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Communicators struggle to build genuine online engagement among employees using the various social tools available for intranets. Study after study shows that few employees use these tools, regardless of how much they might be engaged with external social media. At Bank of Montreal, though, Julian Mills overcame the obstacles to introduce social tools employees at all levels used to advance business goals. In this interview, FIR co-host Shel Holtz talks with Mills about the impetus for the introduction of social channels, and with TemboSocial CEO Steven Green, who worked with Mills to introduce the internal social media tools that drove the interaction on the Bank of Montreal intranet.

(Julian participated via mobile phone; the audio quality isn’t quite up to snuff, but it’s definitely listenable.)

About our conversation partners:

Julian Mills is a management and business development executive with a focus on social media utilization, workplace productivity and marketing innovation. In his role as Head, Corporate Intranet and Social Media at BMO Financial Group, Julian leads that team that maintains BMO’s intranets as well as manages portal renewal and the greater utilization of social business tools for 46,000 employees. Prior to joining BMO, Julian was Vice President of Client Development at Prescient Digital Media, where he worked with Fortune 500 Companies to improve their business performance using employee portals and social business technology.

Connect with Julian on Twitter at @millsj007

Steven Green founded TemboSocial Inc. back in 1999 to provide a polling application for marketing and communications departments. Today, TemboSocial offers a suite of social tools that drives intranet platform adoption and employee engagement for the worlds leading brands. In today’s competitive staffing environment, companies desire to retain their talent and make employees smarter about company business by introducing core business processes related to collaboration, innovation and recognition.

With an impressive roster of clients, such as Bank of Montreal, State Farm, Macy’s and The Cleveland Clinic, and with a reach of more than 1,000,000 employees every day, Steven continues to grow TemboSocial’s role in the modern workplace.

Steven has a BA from McGill University in Montreal and a Social Work degree from York University in Toronto.

Connect with Steven on Twitter at @TemboSocial

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio