Archive for June 2008

More on gaining social capital by losing good people

I posted last month on April's Harvard Business Review article explaining that an old employer's social capital may go up after an employer leaves.

This dealt specifically with the increase in patents a firm might experience after the departure of an inventor to another company. The point is that the old firm tends to gain knowledge from the new company (through an increase in social / relationship capital) as well as the new company gaining knowledge (in the form of human capital) from the old firm.

Well there is also some research reaching very similar conclusions in this Summer's MIT Sloan Management Review.


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/more-on-gaining-social-capital-by.html

 

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Who owns the social network?

Chief Learning Officer magazine ask which function (HR, IT, corporate communications, knowledge management or learning and development) should own an organisation's approach to social networking.

Their answer:

"HR is more likely to own any internally facing social network, but that arrangement isn’t common enough to be considered typical.

When you look internally at an employee-oriented community, you’ve got a number of benefits or goals that you’re looking to achieve with social networks.

They help create a corporate culture of sharing and teamwork. They help increase intracompany communication and collaboration. They facilitate the identification of subject-matter experts. They can improve employee retention because technology is creating new bonds among employees and between employee and company, and that adds a human element to the company.”



Given my past couple of posts about HR's role in steering web 2.0 and social networking, there's a lot of ground to make up before they can take on this role.

Come on in and play

Commenting on a recent post on web 2.0 for recruitment on my HCM Blog, one reader noted that HR's use of the available technology tends to be quite poor.

I think that's largely true.

The CIPD's web 2.0 in HR report notes that:

"More than 30% of the population (UK) have read a blog, 10% have created one and nearly 7% subscribe to an RSS feed."


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/come-on-in-and-play.html

 

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  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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CIPD: HR's use of web 2.0

The CIPD have published a short, initial discussion document on 'HR's use of web 2.0 for strategic business impact' (disclosure: I bid for this work but didn't get it).

The report includes case studies provided by Pfizer, 3 government departments and T-Mobile.

I'm pleased to see that the CIPD recognises that web 2.0 provides 'the potential to change the way people interact and work' which 'offers HR a new way of making a significant contribution to an organisation's strategic and operational goals'.

However, I'm not sure the report offers much to help us do this (and to be fair, I don't think that's its objective either).


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/cipd-hr-use-of-web-20.html

 

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  • Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
  • Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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Toyota's nerve system

There’s a great example of best fit people management in this month’s Harvard Business Review. The article proposes that Toyota’s ability to manage contradictions (along with the Toyota Production System) is the main source of the company’s success.

I don’t deny that dealing with paradox is an important capability, and in fact it is increasingly so, but my reading of the research identifies Toyota’s development of social capital as the engine of the company’s growth.

So I could have posted on this here, but the case study is a great example of best fit HCM as well so I actually did so here.

Do take a look.

Rehumanising the workplace / BT

Contrasting with the Microsoft case study, this was an example of social media being introduced ‘under the radar’.

I’d come across the case study earlier on Melcrum's blog and have also subscribed to Richard's.

The case study means quite a lot to me because of some earlier involvement in BT, which included writing some content on performance management for their intranet. I also had several conversations with Margaret Savage while she was at BT about liberating employees from over controlling managers – social media seems to have been one way that BT has been achieving this. (I would have said achieved if it wasn’t for the 20 calls and 3 different attempts to get a BT phone line installed recently)


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/rehumanising-workplace-bt.html

 

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  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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Microsoft Academy Mobile

I thought this was a great case study of social media implementation - and the opposite of the "sneak it in" approach.


The implementation started slowly with pilots, the development of some content, getting management onboard and identifying champions, but then took place through a very major launch. People were provided with podcasts on SD cards and were supported to try podcasting out. To take it forward, Microsoft provides 'podcasts in a box' - all the equipment someone needs as long as they produce 3 podcasts a month.


















More thoughts on employee communication (part 2)

3. Trust your people and use social media

Presenters gave some great examples to show that organisations have lost control of the conversation. Employees are going online to join interactive conversations about our companies – we need to enable this.

The best web based communication combines web 2.0, the research web by giving people access to data; web 2.0 - the social web by giving access to tools, and what Steve Crescenzo termed web 3.0 - the multimedia web by entertaining people.


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/more-thoughts-on-employee-communication.html

 

  • Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
  • Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
  • Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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More thoughts on employee communication (part 1)

Here are the rest of my key learnings from the Internal Communication Summit that I have been attending over the last two days.

One point that was made several times is that there are increasing challenges in delivering communication that gets read by, and leads to new understanding or actions by employees. Firstly, it is growing harder to get people’s attention, particularly when they are picking up their emails on blackberries and other devices. Secondly, there is increasing cynicism over use of business-speak. People are sick of hearing from ‘suits’ who aren’t seen as authentic and end up playing bullshit bingo.

Organisations can respond to this new environment by:


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/more-thoughts-on-employee-communication_06.html

 

  • Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
  • Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
  • Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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The mother of all intranets: IBM’s w3

A couple of days ago I was listening to an interesting Business Week podcast featuring the journalists who recently updated the magazine’s article Blogs / Social Media will change your Business.

Talking about IBM, the journalists explain that the firm is developing their own versions of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and Wikipedia to develop not so much an intranet, but an intra social net. They see the key to getting their 400,000 people on this as making the tools corporate without loosing the magic and appeal that comes with using them when they’re outside and free.


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/mother-of-all-intranets-ibms-w3.html

 

  • Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
  • Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
  • Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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Employee Communciation Summit

I’m attending Simply Communicate’s Employee Communcation Summit today and tomorrow.

It’s an interesting conference, and I sort of wish I’d decided to live blog it (when I’ve done this before, at last year’s CIPD conference, I’ve found it very valuable to my learning as it forces me to internalise each presentation and articulate my perspective on the topic that’s been presented).

I’m not live blogging this conference however, possibly because I’ve got lazy, but also because I don’t find I’m yet as clear in my own thinking on communication and web 2.0 as I am on HR.


Continued at: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2008/06/employee-communciation-summit.html

 

  • Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
  • Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
  • Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
  • jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

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