In the first decade of the century, BlackBerry (then known as Research In Motion) was an unrivaled leader in the smartphone industry. The introduction of the Inter@ctive Pager brought emails to users wherever they went and with each subsequent device, they further refined their capabilities, bringing in phone features and internet connectivity—making them a household name with prestige across the world. That all changed with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the Android operating system in 2010. These competitors, along with the substandard device launches, left BlackBerry in an extremely vulnerable position in 2011. In July of 2011, they announced the first in what would be a substantial number of layoffs over the coming years, initially letting go 2,000 employees, but in the end letting to of nearly up to 10,000 employees — with 4,500 alone being announced in September 2013. Imploding Employee Morale This landscape led even the most passionate employees to question not only their decision to stay with the company, but the likelihood of their own careers within BlackBerry. The management team knew that they would never be able to perform their critical turn-around strategy if employee engagement stayed low, so they looked to the Internal Communications department to make sure employees were heard and valued during the upheaval. They knew that fear would not be a motivating factor in ensuring performance, so they needed to appeal to their own motivation and job satisfaction. Though the company was known for emails and was an extremely email-heavy culture, the team decided that they best way to foster that engagement was to have a single space where employees could go to hear from leaders, find out the latest news internally and externally, and communicate with each other. They decided to invest in their intranet.

Employee engagement is a vital element of a successful and productive work environment. 1  Companies like Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants (herein referred to as “O&B”) have been empowering their employees for years, which has helped them become one of Canada’s top fine dining restaurant companies. Their employees are passionate, energetic and have a sense of pride when speaking about their employers. O&B operates a portfolio of unique and innovative restaurants across Ontario3.