Detecting Value: UniCredit’s internal social networking experience

By Silvia Cambié

The search for value and successful integration is a common feature of many corporate mergers and reorganisations.

UniCredit, one of Europe’s leading banking groups, is the result of the integration of several Italian banks that began in the 1990s and continued for more than a decade adding banks and operations in Germany, Austria and Central and Eastern Europe.

The Group has now more than 160,000 employees and 9,500 branches serving 40 million customers in 22 countries from Italy to Kazakhstan. Assets under its management exceed € 180 billion.

The path

Creating a common culture has been high on the agenda of UniCredit’s communication team. The bank had been looking for a tool to turn its tag line “One Group, One Voice, No Boundaries” into reality. For this reason in 2009, OneNet, a social media site, was created, for “facilitating networking, knowledge sharing and online collaboration” among its employees.

Part of the employees of the Group (16,000) were then invited to join OneNet. The IT and communication teams have also been using communities to encourage colleagues to join the new network. OneNet now has 6,000 members and more than 50 communities. One of these focuses on card payment solutions and serves as a forum for 300 employees from five countries (Italy, Germany, Austria Czech Republic and Romania) to discuss news about the card market. “It is a way for us to pull up experience from the bottom,” says Stefania Todisco, Head of Community within Group Operations and ICT Factories Business Unit.

Sometimes it is heads of new departments who approach Todisco’s team and ask to start a community as a way to identify people willing to share expertise among their staff.

Empowered through social media

A community for senior management was set up last summer. It gives UniCredit’s 400 top managers the opportunity to participate in virtual discussions with the bank’s CEO. “This digital interaction serves as a strong motivation for managers to create and regularly update their profiles on My Site, OneNet’s personal area, besides make themselves familiar with the internal social media and its potential” says Fabio Delton Responsible for Internal Digital Channels.

My Site is at the core of a new culture the bank is trying to create. “OneNet helps employees to become more visible and manage their reputation,” says Todisco. “Our message to them is ‘don’t suffer - but take charge through social media’”.

People in the Spotlight

The network enables people to get visibility of what their expertises are. “The chance to stay connected with far and new colleagues is a key factor in helping them work better. OneNet allows knowledge sharing in a really pragmatic and people centered way” says Todisco.

OneNet is shaping up as a powerful ally in a further cultural shift the bank is trying to introduce. “We want to move from a serving culture where online platforms encourage people to react to requests to a more proactive environment where employees speak up,” pointed out Fabio Delton.

This process is key to UniCredit’s efforts to spot value in different parts of the group. “In countries where we have big back-office operations like Poland or Romania, employees have ideas that so far could not be heard”, adds Delton. “Social media is a way to uncover hidden value inside the organisation.”

Widening the network

Future plans for OneNet include the creation of new “killer communities” open to all OneNet users. At the moment, access to a community is given only by invitation. “Killer communities” could be set up around experiences like learning a language or living as an expatriate. The bank will also be working on the IT and legal issues connected with extending access to OneNet to all employees on a country-by-country and step-by-step basis.

In terms of governance, the idea is to move to a decentralised model and empower the communication teams in the different business units to manage employees’ requests to set up communities and to act as a partner to their leaders assisting them with training and other forms of support.

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About Silvia Cambié

Silvia Cambié is the author of “International Communications Strategy”, nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Awards. With a background in financial journalism and advocacy, she consults organisations on strategic communication and social media. Silvia blogs at XCulture which is read by an audience of 19,000 each month.