Secretary of State Jack Straw takes part in webchat with help from Chat Moderators

MoJ webchat allows 80,000 employees to question their ‘CEO’ Jack Straw

Secretary of State Jack Straw participated yesterday in a webchat for Ministry of Justice (MoJ) staff. The webchat was hosted by social networking moderation company Chat Moderators at its office in Belgravia, London. The webchat was open to 80,000 MoJ employees including court, prison and probation staff who were able to ask questions on any workplace issues.

Rob Marcus, director of Chat Moderators, explains: “The MoJ is looking for new ways to engage its staff and decided to organise an issues-based webchat. With input from Jack Straw and Carolyn Downs, the Deputy Permanent Secretary of the MoJ, the webchat ran incredibly smoothly and was also a lot of fun.”

Employees were able to question both Straw and Down and discuss issues together as a team. Marcus comments: “This is the fifth webchat we have hosted for the MoJ. By moderating the initiative from start to finish we can take away the risk of possible exposure to inappropriate comments, often associated with social media. We can also help them meet their original objectives of engaging staff in a new way, whilst facilitating discussion throughout the whole organisation.”

Chat Moderators provided the moderation service and software to enable the webchat to go ahead without a hitch. The specialist VIP web chat software and high bandwidth provided by Chat Moderators allowed thousands of concurrent users to be involved without incident.

Three members of the Chat Moderators team were involved in the webchat. A producer, to run the event and deal with any issues which may arise; a typist, to type the VIP guests’ dictated answers; and a moderator, to choose the most relevant questions to ask the guests and identify inappropriate comments.

L-R: Rob Marcus, director of Chat Moderators; Jack Straw, Secretary of State; Aneta Novak-Marcus, operations director of Chat Moderators; Carolyn Downs, Deputy Permanent Secretary Ministry of Justice

About Chat Moderators:

Chat Moderators is a service that takes the management and risk out of allowing user-generated content (UGC) to be published online. Chat Moderators monitors all forms of UGC that are published on a website's community such as discussion areas, forums, chat rooms, picture albums, comment areas, blogs, social network profiles and more.   Allowing UGC online can bring many benefits to a business’ brand and reputation provided it is managed responsibly. Other services provided by Chat Moderators include consultancy, community management and insight reporting.
Chat Moderators is technology neutral and uses real people to undertake moderation work seven days a week from one hour a day upwards, depending on requirements. Clients include Amnesty, BBC, Bauer, Blue Cross, EMI, Friends Reunited, Glaxo, HM Government, Iris, MTV, National Magazines, Orange, Panasonic, Reed Elsevier, Sony, Transport for London, Vodafone and Waitrose. For more information visit: www.chatmoderators.com and www.targetedmoderation.com