Executive Summary
2015 saw two major events for the eBay, an ideal opportunity to maximise engagement and internal communications. eBay decided to create an internal communications noticeboard, powered by its employees whilst at company events.
For the internal communications system to be successful, eBay required a straightforward, accessible submission process that employees would want to contribute to. It was also necessary for the platform to be hosted on their internal network.
The 3D Issue Hub solution was put in place for the 20th anniversary of eBay and their formal separation from PayPal. Employees could submit content via email and from their own personal social accounts which populated the auto updating employee noticeboard Hub.
The Intuitive Hub dashboard allowed the admin team to easily build and manage these online noticeboard style content hubs, as well monitor submitted content and ensuring submission was protected and limited to employees only. As a direct result of its success, a permanent, employee-powered events noticeboard was implemented as part of the internal communications strategy.
Background
eBay Inc. an American multinational corporation and e-commerce company, provides B2C and C2C sales services online.
Founded in 1995, eBay has grown into a multibillion-dollar business with operating in over 30 countries. In 2002, PayPal was wholly acquired by eBay and remained a subsidiary until it was announced it would spin off PayPal into an independent company in July 2015.
With the separation of PayPal in July 2015 and the 20th anniversary in September 2015 their internal communications team were tasked with creating an internal communications notice board where employees who participate and submit content whilst at these milestone events.
Challenges
Each of eBay’s operational centres planned to have its own employee events for the two company milestones, this would involve 15,000 employees over 30 countries.
The major challenges for eBay were managing content submission from 30 locations through an internal network & automating the identification of employees through their social media accounts, the relevant content and their email addresses.
eBay’s Internal Communications team identified key requirements for the system, they required the abilities to:
· Collect content from their employees social media account relevant to the events
· Protect and view content only behind the eBay Firewall
· Allow anyone with an “@ebay.com” email address to submit content to the notice board
· Allow employees to share the content on their social network
· Review submitted content before publishing
· Output content into a responsive online Hub that would perfectly adjust to any device
How 3D Issue Helped
3D Issue’s platform was chosen by eBay as the platform of choice to deliver this solution. eBay’s Hub was set up to monitor two selected hashtags; #weareebay and #ebay20. eBay announced the hashtags and once at the event the employees could take photos and share from their personal Twitter and Instagram accounts with the hasthags.
The Internal Communications team wanted to review all content before it was published to the live Hub. A simple setting to allow this workflow was activated and so content using the defined hashtags would not be published live until the admin team verified and approved suitability of the posts.
The Hub also enabled employees to submit content via email. 3D Issue worked with eBay to set up a unique Hub email address, set as an approved contributor email. A condition was then placed so that only emails sent from an “@ebay.com” email address to the unique Hub addresses would be authorised to publish content into the hub, ensuring only eBay employees could submit content. Once the hub was complete in the design phases, 3D Issue worked with the eBay web team to move their internal comms behind their firewall.
Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans
The adoption of 3D Issue’s content hubs into eBays internal communications strategy has been a tremendous success. Since those two milestone events, eBay has continued to use 3D Issue content hubs as their employee driven notice board. As a result of the integration of content hubs, eBay has been able to:
1. Pass the content creation of the noticeboard to their employees without any additional training
2. Easily manage and police content submitted from employees over 30 different locations
3. Easily create micro-hubs that could be assigned to other international departments to manage
4. Use this content to as a content delivery tool for their native mobile apps
What Our Customer Has to Say
“I couldn’t recommend the 3D Issue team more highly. They quickly felt like an extension of my team and worked to very tight deadlines to pull off this hub. I was so impressed I’m now working with them on having additional functionality included so we can continue using their products as a regular channel.”
Sarah Luker
EU Content Editor
eBay
