At a conference in Singapore this week, I was asked how to get employees to contribute to company wikis and websites. After so many years of training staff not to speak up, they are wary of jumping in.

Here are 8 ideas to get staff involved:

1. Incentives - Could you offer a $20 gift voucher at Starbucks or a local department store? It doesn’t have to be expensive, but offer a reward and people may start contributing.

2. Make it fun - Start by creating a fun place on your intranet or wiki where staff can share office photos with funny captions, stories about their recent holidays or snaps of their new baby. When they get comfortable, they may be willing to contribute on more serious topics.

3. Go first - Have you or the CEO written an honest and open story about your first day on the job or lessons you’ve learned at work? Show your staff how to contribute.

4. Games - Trivia, games and competitions are big on the internet, think of ways to let your staff have a little fun as a way to start.

5. Ask them - Could you turn the site over to the employees and let them decide what to put on it? You can set sound ground rules such as no profanity and no cyber bullying, but then ask the staff to come up with a plan for internal communications.

6. Generosity - Could you be more generous about lavishing praise on the staff? Everyone likes to see their name, so maybe the company wiki or intranet is a place to recognize employees.

7. Complainer zone - create a place for people to post complaints. This is scary, but answering some legitimate complaints may win you a lot of good will. And most people will get tired of the chronic complainers.

8. Give back - Start by using the site to chronicle a company charity or volunteer effort. It’s great for team building and it makes good copy for your internal communications.

Other ideas?