Enterprise Knowledge vs. Individual Job Security
SteveThere is lots of energy and interest in implementing 'social' collaboration systems inside the Enterprise. ;)
Flickr - steve took itThese systems have many goals, chiefly the facilitation of employee collaboration, development of a corporate knowledge base, and to provide a platform to speed new hire productivity.
For any of these 'social' systems to be effective, they must engender enthusiastic support and adoption by the organization's ranks. Employees must see the benefit in contributing and participating in these systems. They must be comfortable sharing information and sometimes explicitly documenting the 'how' of their work processes.
But in a climate where it seems like corporate America sheds thousands or workers every day, does it make sense that many employees will be reluctant to openly share and document this tacit knowledge?
If an employee feels like the safeguarding (in their heads), of this critical information is their best defense against a possible layoff, are they likely to enthusiastically participate in social systems, that rely on making such 'internal' knowledge transparent.
Is it possible that the implementation of corporate social systems can benefit the enterprise, but harm the individual employee?
What do you think?
Reader Comments (2)
My feeling has been that the reluctance to be open has less to do with job security and more to do with the fact that the behavior is not intuitive to most workers. Most workers are used to one to one communication (email or phone). Or if there is one to many communication, it is thought out and well prepared. They are less comfortable with less formal, open communication that the whole work group can see and frankly don't see the purpose. My tactic in these situations has been to use the tools myself and do what I can to drive traffic to them -- i.e., instead of sending an email, I write a post on an internal discussion board and sign everyone up to receive an alert to read the post. I think I'm slowly getting my fellow co-workers to follow suit but the verdict is still out on that one.
Andre - Thanks for the comment, I think your observations are spot on. I am not 100% sure I really believe that most employees would be reluctant to 'share' more due to job security issues, but I have seen the some comments suggestion the same on some related articles lately, so I thought it merited discussion. Your strategy of driving attention and traffic to the new 'social' tools makes sense. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Steve