In March 2007, The Dow Chemical Company introduced a new tool designed to encourage, facilitate and amplify dialog among its 43,000 employees worldwide -- an internal blog authored by chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris. While a key goal of the Access Andrew blog was to communicate Andrew's vision to the organization and make him more accessible to employees at all levels, the primary driver behind its creation was to provide a venue for employee discussion and debate, ultimately resulting in increased employee engagement and satisfaction.

Andrew writes his own entries with minimal input or editing by the communications or legal teams. New entries are posted about once every 10 days and employee comments are invited.

In its first week alone, more than 27,000 employees visited the blog. Today, more than 11,000 employees visit the site each week, and each post receives an average of 50 comments. Almost 600 employees have posted more than 800 comments since the site launched, demonstrating that employees truly are joining the discussion.

Perhaps the most exciting element of the blog is that employees are using it as a vehicle to introduce new topics and concerns. In fact, an impressive 35 percent of employee comments are on a new topic different from the posting topic. Another 27 percent of employee comments are in direct response to other comments, demonstrating a true, two-way dialog. Employees regularly use the blog to open a dialog on company issues and workplace concerns and leaders often weigh in to respond.

One month after the launch of Access Andrew, a short survey was sent to a random sample of employees. Based on the more than 1,200 responses, 68 percent of employees read the blog and 77 percent feel it has enhanced employee communications at Dow.

Credit Information
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Client: The Dow Chemical Company
Agency: Insidedge/GolinHarris
Budget:
Date of Campaign: March 2007 to Present
Case Study URL: http://dialogue.golinharris.com/misc/womma/dow/