne‍ I like the idea of giving each Executive Blogging support, and how you measure Executive Engagement. Do you also have an Editorial Calendar to schedule the posts? 

Rick Batchelor‍ 

Thanks, Diana.  Each exec has their own "editorial calendar" based on the efforts of their Comms person.  Our CEO commits to at least once a week and the rest of the exec team falls below that (some far below).  When asked by the exec Comms support folks how to increase viewership and interaction with their exec's posts, we usually tell them the obvious:

• Keep it short, informal, and personal
• Include images or video
• Have a clear request at the end to prompt comments
• Get the exec to interact by liking comments or replying to comments with a comment of their own (can be a tough sell for some, but not if the exec has said they want more traffic - "You want more traffic to your blog, ma'am?  Then you need to make it more of a conversation and less of a 1-way statement.") {editor's note: we have not been fired yet for saying that.}

Andrew Jayne‍ One of our most popular campaigns to increase Executive Engagement, (See the full list here)is the Blog Oscars Campaign. Some find that the Executives compete with one another for views, replies, liking - so actually providing an award per month or quarter draws attention to the effort and can motivate!

I absolutely love reading everyone's unique solutions to executive engagement, definitely some takeaways for us!

In the past year we underwent a refresh of our DW, and one of the most critical pieces to our success was executive buy in and engagement.  As noted before, every organization has unique challenges and solutions as a result, here were some of our solutions. 

• Leadership Corner
  • Leadership Thoughts: A blog channel for our executives to post to. We also pushed instant subscriptions to all our users for this channel. Our key to increasing viewership on this channel was not only consistent messaging from this channel, but also the diversity in content. We noticed rotating stories about our executives with key company updates helped tremendously.
  • Ask the CEO: A microblog channel for our employees to ask questions, and created a much needed two way communication channel.
  • Mission & Values: A page outlining all of our mission statements and values
  • Company Goals and objectives
  • Meet our Leadership: Bio's for all of our leadership team
  • Monthly CEO video blog and articles:  A monthly video blog or article discussing new updates with our CEO and/or the company. This was a huge success in drawing traffic to the Leadership Corner and our DW in general.

In addition to providing our leadership with the necessary platforms and tools for engagement, we encouraged buy in using other avenues as well.  

• Creating Employee Resource Groups with executive sponsors.
  • Employees created groups with particular areas of interest assigned to their mission(i.e. Women in Renewable Energy). Recently one of these groups interviewed a board member which was broadcasted to our entire organization. We had tremendous traffic to our site from this event.
  • Book Club with our executives.
• Cup of Joe with the CFO
  • A meeting with 15 or so employees to enjoy a cup of coffee with our CFO to ask him about anything they want personal or professional. 

Goodluck to all in your endeavor to drive leadership engagement in your DW!

We've also held "Coffee Talks" with our CEO. Employees loved the informal atmosphere and our CEO enjoyed the small groups. It's a great option if your executive team buys in!

August Robinson‍ - How have you been able to make this a regular event? How to employees sign up or get access to the event? Do you find the open ended format is best? Have you tried topical formats?

Chelsey Louzeiro‍  - Very nice! Yes we have this event at least every other month, sometimes more if schedules permit and rotating executives if necessary/possible. We just can't get rid of the catchy slogan:)  We like to include as many new hires as possible and leave the remaining roster open for sign up. The format is open ended, but if topics run dry he comes prepared with talking points about the company. Keeping the informal "ask what is on your mind" environment is a huge priority for us so our employees have the opportunity to see and interact with our executives in a different manner. Great questions, let me know if there is anything else I can answer. 

August Robinson‍ great ideas - and I love the catchy slogan. Chelsey Louzeiro‍ it would be easy to create a sign up area within the Digital Workplace. Perhaps a CTA on the homepage, or, in the new hire area. 

Absolutely love seeing everyone's ideas. Arlene Bautista‍ knows this is something our team has really struggled with and are actively trying to improve upon. We had a very large group of VPs/EVPs/C-Suite, and here are some of the strategies we have implemented:

• An editorial calendar: We asked each of our leaders to commit to writing just ONE post for the whole year, and we have enough people at that level where we've almost been able to fill up the calendar year!
• We've struggled the most with getting leaders to comment/engage with associates. By setting all members to get instant subscriptions when we post leaders' content, we've seen that leaders do actually consume the info and comment.
• We orchestrated a live Town Hall earlier this year, which we live streamed straight onto the homepage of our DW. So many people tuned in that we ended up crashing the internet in our main office (oops!). But, we followed it up by posting the recording for anyone who couldn't watch, and we did a "Halftime Report" video in July to continue giving employees important updates.
• I went around to each leader's office and downloaded the app on their phone and showed them how to post to our social feed from there. It was successful at first, but they do need reminders and a gentle push.

This has just been the start. We want to keep it going and make it not be as much of a "task" as it is second nature.

Thank you so much Pooja Panduranga‍ for your feedback regarding how you've addressed Executive Engagement within your Digital Workplace. I like the suggestion of downloading the app for your executives, and demonstrating how to post on the social feed. That is definitely meeting people where they are. Great job!

Frances Gilgunn‍ Here's some information you might find helpful when it comes to executive engagement.  Lots of great ideas here.

Fabulous discussion and amazing feedback. It is surely the most frequent question or comment we get "how to we get Exec to buy in", so the comments above are very valuable. I was in a customer session last week that went from 'we only need an Intranet not a digital workplace....we dont have buy in". After some discussions, showing them ITI (Igloos own Igloo and how we use it) the Exec sponsor there ended up bringing in the other C level leaders. So its a step by step for sure but having one Exec leader on board is essential. 

I love hearing points like Chelsey Louzeiro‍ saying the CEO gives a shoutout to the digital workplace at talks. That's the highest buy in. Exec buy in also drives engagement. When employees see Execs using the DW (whether ghosted or not) it is an important driver. 

If you still have trouble.....remember, we can help. As a former customer (and CEO of a company) and now running CS here at Igloo, I can help with discussions on why a DW is so important to corporate success. Reach out and connect with me on here. 

Thanks all for comments. Love it. 

BMAC

Veronica Hayes‍ 

Judy Headrick‍ and Woody Schauer‍ - there are some great ideas in this post on how to engage your Executive Team!