Why the Department of Veterans Affairs Chose Jive Software

For federal agencies looking for a modern, social solution to connect employees, spark engagement and better serve the public, the VA Pulse program might be the...

By Jason Fornicola Federal News Radio

For federal agencies looking for a modern, social solution to connect employees, spark engagement and better serve the public, the VA Pulse program might be the model for the future. Developed by Jive Software, the centralized, online platform provides VA employees access to resources and expertise of fellow staff in a user-friendly manner. The platform allows employees to share important resources, get answers to care- and process- related questions and connect with VA employees nationwide.

VA Pulse was designed to allow for connection, collaboration, idea sharing, and innovation and ultimately uphold the standard of excellence at the point of care.

Today’s environment of email, instant messaging and conference calls could soon give way to online social networking platforms to enhance productivity. According to a July 2012 study by the McKinsey Global Institute titled, The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies, “more than 1.5 billion people around the globe have an account on a social networking site, and almost one in five online hours is spent on social networks – increasingly via mobile devices.”

Businesses have caught on as well, with companies utilizing popular tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with customers and key stakeholders. In fact, the McKinsey report predicted businesses could realize more than $1 trillion in potential annual value. “Social technologies, when used within and across enterprises, have the potential to raise the productivity of the high-skilled knowledge workers that are critical to performance and growth in the 21st century by 20 to 25 percent,” according to the report.

Jive Software, the technology platform that powers VA Pulse, first implemented and evaluated the program about a year and a half ago at three pilot sites in New Jersey, Texas and California. It supported 1,000 users working in capacities from administration to clinical with the intent to provide for better employee engagement across the VA. The success of the pilots led the department, headed by new secretary Robert McDonald, to move forward with a national roll-out.

According to Jive Software Federal Director Jim Kovach, who also is a veteran, VA Pulse brings the user experience one is accustomed to in his or her consumer life – through platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook – to the work lives of VA employees.

“We’re out here in our consumer world and we’re enjoying the experience that we get, but then when we come to work it’s vastly different,” he said. “We’re back to the 1990s whether it’s with email or intranet portals or even instant messaging or some of the tools that have been around forever and we really haven’t moved the needle too much in the form of communication and collaboration when it comes to that. So, with Jive and enterprise social networking technologies for the workplace, that’s what we’re intending to do. We’re intending to improve communication and collaboration that users require for their work today – to serve today’s mission, if you will.

“‘Reply all’ is not a form of collaboration,” he concluded.

Kovach also said the platform offers users numerous points of engagement, from simply asking a question, commenting on discussions, posting ideas, participating in polls, creating collaborative groups, as well as the traditional social features of liking, rating, and sharing content. “You can also monitor and stay current, or maintain situational awareness, on all the relevant on-goings of the community,” he said.

Recruitment and retention

VA Pulse, according to Kovach, is one way to help the VA recruit and retain the best and brightest to government service, including the influx of millennials looking for work.

“We all know the next generation workforce is not inclined to use email, or any other 1990s utility for communication and collaboration,” Kovach said. “Most of them grew up with social technologies and user experiences, so for them it is expected. Many workers join organizations, are assigned their email account and access badge, and after that it is ‘best of luck’.”

But Kovach says Jive offers something more. “Jive will give them a virtual 24/7/365 community to join, and the ability to immediately connect with those relevant to their job function,” he said. “The ‘on-boarding’ and provisioning time for them to become productive decreases significantly.”

Helping caregivers help those who served

Most importantly, VA Pulse figures to change the way caregivers serve the men and women in uniform who come to the VA for help.

“If I was a doctor or nurse and I could leverage the collective best practices of my colleagues to find efficiencies or improvement in patient care, then I imagine that would influence decision-making for the better at the point of care,” Kovach said.

“Capturing intellectual property from staff that may rotate in and out of a department is another area that can be leveraged collectively by clinical staff,” he continued. “In fact, outside of the VA, we have seen that challenge time and again from many clients.”

Kovach detailed “brain drain,” whereby the organization has had no efficient or easy-to-use means by which to capture all the expertise and experiences, in particular over an entire career, of its employees. More often, he said, their contributions are buried in an email or computer drive that nobody knows about.

“Very simply, organizations with better connected and aligned employees perform better,” Kovach continued. “Employees who are engaged with their work and each other deliver higher quality work for their organization and their customers. If a doctor or nurse in Alabama can discover new or innovative methods of patient care from a VA staff member in California that they wouldn’t have known existed, then that translates directly into improving the VA’s overall mission of patient care.”

Day-to-day experience

So, how does the Jive Software technology work?

“The platform is designed to support the way people work today,” according to Kovach. “Email, for example, is where many employees spend a significant amount of time. Workers can answer questions, respond to requests and work collaboratively right from their email client, and not even be required to log on to the system.”

The platform also provides for mobile compatibility, which will help users who rely on smartphones and tablets as part of their workday.

“Same thing with their mobile devices and the ability to interact while on the go, away from their desktop or laptop,” he said. “The Jive platform is designed with a ‘mobile first’ premise, and provides for both native mobile apps and browser mobile user experiences. Collaboration features are central to the entire application. Easy navigation and one-click efficiency to share, comment, invite, notify and participate are present throughout all aspects of the platform.”

Breaking down silos and bridging gaps

Organizations of all sizes, public and private, can develop silos that stunt growth and collaboration. Jive’s platform works to break down those barriers and bridge gaps to spark collaboration.

“By leveraging the core feature set of Jive, the first bridge or gap that is overcome is actually being able to discover people that you otherwise wouldn’t know existed,” Kovach said. “People are the core to every enterprise and by simply connecting the people the silos begin to take care of themselves. The people ‘bridge’ begins to take shape as the connective tissue forms across the enterprise. From there content is leveraged, efficiency is gained, email is lessened and the work life improves.”

Success and adaptation depend on the user experience

Like any new technology, the user experience is essential to getting people to come back for more. “The user experience is critical when it comes to end users because you’re dealing with a wide set of end users and in today’s workforce we’re dealing with multiple generations from folks who are very Internet savvy to folks who perhaps don’t even want to use an Internet browser,” Kovach said. “The user experience has to be clean, it has to be crisp and it has to be easy.”

Kovach says organizations mistakenly think because they have a wiki or a blog or even an ideation capability that they have it all solved for the enterprise. “This is far from reality,” he said. “The reality is, a disjointed or inconsistent user experience across those types of technologies often result in poor adoption. If users don’t find value or the experience is just too painful they will not return.”

Ultimately, Kovach said anytime is the right time for federal agencies to become more efficient and productive, and as it relates specifically to the VA the volume of customers is staggering.

“It’s clear, business-as-usual technologies and work processes are no longer sufficient,” he said. “I would also suggest that social networking technology has proven itself in the market, certainly within Jive’s customer base, as the only path forward for organizations to support the collaboration demands of their business or mission of today.”

What does VA Pulse look like?

Kovach says the user interface has a number of different viewpoints, not too unlike a LinkedIn experience where you might log in and see relevant feeds of information. Trending content and things your connections have shared, produced or commented on will appear. The user will see a very quick snippet to determine if it is relevant and if so, s/he can click on it and investigate more.

From there, a significant advantage is in the follow up and connection capability. “If I have questions then I can hit [the poster] up,” Kovach said. “You could be on the other side of the country and I may not ever even have met you, personally, but we’re both in the same line of work. So now we’re connections on the community and we share information back and forth, so we have this virtual connection.”

This is where Kovach sees the platform’s true power that can’t be provided by email, and intranet portal or web conference. “That connection gives you the situational awareness that you otherwise would not have,” he said.

There are also items that a user may have tagged whereby any time a certain phrase is mentioned the user would want to know about it. “There’s things that you can create, a ‘your view,’ if you will; things that are absolutely relevant to you.”

If a user is involved in a task force or some type of actual on-going project, s/he can go to where those projects are – describe by Kovach as work spaces or work groups. “From there you can go in and out of the various projects and be collaborative and contribute as you are required to,” he added.

Kovach also noted it works seamlessly with other applications in the traditional desktop experience. “From there you can toggle off of it and go into another application or go back to doing an email or something else.”

Ultimately, Kovach sees VA Pulse and, more broadly, Jive’s capabilities as an opportunity for users to enhance productivity in a way that suits their needs and preferences. “It presents itself in a very user-friendly fashion and it gives you, as the user, some control over what you would like to see and where you would like to spend your time,” he concluded.

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