This internal social network links 40,000 employees in a dozen all-business ways

Merck KGaA delivers this message to Merck employees with its internal social network: “Let’s explore this wonderful, huge, mysterious business house we live in—to get new ideas about everything we do.”   

The visitor to Merck KGaA’s intranet, EVA, almost immediately notices that the usual social element often found on intranets takes a decided back seat to the business element. No company eBay or craigslist is found on the internal social network within EVA, nor much deliberate provision made for workplace sociability, small talk, and “fun.” But this emphasis on business is what earned Merck victory in the “Best Internal Social Networking” category of Ragan’s 2015 Intranet Awards. 

EVA focuses on helping employees do many things: Make contact with far-away colleagues; following those colleagues easily on teams, initiative, and projects; conveniently ask questions to a selected group or to everybody at Merck; become immersed in the work lives of fellow workers in an employee’s “activity stream”—and much more.

Some of the advantages of the EVA internal social network:

• Rich user profiles make finding the right expert on your subject easier and faster.
• EVA’s social network fosters agility and innovation by allowing employees to communicate easily across functional, organizational, and geographical boundaries.
• All social functions are wholly integrated into every bit of managed content on the intranet.
• The intranet’s extreme ease of use offers a seamless user experience incorporating simple, elegant visual design.
• A short—almost instant, in many cases—response time to questions in the microblog.
• All activities for each employee post on one central page, called “activities in my network,” which allows employees to stay up to date on everything they’re interested in.

This internal social network seems to beckon the viewer to explore every activity of this gigantic, 40,000-person organization in 65 countries. It stirs the imagination and the viewer’s sense of adventure. 

Congratulations to Merck KGaA head of digital media Frank Sielaff, to Merck KGaA managers of digital media Rudolf Froese, Stefanie Babka, and Karen Bradbury, and to Publicis Pixelpark senior consultant Marian Moehren!