Walls

I know of an organization that does not want their IT folks who support the enterprise HR and Payroll systems to have IM clients installed on their desktops. The reason for attempting to place a wall between them and the people they support? 

photo credit - FlickR -Joriel "Joz" JimenezThe IT development manager is afraid that the HR and Payroll end users (who are all IM users), will directly contact the IT staff with questions, issues, problems, rather than following the established protocols of sending all issues and requests to the IT manager first, who then by some shadowy process assigns out tasks one at a time to the development staff.

Prohibiting IM use by the IT staff doesn’t make any sense, and anyway with services like Meebo, Twitter and Yammer, as well as web versions of the other major IM environments, isn’t even practical or enforceable anyway. But putting that aside for a minute, let’s consider some reasons why organizations would choose to operate this way.

1. A need to ‘control’ workers rather than ‘manage’ an organization – in today’s world this is really not sustainable for too much longer. Staff will tire of this arrangement, turnover will increase, and positions will go unfilled as the ‘buzz’ on the environment starts to spread.
2. A general lack of a collaborative spirit or said differently, an environment where problems are either ‘your problems’ or ‘my problems’ never ‘our problems’. It seems like too many IT departments want to spend quite a bit of time making sure that IT isn’t ever blamed for things going wrong or things not getting done.
3. Lack of the correct tools and technologies to enable better collaboration between the ‘real’ users and the IT staffs meant to serve them. This is the area that is most interesting to me, and an area that I try to focus on in my HR Technology class. Wikis, Zoho applications, internal social networks, Ning, heck even Facebook can all be utilized in one way or another to better foster and enable collaboration across the organizations.

The truth is that the walls and barriers will come down anyway. Banning IM use is folly, would an organization also remove telephones, e-mail or talking?

Smart organizations should be making efforts to increase openness and collaboration, not the other way around.

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Welcome to Wiki

Today we launched the RIT Human Resource Development Faculty wiki (internally we are using the term Community of Practice).  Access the wiki at rit-hrd.pbwiki.com (by invitation only, if you are an RIT HRD faculty member send me an e-mail if you did get not your invite).  We envision the wiki as a resource and tool for faculty to share best practices, learn from each other, and get to know each other a little better as well. 

This project was started by I comment I made back in the spring to Professor Donna Dickson, after receiving one of her 'Dear Faculty, here is some information you may find useful' e-mails. My comment was simply, 'I wonder if a wiki would be a better way to communicate that type of information', as well as provide a collaborative, dynamic, knowledge platform, you know all the classic benefits of wiki. 

Once I set up a brief demo using the awesome PbWiki product she jumped right in and supported the project.  Over the summer we met several times to discuss the goals for the wiki, the basic structure, and some ways to give us the best chance for adoption and success.

Here is the what the home page looks like - really clean, simple, and easy to navigate, hallmarks of PbWiki (click the image to see it in full size).

I am a huge proponent of wiki technology, both in the classroom and out as an enabler or platform for enhanced collaboration, knowledge sharing, and improved productivity.  I could post on and on about wiki, but for this post, I am content to acknowledge the HRD wiki launch and also say thanks to Professor Dickson for her support and enthusiasm. 

And also thanks to PbWiki which I recommend highly.

The wiki will only be as good as the contributors, and I am confident that our group is just the type to embrace the Community of Practice.

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Talent Management and Google

This announcement from August got by me, but I think it is interesting and worth noting.  SuccessFactors markets a suite of Talent Management applications ranging from Performance Management, to Compensation Management, to Employee Development.  They announced a new integration with Google Talk to enable real-time chat via the Google platform as well as Google Calendar to leverage a centralized scheduler as well as Google docs and Google Maps. See a screen print below of a Google Chat dialog embedded in a SuccessFactors dashboard.

The interesting thing to me is how a mainstream, entrenched Talent Management platform is opening up to the Google platform, recognizing that many employees are either already using these Google services, or that organizations are starting to encourage the blurring of the internal vs. cloud services.

Another benefit of a platform like SuccessFactors opening up to Google, is the relative ease embedding these Google services in other applications like wikis and blogs.  So a workgroup or organization could set up a shared Google calendar once, and leverage the same calendar in their talent system (SuccessFactors), their internal wiki and perhaps their blogs or other web sites. 

I love to use wiki technology (especially PbWiki) for this ability, and I think it is likely that more and more internally focused applciations will begin to support this simple interoperabiltiy.

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Simple group chat

Looking for a really simple and inexpensive group chat solution to allow your employees, contractors, consultants, and even customers to share information and interact in real time?  Then check out a product from 37signals called Campfire.

Campfire is a web-based group chat tool that allows multiple people to chat, like in a normal IM session.  But the real strength of Campfire is that chat participants can upload and share files, images, and all users can access the uploaded content in real-time.  Transcripts for the chat sessions are saved and can be reviewed later.

Campfire is ridiculously easy to use, and the pricing plans start at $12/month to support up to 12 simultaneous chatters.  There is even a free plan that allows 4 people to use Campfire at the same time, (with a smaller file size upload limitation).

I have used Campfire to quickly organize group brainstorming sessions, especially ones in which the contents of a document needed to be discussed.  It is a great tool, and you should check it out if trying to get teams working together more efficiently.

Corporate IM in 5 minutes

For a time there was quite a bit of debate about the merits of instant messaging in the workplace. Many managers and executives viewed IM as a distraction and a tool that needed to be kept off the desktops and browsers of their staffs.  But over time, and as more workers already familiar with IM began entering the workforce, the IM walls began to come down.

For many job roles, the ability to ask quick questions and get immediate replies proved so beneficial, that even the most stodgy, traditional environments relented to the employee's desire for IM tools.  Many employees simply started using their personal IM accounts (usually AOL Instant Messenger) and started making connections via IM with their most utilized contacts. 

Of course AOL is not the only popular IM service, competing offerings from Microsoft and Yahoo also have their share of users. Bringing all these disparate IM accounts together under one application proved to be important (particularly for the corporate user) so services like Trillian were developed.  The Trillian application lets users log in to multiple IM services through one interface, and simplifies contact and buddy list management.

But there could still be a barrier to the use of corporate IM, that is IT departments.  Initially, these IM services all required a small application to be downloaded and installed on each individual PC.  Many organizations restrict the end user's ability to install any programs on their computers, thus requiring IT involvement and sometimes permission. So many potential corporate users of IM were essentially shut out. In time, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL did roll out web-based versions of their IM clients, but for many, the initial struggle with downloading clients ended their IM initiatives.

Enter web-based IM services.  There are many competitors in this area, but my favorite and the best one is Meebo. Meebo lets you sign in to multiple IM services (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google), all from one unified Meebo account.  It is entirely web-based so it requires no IT involvement, and works from any place you can connect to the Internet.  Meebo even has the ability to create group chat rooms, and chat windows that you can embed on your corporate website, intranet, or wiki.

Best of all is the price - free!  If you are in a small to medium size organization looking to take a very small step into collaborative technology, then have your employees create Meebo accounts, create a few chat rooms and try some Im-ing. The benefits your staff will realize from the 'instant' nature of the communucation and feedback will impress you.

In the next post I will take a look at a more robust platform for corporate chat, Campfire from 37signals.