Introduction and Background
Pfizer is the world's largest research-based biomedical and pharmaceutical company. It has a corporate headquarters located in New York, with several major research and development sites around the world, including one in Sandwich, Kent, UK which employs approximately 4,000 staff.
The pursuit of innovative solutions and a knowledge sharing culture encourages Pfizer to embrace well conceived and creative approaches to business practices. About three years ago, a small number of research scientists developed an internal shared knowledge repository using wiki technology, to help them work more effectively on their project. From those early origins, a company wide application called ‘Pfizerpedia’ was developed.
Pfizerpedia (please see PDF below of Pfizerpedia home page) acts as a central web hub that colleagues can use to link, generate and search content authored by the global Pfizer community. Project teams may use the Pfizerpedia to share non-sensitive information both within the group and with the rest of the organization, but it is not intended to be a system for sharing data or summarized/interpreted results related to specific compounds or projects.
Its popularity has grown and it is fast becoming an on-line resource of first preference for R&D employees, seeking knowledge pertinent to their job role. Pfizerpedia now has over 2500 contributors creating over 5000 content pages. More than 3000 pages have received at least 1000 hits each. In total, there have been over 11 million page views and approximately 100,000 page edits since it was set up.
As the screenshot says, it is important to note that the Pfizerpedia does not replace any document management systems within Pfizer. Rathert, it complements these systems by providing a way to easily link into them, while maintaining the security and authorization controls to the primary documents
The development of Pfizerpedia
At its heart a wiki is just a web content publishing tool. The concept was originally conceived as a means of providing the simplest and quickest way for non-technical users to publish web content. The features that differentiate a wiki from most other web publishing platforms provide some good clues as to where and how wikis are best used.
Enterprise wikis such as Pfizerpedia are often used for:
- collaboratively building documentation
- creating and maintaining knowledge bases
- project management
- gathering tacit knowledge (knowledge not related to any specific project but essential to getting things done in an organization)
- meeting management, from agenda to minutes and action items
Popular pages on Pfizerpedia include: (i) a ‘one-stop shop’ for navigating the acronyms commonly used by the business; (ii) scientific ‘centres of expertise’ knowledge bases; and (iii) the Learning & Development ‘home-page’ with regularly updated information on training opportunities.
John Castledine, the Director of Learning and Development for Pfizer’s Global Research and Development (PGRD) Division, reflected on Pfizerpedia’s growing prominence as a learning tool by suggesting that:
“For organizations that need to create and nurture an innovative culture, the development of an internal ‘wiki’ site can be an important element. It is certainly the case at Pfizer, where increasing evidence points towards the usefulness of Pfizerpedia in enabling our employees to share and access knowledge more quickly than before. The ability to publish freely attributed information on line can help overcome any tendencies that may exist towards ‘silo protectionism’ or a bureaucratic approval process.”
There are, however, important challenges, not least of which is dealing with the change ramifications of promoting organisation-wide access to new ‘bottom-up’ collaboration tools such as Pfizerpedia. This may also be viewed as an opportunity for Human Resource (HR) professionals.
John Castledine returned to this point. “There can be little doubt that for an organisation to encourage the adoption of enterprise 2.0 there must be a perceived overall benefit in doing so. To achieve sustainable change, it is vital that these benefits are presented from the frame-of-reference of the key stakeholders. We can partner closely with IT colleagues to help achieve this goal. For example: information overload is a major concern for most colleagues. Hence without understanding RSS feeds, blogs become yet more websites to add to your favourites list. Similarly, wikis and social bookmarking (tags) offer welcomed options to reduce email traffic within teams.”
HR and enterprise 2.0
John identified three steps that can be taken by HR to help drive the uptake of these enterprise 2.0 tools.
Firstly, early adopters (from both the scientific and IT communities) typically welcome wider interest. Hence there is a wealth of advice available within organisations for those seeking to better understand how to use the technology. HR colleagues should seek out such information, and experiment with applying these tools in their day-to-day roles. This builds awareness and a credibility to effectively partner with the early adopters in wider deployment of these technologies.
In the case of PGRD Learning & Development, this approach also provided a ‘quick-win’ for enhancing communication with internal audiences. Creating an L&D page on Pfizerpedia provided an additional channel for advertising the training available to colleagues. With all L&D team members able to contribute to the site, more information is being shared than through traditional websites (e.g. all Level 1 training-class feedback metrics), and updates are published on a regular basis. This has proved popular with ca. 1,500 hits every month.
Secondly; by definition the early adopters view new technologies from a different frame-of-reference to the majority of the workforce. Their enthusiasm alone is rarely enough to achieve a tipping-point for organisation-wide uptake. Hence, the expertise within HR to guide culture-change programmes should not be overlooked.
This is illustrated by ‘Meet Charlie’ and ‘Meet Jessica’. Originally developed by early adopters of Enterprise 2.0, these communication decks focused on the tools themselves. Subsequently this was reworked in partnership with HR as When Jo Meets Charlie , to focus on the frame-of-reference likely to be adopted by those less enthusiastic about signing up for yet more on-line communication. Well received both internally and externally, this communication has subsequently been converted into a rapid e-learning module.
Finally, there is a lot written about the changing expectations of Gen. Y vs. previous generations entering the workplace. There is no doubt that a growing number of new starters will be familiar with Web 2.0 tools. Given that HR have a central role in talent acquisition and integration, there are clear opportunities to use knowledge of the available Enterprise 2.0 tools (such as Pfizerpedia) to help attract talent to the company.
Note: You can read more about John Castledine’s personal views on Learning & Development (including the opportunities presented by Web 2.0 technologies) in his blog at www.learningconsultant.blogspot.com