What do corporate social networks mean just for you?

Almost everyone is familiar with such a new tool for organizing the life of a company as a corporate social network or corporate portals. The idea itself is new and good, only here are the companies where the implementation of corporate social networks has turned out to be successful and brings the business benefit of the company very little. What are the situations in which advanced Russian companies find themselves who decide to implement a corporate social network or corporate portals?







Currently, a large number of people have already heard about corporate social networks, and many have already tried it. Almost everyone can hear that the idea is new and good, except that there are not enough companies where the implementation of corporate social networks has been successful and brings real benefits to the company. Fingers can recalculate projects in Russia, where the implementation is recognized as successful in terms of the number of employees actively involved in the life of the network and the business benefits.

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What are the situations in which advanced Russian companies find themselves who decide to introduce a corporate social network or a more functional product — corporate social portals? :

1. "Desert". For some reason, no one lives on the network. It seems that the project was actively beginning and the benefits were obvious, except that quickly the staff forgot about its existence. It is always very "pleased" the surprise of some employees of companies when communicating with them at our introductory seminar on the introduction of social networks . They are completely delighted with the idea, and when you ask about how your corporate social network is doing (after reading press releases about how great it was implemented), you can see complete amazement on the faces - and what, we have corporate social network?!
   
   
   
   
2. The corporate social network is turning into a “flood”, “facebook”, where the percentage of involvement goes off-scale, and employees who have previously turned off the “classmates” at work have finally found the opportunity to do everything the same thing legally. I remember an example when, after long training and individual consultations, instead of developing the group of his department, posting useful materials, news about new arrivals of goods, the user goes to the group of “non-working” activities and begins to actively use all the knowledge put into it still use the corporate social network.
   
   
   
   
3. "Theater one actor." It so happens that the corporate social network becomes a place for the Elected, and for various reasons. Either the employees who started using the network, are perceived by the collective as “renegades”, and on the sidelines they are given various nicknames: Mr. and Missis corporate social network. Or, the employees responsible for the development of the corporate social network remain alone there and generate content in large volumes to show how effective their work is, and the rest at best read this content. Often such employees are internal communicators or HR specialists who are concerned about the level of employee involvement in the life of the company. Although it also happens that the corporate social network becomes the place of the monologue of the leader, urging his employees to start changing and working in a new way, and they, in turn, silently heed the voice of the management.
   
   
   
   
4. "Honey apiary." Finally, in some companies, corporate social networks perform their primary function and bring the business benefit of the company. This is due to the fact that employees are actively sharing information about the market, best practices, looking for new ideas and implement them in team work. This leads to the fact that the corporate social network becomes a place of accumulation of knowledge, accelerates teamwork, contributes to high involvement (by exchanging opinions and collecting new ideas), also improves customer service and the quality of work with partners.
   
   
   
   

Let's try to depict these options in the diagram:





So now the fun part. And in which of the squares is your corporate social network? To understand this, answer a few questions:

• What is the percentage of active users (those who log into the network at least once a month) on your network?
  
  
  
  
• How many people generate the main content?
  
  
  
  
• Does the corporate social network bring you any benefits?
  
  
  
  
• Does a corporate social network help solve organization's problems? Did it work better after the introduction of the network?
  
  
  
  

After you honestly answer these questions, I think it will not be difficult to determine in which quadrant your corporate social network is located.



And what to do with this knowledge we will talk further in the next article.



ps By the way, friends, colleagues from HSE, and do you know that the Higher School of Economics has its own corporate social network (and this is not a forum and not an email list of interests)? Frankly, I learned about it only at the next conference dedicated to corporate social networks, where it was told how much benefit it brings to employees. So draw conclusions ...



Ekaterina Buzulukova Facebook | LinkedIn