The benefits of staff forums - two way communications with management

A challenge in any organisation is to foster two-way communications.

Many organisations have used suggestion boxes, 'chat with the CEO' email accounts, or other primitive tools to offer pseudo-two way communication, but without the immediacy or ability to readily expose discussions to the broader organisation.

These are often mistrusted by staff as they are essentially black boxes - suggestions go in from individuals and responses may come back, but there is no mechanism for others across the organisation to witness or participate in the conversation.

That's where staff forums can fill a major gap, providing a mechanism for organisations to unblock their communications channels, not only from staff to management, but between staff in different offices.

The following video illustrates how effective an online forum can be for engaging staff and improving customer service outcomes.

It is about British Airways, a 2008 Intranet Innovations Awards gold medal winner, who has engaged its 17,000 cabin crew in discussion around customer service and internal process issues via an online forum.