Give your people a face

You have utilized team building exercises, company picnics and outings, trained your managers to provide praise, spent a lot of money on corporate retreats and still you sense some disengagement within the troops. Frustrating isn't it? Not even the company's intranet or online employee directory has truly "connected" everyone. You might even say you have "Facebook envy" at how quickly the public social networking site has managed to connect and keep so many folks engaged in such short order. Why is that? Finding ways for employees to connect and remain connected is always a challenge, its what we call engaged in the HR business.  Keeping them connected when they don’t interact frequently is even more challenging. One modern way to create better connections is to provide each employee a user profile that facilitates and personalizes these connections. Think of it as putting the Human back in your human resources. Their user profile can contain their name, photo, position or title, contact info, office they work in, responsibilities, area of expertise, blogs, or anything else you deem necessary to strengthen these connections.  This alone is a step above and beyond the old Excel spreadsheets with everyone's telephone extension and email address … it allows for two fellow employees who don’t really know each other to feel like they know more about their teammate than in olden days. But let's face it, this alone won't do it.

[caption id="attachment_438" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="User Profile sample"][/caption]

What keeps people connected and primed to remain engaged is the ability to stay up-to-date with what their peers are doing, what they're working on, etc. relatively quickly. This is the addiction to social media in a nutshell! This technology is enabling CNN's "24-hour news cycle" at the personal communications level. Online directories are relatively static, except for when the admin goes in to remove names and contact information of those that have left the firm. User profiles are dynamic, self-administered, and engaging by their very nature.

What business reasons would you justify implementing user profiles vs. online directories:

• First and foremost, to push the onus of maintaining updated information to the employee, and away from HR or IT's hands; decentralization and democratization of the data.
• To establish a place for employees to engage with like-minded peers, not simply look each other up.
• To allow employees to "connect", "like", or "follow" their peers regardless of geographical or professional boundaries.
• To search for shared expertise, favorite bookmarks, common interests or ideas; a virtual suggestion box or water-cooler.
• To reduce on-boarding time for new hires.

Many of the lessons of the past few years that apply to the rise of social media platforms port over well to enterprise social networks, and should not be overlooked. Additionally, many users have become accustomed to using these profiles in their personal lives, and will be expecting to leverage the technology in their professional endeavors. Can you think of some of the other benefits that implementing user profiles would have for your organization?

-Steven Hornak

Steven is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Steven can be reached at 305-791-1764, steve@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter @smhornak.-

Accelerate your business

So... you took a long, hard look at the reasons Why you want to try out social technology and one of your goals is to accelerate some portion or process of your business. It could be as simple as you have a very short time frame in which to roll out a new product or service, and have to find a way to do it faster without losing the quality your customers have come to expect. Some examples of projects or goals that could be accelerated include:

• You are introducing a new and very large software application,
• Your intranet is stale and your web development team is buried and can’t get to it to keep it fresh enough for it to be valuable to your team,
• A large policy document needs a rewrite and you need it done quickly, or
• You need to document a business process or system.

Rather than going with traditional development options for a project like this, let’s take a look at how one particular Web 2.0 technology can help you achieve your business goal faster than going with a traditional business response.

A Wiki, named after the traditional Hawaiian word for "fast", is an option you can use to meet any of the goals of projects like this in a very short period of time. A Wiki is a web document created by and editable by more than one person, typically powered by one of many Wiki software platforms available on the market. Access controls and rules can be easily imposed on contributors. How could a Wiki accelerate the rollout of a very large software application?

Traditionally, a technical writer, trainer, or engineer is assigned the task of developing the documentation required to serve the population of end-users that will likely have to use this new and very large software application-bottlenecking the implementation of the system until it is ready. Rather than going this traditional route, a Wiki can be used to democratize the process. What do I mean? Well, rather than have an individual of small group of individuals develop this documentation -a Wiki would allow for contributions to the documentation to be made by ALL of the members of the roll-out team, up to and including end-users! Every developer on the project and every end-user would be able to contribute to the document, much as you are able to edit articles in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is arguably the largest and most popular Wiki project on the planet.

From a Human Resources perspective, a Wiki has many benefits as well.

1. Engagement. Besides accelerating your project, by involving more of your employees and giving them “skin in the  game”, you get more engagement from a greater number of your employees,
2. Cohesiveness/ Teamwork. A tenet that distinguishes a group of people from a team is a shared goal or objective. By making everyone responsible for the document, you are going to get a more cohesive team.
3. Quality. Again, making everyone responsible for the quality of the document spreads out the responsibility from a few to the many. This has the effect of community policing to ensure the company is putting its best foot forward, and generally increases the quality of the output.

Can you think of some of the other benefits that implementing a Wiki would have for your organization?

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Got Social?

Simon Sinek has a fabulous speech that he gave at one of the TED conferences discussing his philosophy Start With Why. Nothing could be closer to the truth when looking at ways to incorporate Social Technologies into the workplace. Web 2.0 tools are almost ubiquitous in our personal lives. We live, learn and play with these tools at home, and the generation entering the workplace will be demanding these tools to make their jobs easier and more fulfilling. In order for your employer brand to remain competitive, you'd be well advised not greet this new workforce with "oh, we have a policy against that here". You need to convene your Training, HR, and IT heads and strategize how these technologies fit, or not, with your culture's values. Then ask yourself, looking at your firm's goals-could adopting one of these technologies accelerate achievement of your goals or maybe even help you blow past your goals and into performance territory you never even dreamed possible? What stakeholders in your business would benefit the most from the use of these tools? Could your supply chain be streamlined or accelerated by better connecting your staff to your suppliers?

Look for KPI's in your organization that could be positively impacted by the introduction of one of these tools. It's important to do this in order to select the right tools for your culture, and to establish some baseline from which to measure benefits to your business. And I'm not just talking about ROI. Also, look for workflows or communication channels that could be streamlined by the introduction of one or more of these tools.

After you have defined your Why's for incorporating these tools, it's time to narrow down your selection... and boy what a range of possibilities you have available to you. We'll take a look at some of your options and their use in the business world next week.

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

A picture is worth a 1000 words

As many organizations are looking to cut costs, training is often quick to be placed on the cutting block.  In the past many organizations transitioned from classroom training to e-learning which promised cost savings in design and delivery time.  However, as budgets tighten further, organizations are looking for even more cost effective ways to train their employees.  Many are looking into more on-the-job training, coaching and mentor solutions. Napoleon said “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours” which translates into a picture is worth a 1000 words.  If this holds true, then a short video is worth millions of words.  Video is a great format for delivering training, and production costs have dropped dramatically in recent years.  In today's "reality TV" dominated world, expensive training video productions of yesteryear are no longer realistic or necessary.  How do we incorporate today’s technology into our training?  And how do we "democratize" it from emanating from the training department to a tool the front lines of our businesses can use?

The simple answer is to empower your employees to shoot video and provide them with a platform for sharing  it.  Using video appropriately enables your employees to contribute to the community that is your organization.  It allows those who are best at demonstrating their expertise in executing a business process to teach others and develop these skills in their peers.  This way, instead of being paired up with one or two people to deliver on the job training, employees are exposed to the best the organization has from wherever that may be in the organization.  The best part of collecting these videos is that over time you develop a searchable archive.  Then, as your experienced workers retire or leave, their contributions stay with the organization.

Many are concerned about privacy and security using the public video sharing services.  But organizations are finding it very affordable to install their own platform to share, comment and discuss video demonstrations.  The first step is to overcome the fear of allowing employees the power to have a voice within the organization.  Leverage the power of social learning through employee videos, and you'll wonder why it took you so long to employ this strategy!

____________________________________________________________________- Alex Santos

Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter @collabor8alex.

Social networks, not always a Field of Dreams

Many organizations are implementing policies to manage employee interaction with social media in the work place.  However, leading organizations are implementing their own social platforms.  These platforms feature the same communication tools that the big social websites offer, connecting person to person.   But these organizations are using them to increase the type and quality of communications among employees via internal Blogs, Wikis and through sharing documents and information.   But the real secret to their success lies in their execution. The predecessor to the enterprise social network was the intranet.  The difference between today’s technology and yesterday’s intranet was in the complexity for the user.  The corporate intranet was far more complex to use and required a much steeper learning curve.  Because of this complexity many had difficulty properly executing and maintaining its use.  Employees were often forced to use it.  Many, due to its shortcomings came to rely on email to serve as there document share, their data collection and communication tool.

So how does an organization ensure proper execution of their new social platform?  First you have to realize that today’s social platform is not like yesterdays complicated intranet.  Your employees already engage on social networks.  They are all, whether there a public or an enterprise social network, user friendly.  There is no better example of their ease of use than the growth in the number of grandparents who are connecting online with their kids and grandkids.

Believing that execution is easy would be shortsighted.  It’s not without it’s own challenges.  As an organization implements theirs they need to make certain that it’s done correctly.  It does take a change in the thinking of the employee and many are reluctant to change their emailing ways.  That old adage of “If you build it they will come” does not hold true without good relevant content.  Content is what drives social media.   Don't make the mistake of launching a bare social network.  A core group of supportive users will develop the initial content enabling a larger roll out.  Driving and developing this early content is where proper execution lies and it can easily fail.  A controlled roll-out within an organization so that the platform develops naturally, with guidance, is the best plan for success.

Through proper execution the platform will take off within your organization.   It will deliver an increase in the quality of communications and idea sharing that cannot be measured in dollars.  As Jef Vandecruys, Global Project Leader Digital Connection said:

“It is important to measure the actual implementation of social media in projects.  It’s not just the theory that matters; the true value is in the execution.  The very first KPI of 'social' is not about monetary value, it’s measuring the evolutions in the internal knowledge.”