Celebrating Information Management: Shell's Annual IG Week

At Shell, we believe in the power of information management (IM) to drive business success. That's why, once a year, we host an Information Governance Week - a dedicated time to focus on the importance of IM across our organization. 

A Week of Learning and Engagement 

Our IG Week is a comprehensive program designed to engage employees at all levels of the organization. We typically host 50 to 60 sessions throughout the week, attracting thousands of attendees. The program is carefully crafted to cover different themes and cater to various levels of expertise. 

Here's a glimpse into what our IG Week looks like: 

1. Leadership Insights: We invite our leadership to talk about information and the value it can generate for the business. This top-down approach helps reinforce the importance of IM across the organization.

2. Practical Workshops: We conduct workshops on tools like Microsoft 365, showing employees how to use these platforms more efficiently. For instance, we might have a session on "How to be more efficient using your Teams environment."

3. External Perspectives: We bring in external speakers to provide fresh insights and broader industry perspectives. This year, we were fortunate to have Tori Liu from AIIM speak about the future of IM.

4. Diverse Themes: Each day of the week focuses on different themes, ensuring we cover a wide range of IM topics and cater to various interests and needs across the business.

Recognizing Excellence: The IM Awards 

A highlight of our IG Week is the Information Management Awards. Our senior leadership presents awards to individuals and groups who have made significant changes in IM within Shell. This year, we presented about ten awards, recognizing the outstanding work happening across our organization. 

These awards serve a dual purpose: they celebrate excellence and innovation in IM, and they demonstrate to the entire organization that leadership values and supports good IM practices. 

Evolving the Format 

While our current week-long format has been successful, we're always looking for ways to improve. We're considering spreading the content throughout the year, possibly focusing on a theme per month. This could make the content more digestible and allow for deeper dives into specific topics. 

The Impact of IG Week 

IG Week serves as a powerful tool to put IM on a pedestal within Shell. It shows people what's important, why we're doing it, why it matters to their work, and how they can support and help us in our IM initiatives. 

Starting Your Own IG Initiative 

For those looking to start a similar initiative in their organization, here's my advice: 

1. Secure Leadership Sponsorship: This is crucial for getting buy-in across the organization.
2. Allocate Budget: Even a small budget can go a long way in creating engaging content and activities.
3. Bring Energy: Your enthusiasm will be contagious and help engage others.
4. Be Creative: Don't be afraid to think outside the box. For instance, last year we themed our February 14th sessions around "Love Your Information," complete with laptop stickers that employees still use.

Remember, the goal is to make information management engaging, relevant, and valuable to everyone in your organization. With the right approach, you can turn IM from a back-office function into a celebrated driver of business success. 

This blog post is based on an original AIIM OnAir podcast. When recording podcasts, AIIM uses AI-enabled transcription in Zoom. We then use that transcription as part of a prompt with Claude Pro, Anthropic’s AI assistant. AIIM staff (aka humans) then edit the output from Claude for accuracy, completeness, and tone. In this way, we use AI to increase the accessibility of our podcast and extend the value of great content.