Platform for Dialogue

Russian Railways' experience in building internal communications has been highly praised internationally. The Russian company won a silver award at The Stevie Awards for Great Employees for the project "How to Reach a Million Colleagues", while its employee service portal beat all competitors at the Digital Communication Awards. In 2022, Russian Railways will introduce new communication formats, primarily online.

The panel of judges of the international Digital Communication Awards named Russian Railways’ corporate platform the best internal communications channel in the world in 2021. The winners were determined by experts in digital business transformation and representatives of the scientific and financial communities.

As Stanislav Sugak, head of the Employer Brand and Human Capital Development Center of Russian Railways, told Gudok, the Employee Service Portal is now Russian Railways’ key internal corporate platform and at the same time the largest corporate platform in the country. "The peak attendance of the portal exceeds 150 thousand people a day. The portal made it possible to transfer the personnel document flow into electronic form and develop new intra-communication tools," noted Stanislav Sugak. 

It may be recalled that the Service Portal is an in-house development of Russian Railways. It takes into account particular features of all production processes and is integrated with corporate IT systems. At the moment, the portal offers more than 50 functions, such as a service for maintaining personal expert blogs, chatting with colleagues, searching for mentors, and promoting initiatives. Concurrently, the resource is constantly being updated: for example, last year the "Online reception desk of the manager" became available to users.

According to Stanislav Sugak, the development of feedback channels is one of Russian Railways' priorities. Every year the company conducts about a hundred surveys on topical issues affecting the personnel - satisfaction and involvement, working conditions, motivation, employer brand, corporate culture. The results are used as a basis for managerial decisions, he said. 

In addition to its own platform, Russian Railways uses social media and messengers. This makes more communication formats available to employees, including user generated content. 

Last year, the comprehensive internal communications development program of Russian Railways received a silver award at The Stevie Awards for Great Employees. About a thousand applications were submitted for this international contest by companies from all over the world that presented their personnel management projects. The panel of judges noted Russian Railways' experience in developing and implementing internal communications and feedback tools.

This year, Russian Railways is going to continue developing channels and communication services on my.rzd.ru platform and introduce new communication formats. "Taking into account the unfavorable epidemiological situation, as well as the penetration of digital technologies in all areas of life, we will focus on the development of the online format," says Stanislav Sugak.

Maria Abdrimova