General Motors Corp. is making sure each one of its 180,000 U.S. employees is in the driver's seat when it comes to getting information about employee benefits such as 401(k) plans. The automaker has built a shiny new personalized portal dubbed mySocrates.com for its workforce.

The world's largest auto manufacturer is in the process of rolling out a comprehensive, three-part program that will offer Internet-accessed, self-service applications, and local news, weather, and sports reports to any employee with a computer or a television in their home.

"Our goal was to reach the maximum number of employees and connect them to GM, whether it be at home, at work, or, ultimately, in their car," says GM chief technology officer Tony Scott.

Employee surveys revealed that 70% of GM workers had access to a computer, either at home or work. For the remaining 30%, GM brokered a deal with America Online to offer AOLTV, which includes hardware that provides Internet access through television sets. As a result, the GM portal was designed to be easy to use, whether an employee logs on via a Web browser or AOLTV.

The first generation of the portal worked well but reached a limited number of employees--those with access to computers at home or at the office--and offered only company content and minimal personnel information. The portal's architecture was also extremely limited, Scott says.

After gathering feedback from employees, Scott spearheaded the development of a more-scalable and robust portal built on Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system and iPlanet's application server. The mySocrates.com portal offers self-service applications from Workscape, a developer of customizable human-resources applications that integrate with payroll and HR systems and also provides local content from the Internet.

"Self-service portals are a great way to keep employees informed and have control over their own personnel data," Meta Group analyst Maria Schafer says.

Workscape is hosting the portal for GM and serving as the system integrator. Workscape's proven integration work with other large businesses such as the United States Postal Service, its local content offerings, and the applications' ease of use were significant draws for GM, Scott says.

General Motors' portal reaches all employees, says CTO Scott, who spearheaded the project.

Employee reaction has been favorable: More than 70,000 U.S. employees have signed up for the service, which will be offered to GM's 90,000 workers in Europe in the next 18 months. "One of the design goals we wanted was for each major site, for each country or region, to have localized content to make it the most useful to the users," Scott says.

The agreement with AOL has additional benefits when it comes to the European rollout. "Every country in Europe has a different telecommunications model," Scott says. Rather than set up a single system for all of Europe, Scott is working with AOL so that each country will have a different network for the subsidized dial-up Internet access.

During the peak of the Internet and dot-com boom, several companies announced similar programs with much fanfare--and recently canceled them with much less publicity. Ford Motor Co. and Delta Airlines Inc. offered computers and Internet access to employees for as little as $5 per month.

These programs failed because they were too ambitious and suffered from bad timing, Meta Group's Schafer says. Such benefits are "a nice thought, but execs have to cut down to the bone for the bottom line in the current economic climate."

While heavily subsidized by GM, mySocrates.com keeps costs down by providing access only via a 56-Kbps modem, not broadband. AOL services will cost GM employees $3 per month, or $5 per month with the AOLTV device.

Scott didn't calculate a hard return on investment for the program. But over time, he says, it will improve employee productivity, reduce benefit administration costs, and improve communication. "There's a collection of tangible and intangible benefits," he says.

One analyst agrees. "For medium to large companies, it's simply much easier to communicate benefits using employee portals," says Hurwitz Group's Bob McCullough. "The portal can be a gateway to the benefits provider, whether it's an insurance provider or a financial-services firm."

Eventually, GM employees will be able to enroll in E-learning courses, change insurance options, and schedule conference rooms, among other things--"the productivity enhancing, make-life-easier types of applications," Scott says. Scott's projections are based on his own experience. He says his wife now accesses the portal via the Internet for all the benefit information for which she used to badger him. "I'm no longer the middleman for company information," he says. "My own productivity has improved."