Do you need a Corporate Social Network?

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have seen dramatic growth in the last year.  The chances are extremely high that your employees are already engaged on one or more of these networks.  And the chances are also high that your employees are interacting and engaging with each other on these platforms, during the 'normal' work day.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.Flickr - Zach Klein

In fact you could make the argument that staff engaging each other on these networks is really no different than them e-mailing each other, or talking on the phone. But there is a difference.  Corporate e-mail and phone networks are essentially 'private', no one outside the organization can get in, the data and networks are secured and likely archived.  Companies don't usually have to worry about inappropriate content or embarrassing revelations on the internal e-mail network.  Contrast that with stories like this one - Virgin Atlantic Facebook scandal.

But the truth is that many (if not most) of your employees are going to continue to engage on social networks.  As a company you have a few options available to address this situation:

1. Don't do anything, treat employees like adults, and manage performance and performance alone.

Whatever mechanism and tools employees use don't really matter, only results matter. Whatever information, learnings, and discourse take place on external social networks remains 'in the ether' so to speak.

2. Block employees from accessing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like from the office

Estimates vary on the number of companies that block social networking sites.  Last year the firm Challenger Gray & Christmas released a study claiming 25% of companies were blocking Facebook. Blocking these sites addresses your immediate concerns (time wasting, inappropriate content, etc.), but may spawn a new set of problems (employee dissatisfaction, Gen Y employees leaving, disconnecting staff from their networks that actually help them with their job duties).  But if you feel like you have a problem that blocking these sites will solve, chances are you have more serious employee relations and performance issues.

3. Allow access to external social networks, but set and enforce guidelines as to their appropriate use

So you realize that staff are on these networks, and while you may not be ok with that, you understand it, and define and enforce guidelines for their use. Many organizations are going down this route, it is a more pragmatic approach that attempts to balance corporate and legal concerns with employee satisfaction.  There are lots of examples in this area, a good one from the Higher Ed space is from DePaul University.

4. Develop or deploy a Corporate or Internal Social Network for your employees

This option recognizes the utility and attractiveness of social networking to your employees and attempts to harness that power and energy to drive increased productivity, knowledge management, and community building.  If you are not familiar with corporate social networks, the simplest way to explain one would be 'Facebook for just your employees'. But that kind of description is certainly incomplete and possibly misleading. 

Most corporate social network platforms start with the employee profile, a way for the employee to indicate personal and professional information about themselves. This profile information enables staff to 'find' each other, based on tags or keywords.  This facilitates making connections with the right people for supporting a new project or initiative where specific skills are needed.

In addition to the profile, these platforms usually possess some type of collaboration tools, like blogs, forums and wikis to promote information sharing, discussions, and the development of a sustainable corporate knowledge repository. There typically is the ability for employees to upload and share content such as documents, images, and video. Also, chat and integrated IM may be included.

These platforms can be developed from widely available open source platforms, be licensed from one of many vendors in the spaces and deployed as a subscription-based service, or licensed and installed on the company's own servers and then deployed to employees.

This market is crowded, so I will hold off to another post getting into the details and vendor profiles, but I will say that it is an emerging market and one that deserves attention. But for a company that really wants to capture the value and promise of social networking to drive business results, the internal social network may just be the way to go.

Trying out Rypple

Heard of Rypple?

Until a few days I hadn't either until I read this post, from the HR Capitalist blog.  After reading the post, and checking out some other press and buzz on Rypple, I applied for the Beta program and thanks to David Priemer at Rypple, I was quickly invited to participate.

Why was I so intrigued?  Well, Rypple has a great concept, it enables anyone to solicit fast, meaningful, and anonymous performance feedback on literally any topic.

The process is straightforward and intuitive. Ask a question, enter three attributes or criteria to be assessed, and invite folks to provide feedback.  Responders are not required to give their name or e-mail address, so the responses are assured to be anonymous.

For my test, I decided to use Rypple for a quick, mid-course evaluation for the students to rate my performance as an Instructor.  Rypple lets you pose a topic or question for feedback and then indicate three criteria, or attributes that are to be evaluated.  You can re-use these same attributes or tags on further feedback requests, enabling you to get a view over time of your performance against a key measure like 'Creativity' or 'Leadership'.

So for my test, I asked all the class members to respond to the following question:

How do you feel the Leveraging Technology class is doing in these three areas?

The three categories or attributes I asked to be evaluated on were challenging, interesting, and relevant. Respondents can also enter free form text responses to 'What you like' and 'What can be improved'.

I sent out the request for feedback on a Sunday morning, and within 10 minutes I already had received feedback.  Within an hour or so, I hade received feedback from six students, and three or four more gave their feedback in the next day or so. Most of the feedback was really solid, and I immediately noticed a theme in the responses, something I need to improve in the second half of class.

So about ten students gave precise, informative, anonymous feedback in a day or two, and the entire process took me about 15 minutes to set up, and each student no more than three or four minutes to respond.

My other alternatives to soliciting this kind of feedback would be to use a tool like Survey Monkey (good, but certainly takes more time to create and administer), or the survey tool in my Course Management System (not that good, and I would waste time figuring it out since I've never used it).

The advantages of Rypple - ease of setup, anonymity, sheer speed of the feedback loop, cost (free).

The shortcomings of Rypple - not easy to get summary information, no ability to export feedback into another tool or system for further analysis. 

But honestly, Rypple seems designed for one thing, simple and fast performance feedback, and it does that one thing very well.

I encourage you to check it out - Rypple.

HR and New Technology - follow up

A quick follow up to the HR and New Technology post from earlier this week.  A point I should have made originally, in fact. Here it is:

If HR does not start learning, trying, embracing some of these new Technologies (Twitter, Yammer, YouTube, Facebook all the usual suspects), they will take root in the organization anyway, HR won't know what the heck happened, and jump back into classic 'regulate, monitor, make a policy so we don't get sued' mode.

Months ago I 'claimed' the Yammer domain for my organization.  I invited two or three HR colleagues (who are pretty tech savvy) and tried to get some interest and momentum in the tool.  But nothing happened.  Could not get the HR folks to see the value (or even attempt to see the value) in a tool that allows micorblogging, threaded discussion, image and file sharing, groups formation etc.  In a 'perfect' world, HR would lead the drive to adopt these types of tools in the wider organization.

Today, out of nowhere, I noticed a flurry of activity on our Yammer network.  It appears like one class of students have decided to sign up for Yammer and create a group to facilitate collaboration and information sharing. This could have just as easily been a faculty or administrative department, the specifics don't really matter.  What matters is that the organization did it on its own.

And what happens if this group discovers Yammer to be a great tool and spreads the word to the wider organization?  Maybe they'll get some kind of recognition or be recognized as 'innovators'.

Exactly he kind of PR that most HR departments really need.  That's ok, keep processing the forms, keep folks paperwork up to date, and try not to get noticed.

Rant off.

An opportunity for HR in 2009

Ok, you are probably sick of reading blogs, analyst opinions, and watching Webinars that all keep saying the same thing: in 2009 there are opportunities for HR Technologists to make substantial impact deploying systems or platforms to improve collaboration, networking, and information sharing. 

Take a look at this quote from the Collaborative Thinking blog by Mike Gotta:

An opportunity for HR in 2009

Generational shifts: GenY and aging workforce trends create opportunities for HR groups to take on a much more strategic role. Employee, retiree and alumni social networks for instance have the potential to help organizations become more resilient and agile by allowing it to capitalize on its internal and extended relationships - often in ways not constrained by formal institutional structures

 How about this one from the Aberdeen Group's Kevin Martin:

While HR and IT can often butt heads regarding HR systems implementations, Aberdeen's research has uncovered that HR should collaborate with IT to advance Web 2.0 initiatives and achieve the above-referenced common organizational objective: organizational knowledge capture and transfer.

And if you come to the realization and conclusion that social networking and collaboration technologies are the right tools for your organization and want to champion their adoption and deployment but are faced with skeptical or less-informed management? How do you convince the 'old-guard' managers and influencers that social technologies are a valuable, soon to be essential tool, and not just a distraction from 'real work'? How about this answer from Knowledge Infusion:

 Don't try. Start at grassroots level with a ripe and receptive department or business unit. Once there is success and viral effect, the old school executives will take notice and support an enterprise approach.

You know, deep down you know, that jumping in to the Web 2.0 world is the right thing to do in 2009.  The start-up investment is extremely low, the learning curves are short, and there are loads of articles, blogs, case studies describing how numerous organizations have approached and have had success with these tools.

Don't wait for the jokers in IT to do this and grab all the glory a year from now!

Downturn dilemma

Stock market cratering, employees on edge with 401(k) values plummeting, layoff rumors buzzing, not a great time here in corporate America.  While I am not smart enough to predict how all this will shake out, I do know one thing, your organization may need to start postponing planned or needed technology projects in order to cut costs and ride out the storm.

What can you as an HR Technologist do in the interim?  Because in the current environment your employees are more nervous that ever, your need to help your company execute the strategy is more critical than before, and you may have had your project funding and/or resources yanked from under your nose.

In a strange way, the downturn may actuallly help you kick-start some experimentation and pilot projects using technologies that are simple to implement, do not require a significant investment, and don't 'trap' you into a long-term situation that you worry you won't be able to afford.

Some ideas:

1. Kick-start a Yammer trial with the HR department

2. Organize and seed a simple wiki to share internal infomation in your department (everyone's e-mail inbox is maxed out already) - check out PbWiki or Socialtext, both offer free versions totally acceptable for a trial deployment

3. Get a read on your Employment image in the Web 2.0 world.  Search for your company name followed by 'Jobs' or 'Careers' on Google, FlickR, YouTube, Facebook and other popular site where your target candidate pool congregates.  What are you seeing in the results?  Do you need to upload a simple 2 minute recruiting video to YouTube?  You probably already have something like this on your corporate website, it will take you 5 minutes to get it on YouTube and cost you nothing.

4. Get on Twitter. Use Twitter Search to see who and what is being talked about your brand, industry, region. Consider if an active presence on Twitter makes sense for your brand. Save the Twitter search(es) you need as RSS feeds in your feed reader.

And here is another point to consider, whether your focus is tying to build better community and collaboration among your employees, or to gain insight to the external community of customers, prospects, potential applicants, either way those folks are already out there in Web 2.0, talking about you, commenting, tagging, and influencing your organization. 

So, maybe you no longer have the funds for the ERP upgrade, or the new Applicant Tracking System, but there are lots of other HR Technology avenues to pursue in the meantime.

What else can you be doing to make sure when the downturn shifts back to an upturn you are smarter and more prepared that before?

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photo credit - FlickR Simon Willison