Virgin Media in the UK is deploying a suite of tools from Cisco to support company-wide collaboration:

“Virgin Media, one of the UK’s entertainment and digital communications companies has taken a step to becoming a more social business. It is deploying Cisco collaboration tools to its 15,000 workers.

Virgin is deploying Cisco Quad, WebEx and Cisco Unified Communications throughout its business. This initiative will enable staff at Virgin Media to take advantage of its ‘Flexible Working’ initiative.

Elisa Nardi, chief people and services officer, Virgin Media hopes that this will bring about a culture change across the organisation. He hopes that the introduction of these collaboration tools will bring a ‘more agile and engaged workforce‘.

Virgin Media is enabling a ‘more flexible and collaborative work environment’ said Nardi. ‘Our people will be able to connect using video, chat and activity feeds from the office, when working from home and on the go’.

It expects to move out of pilot testing its 1,000 staff in March and eventually migrate 5,000 workers onto the new solution.“

I truly hope that Elisa Nardi from Virgin Media doesn’t believe that “the introduction of these collaboration tools will bring a ‘more agile and engaged workforce.'” In line with my work, and especially Collaboration Roadmap, that’s arguing that technology drives culture. I sincerely hope that Elisa is instead acting on the belief that the organization’s collaboration mandate, cultural change initiatives, social business governance, and adoption work – supported by various Cisco tools – bring a ‘more agile and engaged workforce.’