Recognizing the need for increased communication and collaboration among our globally dispersed workforce, Dow recently launched an internal blog authored by chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris. The blog, Access Andrew, supplements many other employee communications vehicles and is designed to give employees around the world an opportunity to connect directly with our company’s leader and with each other.

Andrew authors the blog himself with minimal editing and input from our legal and communications teams. Since launching the blog, Andrew has tackled a number of topics, including reporting on the annual shareholders’ meeting, addressing marketplace rumors and responding to employee posts about Dow’s work environment. New entries are posted, on average, every 10 days.

Employees have the ability to comment on blog postings – their comments are monitored and reviewed by a global team of communicators 24 hours a day. We encourage employees to join the conversation on the blog, but to ensure their comments reflect the spirit of Dow’s values and adhere to Dow’s Code of Business Conduct, posts are quickly reviewed before publishing. To date, we have received only a small handful of comments that did not meet the blogging guidelines and ultimately were not posted.

Today, more than 11,000 employees visit the site each week, representing about a quarter of Dow’s global employee population, and spend an average of nearly 9 minutes on the page. Each post receives an average of 50 comments. Almost 600 employees have posted more than 800 comments since the site launched, demonstrating that employees truly are joining the discussion.

Perhaps the most exciting element of the blog is that employees are using it as a vehicle to introduce new topics and concerns. In fact, an impressive 35 percent of employee comments are on a new topic different from the posting topic. Another 27 percent of employee comments are in direct response to other comments, demonstrating a true, two-way dialogue. Employees have posted questions and concerns about everything from leadership changes to childcare options, from discussing Dow’s commitment to the environment to ways of managing workplace stress. Leaders regularly join the discussion to respond to specific questions and concerns, and in some cases, set up offline meetings to discuss serious concerns in person. This has been particularly effective in halting rumors and clarifying misconceptions.

One month after the launch of Access Andrew, a short survey was sent to a random sample of employees. Based on the more than 1,200 responses, 68 percent of employees read the blog and 77 percent feel it has enhanced employee communications at Dow.