Social Media: Implications for Technology and the Organisational/Employee Interface Gareth Glover &...

Social Media: Implications for Technology and the Organisational/Employee Interface

Gareth Glover & Bowen Pan, Deloitte

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OK – so maybe a little more technical and specific:

What exactly is Web 2.0 / social computing?“Web 2.0” or social computing can be best described as:

A paradigm shift to user-generated content

Extending the control and flow of information to the users and communities that consume it

Trusting users as both participants and co-developers of the features and content we interact with

Embracing collaboration and “the wisdom of the crowd” for collective value

Web 1.0“Interrupt the mass audience”

Structured

Siloed

One size fits all

Passive audience

Top-down, one-directional

Web 2.0“Engage the individual”

Flexible

Collaborative

Communities

Engaged users

Top-down, bottom-up, and lateral

Power lies with: institutions, platforms, and technology

Power lies with: users, communities, and experiences

Mass audience

Company

Push Provide

Company

Push

Pull

Targeted, participative Targeted, participative audienceaudience

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Basic Web 2.0 Concepts

• “Wisdom of Crowds”: the process of taking into account the collective

opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a

question. Wisdom of crowds forms the foundation of “crowdsourcing” –

a process whereby problems are broadcasted to an unknown group of

solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Examples of this

include Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers and vark.com.

• “The Long Tail”: a concept which describes the ability for social media

and online services to sell a large number of unique items, each in

relatively small quantities. Examples of this include Amazon and

TradeMe.

• “Peer to Peer”: a relational dynamic organized through the free

cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for

the creation of a common good. Within such a network, with forms of

decision-making and autonomy are widely distributed. Peer to Peer

(“P2P”) forms the foundation of a “social network”.


Its moving fast .....

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Examples of social computing tools

Chances are, you’re probably already using (or at least familiar with) one or more social tools or sites.

When you hear... Think of... Here’s what it is...

Socialnetworks

Technology that allows users to leverage

personal connections to link to and

communicate with friends, family,

colleagues or others with shared interests

Blogs

Simple online journal entries or update

messages which support text, photos or

video

Wikis

Collaborative Web sites that allows users to

easily create and edit the content,

leveraging the expertise of its users

RSS

(or “Real Simple Syndication”)

Technology that lets users subscribe to,

collect, and read regularly updated

content feeds such as blogs, sound files,

news, weather, and other information

Social tagging & bookmarking

(or “Folksonomies”)

Allows users to store bookmarks they

wish to remember / share publicly and tag

the bookmarks to facilitate searching and

sharing with others

http://www.linkedin.com/

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Examples of social computing tools (cont’d)

When you hear... Think of... Here’s what it is...

Media sharing

sites

Websites that allow users to easily view,

share, rate, and/or respond to media

such as photos, video, and documents

without the need to install any special

software

Presence

(or “Microblogging”)

Very lightweight and portable software

which allows users to share their status by

publishing brief text updates, typically via

the web, text messaging, IM, or email

PodcastsOnline audio or video that users can

download to a device for offline

consumption

Social review

sites

Websites that allow users to search for

peer reviews on a product or service, as

well as to contribute their own ratings &

comments

MashupsA web service that allows users to easily

aggregate content from multiple

sources, creating additional value

Virtual worldsVirtual simulated environments which

users inhabit and visually interact in

through avatars and other media


The organisational/ employee interface

... is your organisation ready to embrace the coming change

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Our employees are changing

We now have four generations of employees in the workforce, each with their own communications perspectives and preferences.1

VETERANBorn before 1946

BOOMER1946 - 1964

GEN XER1965 - 1981

GEN YER1982 - 2000

Style Formal Semiformal Not so serious; irreverent Eye-catching; fun

Content Detail; prose-style writing Chunk it down but give me

everything

Get to the point; what do I

need to know?

If and when I need it, I’ll

find it online

Context Relevance to my security;

historical perspective

Relevance to the bottom

line and my rewards

Relevance to what matters

to me

Relevance to now, today

and my role

Attitude Accepting and trusting of

authority and hierarchy

Accept the “rules” as

created by the Veterans

Openly question authority;

often branded as cynics

and skeptics

OK with authority that

earns their respect

Tactics Print Conventional mail Face-to-face dialogue Phone Some online information

Print Conventional mail Face-to-face dialogue Phone Online tools & resources

Online Instant messaging Conference calls Some face-to-face (if

they’re really needed)

Always online Wired through multiple

devices seamlessly Communicate with the

world

Speed Attainable within

reasonable time frame

Available; handy; easy to

get to

Immediate; when I need it;

I’ll ping you

Five minutes ago

Frequency In digestible amounts As needed Whenever Constant

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Expectations of employees are changingWe can expect an ‘expectation wave’ for usage and adoption of social media as our incoming workforce brings their social computing habits with them.

Generation Y characteristics:

Matches the Baby Boomer generation in size and will be entirely integrated into the global workplace within the next ten years

Responds best to more networked, less hierarchical organizations; and places a high sense of importance on their workplace relationships

Consumes information differently from their Gen X or Baby Boomer colleagues

The upcoming “crew change” will make it increasingly important for employers to attract Generation Y with the tools and information they need to be successful.

More than three-fourths of workers age 20-29 believe that the “social” aspects of work (e.g., connectedness, collaboration) are very important to their overall sense of job satisfaction.

However, about two-thirds of employees from all generations believe that their organization’s leaders do not have a clear understanding of Gen Y’s communication preferences and perspectives.

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Social networking plays a big part in talent retention and the way knowledge workers ‘get the job done’

One of the top reasons employees leave their companies within their first three years of employment is a lack of connectedness & sense of belonging to the organization

In fact, 90% of employees make the decision to stay at a company (or not) within the first six months of their tenure, underscoring the need for robust on-boarding and assimilation

Even entry-level employees are required to digest vast amounts of information, collaborate across geographical & hierarchical boundaries, and continuously multi-task & make quick decisions, all amid a flurry of distractions

Percentage of Employees Who Have Left Their Job Because They Felt Disconnected from the Organization

Many employees find themselves at odds with their work environment and require solutions

which will help facilitate communications, connectivity, information sharing, and productivity.

Participate

70%

I Feel Most Productive at Work When I Am Surrounded by Colleagues with Whom I Have a Good Working Relationship / Rapport

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Online content usage by adult internet users in the U.S.1

45% of adults visit social networking sites on a weekly basis

29% of adults visit user generated content (e.g., YouTube, Photobucket) sites weekly

U.S. IT professionals who actively participate in work-related online communities2

Many employees are forming online social networks of their own with their work colleagues

There is evidence that social computing has been gaining significant traction outside of its

most youthful base of users.

Do not participate

30%

Participate

70%

Employee perspectives

Benefits to the Enterprise

© 2009 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu18

Gen Y employees are

replacing the current generation

FACT #1

of employees

© 2009 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu19

Gen Y employees will bring their

personal communication habits

FACT #2

into the workforce.

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Enterprise social computing benefits

Staff Engagement:

Gain and maintain employee trust and respect for both the organisation and with each other, especially important in the current tough economic conditions, through staff engagement (both employer to employee and employee to employee);

collaboration and more streamlined communication

Turn that trust and respect into productive, profit driven activities through collaboration and more streamlined communication.

Trust & Respect for the

Organisation

Productivity + Increased Profits

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Enterprise social computing benefits – Enterprise 2.0W

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Staff Engagement

Collaboration

Enterprise 2.0

Gen Y Enters the WorkforceFundamental Society Changes

Web 2.0 Characteristics

Web 2.0 Values to the Enterprise

Enterprise for the Web 2.0 World

· Employees create connections (intentionally or unintentionally) with one another and expand their base of trusted colleagues

· Establish and maintain strong workplace relationships

· Immediate feedback between management and employees

· Transparency of all information for employees at all levels

· Commitment and belonging through empowerment

· "Sense of community" increase employee satisfaction

· Quickly on-board and connect new hires

· Non-intrusively understand and address employee issues

· Attract talent who view collaborative, social technologies as a workplace necessity

· Better alumni relations through a strong online community

Talent Acquisition

Talent Retention

Peer to Peer Trust

Morale Reinforcement

Staff Engagement

Staff Engagement Case Studies

Best Buy uses its employee-only social networking site - Blue Shirt Nation as a window into employee opinions and viewpoints. On one occasion, executives got an inside view of just how important the employee discount was to employee engagement and decided that it was better for business to keep the program in its original form.

The U.S. intelligence community dispelled the perception that web 2.0 only engages with the younger generation by creating an internal wiki, Intellipedia, to bolster information sharing across 16 U.S. spy agencies in a post-September 11th world by combining human intelligence feeds-- Intellipedia’s top contributor is a 69-year old analyst.

The Home Depot enabled colleagues or bosses to recognise, praise, or write quick notes of appreciation to other employees on its internal social network -- a feature which helped motivate Gen Y workers

Dow taps into the company’s global retiree & alumni base through DowConnect, its corporate social network for potential contract opportunities when there is a talent shortage

The State of Missouri established their own Second Life island, “Eduisland3,” to nullify the perception of the public sector as technology laggards and attract tech-savvy twenty- to thirty-somethings. Its virtual job fairs were so successful that Eduisland3 now has nearly 10M residents.

Collaboration

Collaborative Feedback

Innovative Workforce

Streamlined Communication

· Harness innovations by unlocking creativity and ideas from any area of the company

· The diverse group feedback accelerates the problem-solving process and draws on collective talents and knowledge.

· Create a repository of reusable intellectual assets that is fresh and current

· More unconscious, and ubiquitous contribution to the knowledge base

· Productivity gains by rapidly getting information into the hands of people who need it

· Accelerate review cycles

· Test and refine new ideas with the market early in the process

· Reduce email volume by having users to "pull" information as opposed to mass-email chains

· Better control the distribution of information and minimize forwarding to unintended audiences

· Get valuable information out of peoples' email inboxes and make it available to others

Staff Engagement Case Studies

Sony’s PlayStation team uses an internal wiki as a way to minimize emails and documentation about unreleased products from leaking to outsiders.

Dresdner Kleinwort a large investment bank in Germany found wikis to be an efficient way to get projects up and running quickly between globally dispersed teams in Frankfurt, London, New York, and Tokyo. In fact, the efficiency and ease-of-use benefits were so compelling that just six months after experimenting with an internal wiki, its traffic exceeded that of the company’s entire intranet. The use of wikis and other web 2.0 tools such as Microblogging reduced email volume by up to 75% per employee and cut the company’s meeting time in half

Using web 2.0 technologies, Cisco allowed its employees and select partners to create and vote on TV and Internet ad content as part of the creative process. We need to decide if we want to tell more than one story in each example

Shell realised approximately $250K in cost savings by conducting its spring 2007 conference virtually and through social media and is exploring opportunities to conduct future conferences in Second Life.

Morgan Stanley created a system to convert email groups into online forums so that access and dissemination of the information can be better controlled.

Deloitte Australia and New Zealand found internal micro-blog as an effective collaboration and communication tool, with over 25% of its employees voluntarily signing up and contributing to its within the first few months. As part of designing its campaign slogans, Deloitte Australia used microblogging to engage its staff to brainstorm the best ideas. The Chief Marketing Officer was extremely impressed with the results – “it’s like having 4,500 chief marketing officers working at the same problem”. The end result: a campaign that has 100% employee buy-in and is highly effective in communicating Deloitte’s messages.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Potential Barriers

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Potential barriers

There are three types of challenges we must address in order to ensure the success of

social media in organisations:

Cultural factorsBehaviors, values, and attributes by which we live & operate as an organization

Personal biases & perceptionsAttitudes and preferences of individual employees and their resulting behaviors

Social computing-specific risksChallenges attributed specifically to social computing tools & technology

1

2

3

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Organizational:

Possible cultural factorsSocial media needs to be made consistent with our corporate values, promoting a

culture that aligns social media more closely with “The way we do things around here”.

Current state(established order)

Risk aversion and fear of

failure

Consensus-driven decisions

Conflict avoidance

Traditional organization

hierarchies

Formal roll-outs, scaled

growth

Future scenario(with social computing)

Value in experimenting and

testing ideas

Collaborative decision-making

Open challenge to opinion

Democratized, flattened

structure

Organic adoption and growth

The CLIENT WayValues

Integrity

Trust

Diversity

Ingenuity

Protecting people &

the environment

High performance

is transformed into...

in alignment

with...

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Individual:

Personal biases & behaviors

In addition to our company’s cultural factors, common individual biases and behaviors

could hinder adoption of social computing tools.

Bias / Perception Challenges

Although social computing software have a reputation for their flexibility and ease of use, some employees simply will not contribute, no matter what

Initial interest could trail off with fading enthusiasm and less frequent usage of the tools

Social computing is incorrectly perceived as trivial or “fun” by some -- and not necessarily as business productivity and collaboration tools

Lack of trust that information in the tools are accurate and up-to-date

Users may be unclear on the business uses of social computing

Mitigating Tactics

Allow some users to consume content without being forced into having to actively create or contribute

Focus on user pull, viral and peer word-of-mouth promotion & dissemination of the tools

Management support and example-setting of social computing as value-driven work tools

Create exceptional user experiences for the social computing tools

Ongoing education & awareness of social computing tools and their benefits

Tie social computing to the business process -- make these tools unavoidable to get employees’ jobs done

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Technology:

Social computing-specific risks

Employees may post and distribute defamatory, harassing, abusive, misleading, or inappropriate content using social software

Security & data protection concerns, as information could make its way into the hands of the wrong person(s)

Mitigation: Leverage existing corporate information risk standards and business conduct policies to provide proper guidance to employees. Avoid ability to contribute anonymously.

The introduction of social computing raises a number of potential risks to the

organization, specific to the technology. Fortunately, many of these risks are easily

mitigated by existing policies and controls.

Social computing provides an avenue to violate existing policies (e.g., copyright, professional conduct) instituted by HR, Legal, IT, and other groups

Employees’ activities and content on social computing platforms could expose the company to legal liability

Mitigation: Review and modify existing policies, as needed, to ensure coverage specifically for social computing.

Employees could become distracted and spend inordinate amounts of time with social software, to the detriment of other critical tasks and responsibilities

Mitigation: Remind employees not to forget their job duties. Also, let employees know that they are encouraged to take some time out of the day for social computing, the same way we normally reserve time for emails daily.

Legal & Compliance

Risks

Productivity Risks

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Technology:

Social computing-specific risks (cont’d)

Corporate & Hierarchical

Risks

Authority may be challenged as the playing field is leveled for employees, regardless of their position in the corporate hierarchy

Some loss of control of top-down messaging as well as the flow of information within the organization

Like-minded, disgruntled employees will have an easier way to find one another and take organized action against the company

Mitigation: Educate management about the paradigm shift that social computing brings and that the business value it produces far outweighs the potentially negative consequences.

At this point, it is difficult to foresee the long-term costs and capabilities required to support and scale social computing on an enterprise-wide basis

Mitigation: Approach social computing in a predictable and controllable environment by starting small and course-correcting as needed.

Technology Risks

Social computing software may not fit into the company’s enterprise architecture, resulting in security, integration or operational challenges

The market for social computing software is highly fragmented, with a bevy of products & services coming from small startups

Mitigation: Leverage Microsoft SharePoint as our core social computing platform, in-line with IT’s infrastructure strategy; build or buy additional capabilities to layer on SharePoint. Leverage MSFT partners.

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