Updated 10/2009: If you’re looking to set up a Facebook-style network inside of your organization please take a look at this new post on internal Facebooks and expert location. You’ll find some advice you can act on there! - Daniel
I got pretty excited and tweeted about this throughout the day.
I got pretty excited and tweeted about this throughout the day.
Who knew I was looking for diversity?
This morning I had the privilege of participating in a breakfast for the industry-leading “diversity and inclusion” initiative at the office. Since I work for a Fortune 100 company there is a lot of weight behind our diversity initiatives. I was especially glad to hear about a desire to promote inter-generational and cross-divisional inclusion. In other words, our workforce spans 4 generations and even more levels of organizational leadership, and everyone wants the best ideas at the company to be shared as freely as possible so that we can weather the recession.
You won’t be surprised to hear that I think enterprise social networking can cure most of the problems we discussed in the meeting. I jotted down my notes on some of the biggest inclusion problems identified by our group this morning, and the following chart explains the ways an in-house social network can alleviate them. Notice that several cells link to past posts on this blog which should further explain the details:
| Problem | Solution |
| Hard getting face time with the manager | Post status updates and requests for help online, manager can resolve them asynchronously |
| Want to know more about operations of divisions other than my own | Read up on the last few weeks’ work from another group’s web-based project management group site |
| We can no longer afford to spend millions of dollars to run a yearly survey to track employee egagement | Push insta-polls on the internal social network and/or track emotionally-laden keywords in forum/wiki/blog posts |
| Some associates are uncomfortable sharing | Online sharing allows for contributions at one’s own pace and without having to talk face to face |
| Different communication styles for different people | Provide many different avenues to access the company network (i.e. blogs, forums, wikis, IM, phone numbers |
| Need to encourage the sharing of business ideas from all levels of the organization | Company-wide discussion forums allow people to gravitate to the topics that interest them, regardless of their current position |
| Event-based inclusion and career planning can be insufficient on the days when the work group is not meeting | Social networking allows for continuous collaboration and update tracking |
Great, how are we going to get this in-house?
Let’s imagine I download and install fbOpen, the open source version of the Facebook software.
Can we get fbOpen up and running in-house? I know I’d rather we just used the real Facebook or something like it, but anything that gets us past the “can’t share this with the outside world” and “don’t want to deal with constant distractions” arguments against social networks is a plus. So let’s start here, and then see where we can go. I’ve expressed my extreme gratitude at being included in this morning’s breakfast, and I believe I’ve elicited a promise to stand up a SharePoint-based collaboration destination for the participants int his morning’s meeting.
With a bit of luck I might be able to use this destination to showcase a lot of the industry best practices in social networking, expert location, and knowledge sharing. I’ve referred a few of my fellow social networking enthusiasts to the inclusion breakfast series, and I sincerely hope we can make a difference. Wish us luck!
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to promote web-based collaboration and socialization tools at work for the better part of a year now, and I’m starting to think that my initial approach of working the problem from within my IT organization might be the wrong one. We IT types are trained to approach IT problems in terms of risk management and cost savings. Neither of those are obvious strong points for social software, even though they may be great productivity boosts in the future. Perhaps this diversity and inclusion angle is exactly what we need to get some more social collaboration champions on board!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change (readwriteweb.com)
- VSP Wants Facebook Users To See The Benefits Of Eye Care (insidefacebook.com)
- Ten Commandments for Professional Networking through Social Media (sociableblog.com)
- Technomadic Social Media (slideshare.net)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=39fded96-a124-452f-ab86-956b57dacf91)
