Electric company empowers staffers on its intranet

Canadian utility has grown its online community by encouraging workers to sound off

If you allow comments, employees will come.

Sooner or later, that is.

Communicators at SaskPower redesigned its intranet to be more interactive and allow staff to comment on articles. Although employees were initially hesitant, commenting has become a popular feature of the intranet.

“You can’t push tools on them,” says Lisa Raddysh, interactive communications supervisor for SaskPower, the principal supplier of electricity in Saskatchewan, Canada. “Commenting has taken three years to become something really valuable, and now it’s something we can’t imagine the site not having. It’s such an integral part and it’s what people go to [the site to] look at.”

SaskPower’s redesign of its intranet—the Employee Information Network (EIN)—was implemented over the past two years and won this year’s Ragan Recognition Award grand prize for best intranet.