Issues
Employees spend more and more of their time online. And, thanks to Web 2.0 they expect the same kind of speed, accessibility, publishing capability, and ways to connect with their friends and colleagues at work. Most intranets are decades behind.
We’re not just frustrating employees, but we’re missing important business benefits: innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
Facts
Employees are looking for tools that will better support them in their work. They want to be engaged and connect with their colleagues and networks to better serve their customers.
Organizations want and need institutional collaboration, learning and innovation. They want productivity and competitiveness.
Web 2.0 creates powerful opportunities for supporting and encouraging employee collaboration, knowledge sharing, and learning that didn’t exist even a couple of years ago. Web 2.0 is a relatively inexpensive way to accomplish this. It can even be fun! and we’re only just beginning to see the powerful business benefits.
Learnings
These tools create possibilities for:
- strengthening alignment between organizational strategy and day-to-day work across the institution
- improving operations and communications.
And, if your employees are able to use this tools with RSS feeds, comments and ratings and bookmarking they will be even better able to get what they need when they need it to serve their customers better. And, soon, adding mobile functionality will mean they’ll be able to do all this where they want.
Here are some examples of social media opportunities that exist today:
| “Ownership” | ||||
| Social Media | Orientation | Opportunity | The space | The content |
| Social networks & profiles | Individual centred | Finding/promoting expertise | Communication and/or IT and/or HR function | Individual employees |
| Online communities | Group centred | Collaboration and team work | Function/team/ ‘project’ leadership | Function/team/ ‘project’ members |
| Wikis | Group centred | Content management and knowledge sharing | Function/team/ ‘project’ leadership | Function/team/ ‘project’ members |
| Microblogging | Individual centred | Finding/promoting expertise Collaboration and team work | Communication and/or IT and/or HR function | Individual employees |
| Instant messaging | Individual centred | Finding/promoting expertise Collaboration and team work | Communication and/or IT and/or HR function | Individual employees |
| Community-based design applications | Theme centred | Engaging employees directly in product, service, and process innovation | Communication and/or IT and/or HR function | Individual employees and teams |
| Blogs | Individual/theme centred | Sharing insights and knowledge | Corporate Communications and/or other functions/teams or leadership | Individual employees |
| Podcasts | Individual/theme centred | Sharing insights and knowledge; Training and development | Corporate Communications and/or other functions/teams or leadership | Individual employees |
| Vidcasts | Individual/theme centred | Sharing insights and knowledge; Training and development | Corporate Communications and/or other functions/teams or leadership | Individual employees |
Bottomline
Designing Web 2.0 tools and tactics into your overall internal communication strategy and making the business case is good for your organization and employees.