ORLANDO, Fla. — IBM announced that Fluor Corp., an engineering, construction and project management company, is using IBM social business technology to connect its global workforce of 43,000 employees around the world.
With IBM social software, Fluor employees are more effectively communicating, collaborating and spurring innovation across the company’s construction sites and engineering offices. In just a matter of weeks, more than half of Fluor’s global workforce was up on the social platform, uploading profile photos, detailing experience and making new connections, IBM said.
IBM officials noted that the social business revolution is catching on in all kinds of industries, and in long-standing companies. IBM announced the Fluor relationship and other social business news at its IBM Connect 2013 conference here on Jan. 29.
“In 2012, Fluor celebrated its centennial, prompting us to evaluate how to maintain an edge in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, said Say Lim, vice president of IT at Fluor, in a statement. “A social intranet powered by IBM is transforming how we do business and creating a more connected workforce across departments, geographies and the world.”
Fluor officials said the company has been able to thrive in its industry through the creativity of its employees, who help to design, build and maintain the company’s complex capital projects. The ability to share knowledge across the organization in real-time is critical when decisions need to be made at a moment’s notice.
Thus using IBM’s enterprise social networking platform, Fluor employees across 60 global office locations on six continents are now united, able to find colleagues with unique expertise to develop and implement solutions for projects issues in diverse industries, including chemicals and petrochemicals, manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, infrastructure, power, renewable energy and more. By helping its engineers, professional staff and construction workers collaborate, Fluor is fostering a deeper level of innovation and knowledge among its workforce.
The Fluor intranet, powered by IBM Connections and IBM WebSphere Portal, contains more than 11 news and information portals and more than 1,200 collaboration spaces with nearly 2,000 active forum participants in the Connections tool enabling the company’s workforce to be more collaborative, responsive and innovative, IBM said. The social business software helps Fluor to unlock new sources of value daily, IBM said.
IBM noted that organizations that are using social technology to engage and empower their employees are improving productivity and unleashing innovation to gain competitive advantage. Indeed, according to a recent report from Deloitte, people-focused businesses generated 26 percent more revenue per employee and had 40 percent lower turnover rates.
“Social business has really changed the way organizations of all kinds interact with their clients and their employees,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager of social business at IBM. “Today, organizations are thinking entirely differently about how to activate employees to drive business outcome. Social business is driving a smarter workforce. When you’ve got a smarter workforce, you’re changing the way the core processes in your business run, leveraging the incredible talent in your organization to meet your clients’ most critical needs.”