Thoughtfarmer's Social Intranet and Employee Engagement paper pulls together a range of statistics that add to the case for social intranets (and I would say more broadly, Social Business). Quoting research by Cornell University, Gallup, Aon Hewitt, and Aberdeen Group they point out the cost of low employee engagement and also the gains for organisations that do use social software (including blogs, wikis and social networking tools). In the rest of the paper you can explore how ThoughtFarmer's own customers have been applying their platform to support the goal of enabling greater employee engagement.

With its office based and field staff all over the state, McIntyre is striving to improve communications with the public and the employees of TransGrid through social media and internal communications. One of the tools he will be using to communicate directly with employees is the newly developed and region specific intranet site “The Wire”. He also participates in regular graduate and company wide forums using online tools like Yammer. Here, McIntyre updates employees directly with any TransGrid related news and listens to his staff’s feedback as they share their thoughts organisational policies and industry issues. This creates a corporate culture of inclusion, along with internal polling of high employee satisfaction and a very low turnover rate – it would seem that TransGrid is one of Australia’s best employers.

Mentioned in a general article about TransGrid, who own and operate the high voltage electricity transmission network in the Australian state of New South Wales, is a great example of how even industrial organisations like this (i.e. not an IT or consulting company) benefit from the use of enterprise social computing. In this case they use a combination of Yammer and an intranet, which I believe is based on Microsoft SharePoint.

A good follow on from my last post, this video is great on two levels. The animated sketching really enhances this great talk by Daniel Pink about what drives us to perform.

There are more sketch videos available from the RSA's Animate series. I also particularly enjoyed Jeremy Rifkin's talk on the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.

Hat tip to Headshift and Channel N.

Last week I had a long talk with a mid-level executive about the rollout of a new employee engagement program in his organization.

(You know it’s gonna be bad when the words “rollout” and “program” appear together. “Rollout” alone is a dead giveaway.)

He told me that he was reluctant to throw his own enthusiasm behind the program, because he wasn’t sure if it was fair to ask the people who work with him to give any more than they were already giving. He just couldn’t get engaged in the engagement program.

This executive isn’t lazy, or lacking in ambition, or afraid of the challenge of employee engagement. He believes that, more often than not, employee engagement is usually a scam.

And he’s right. Employee engagement is a scam.

Hmm. If employee engagement is bad, what about employee engagement with with social computing tools?

Actually, as this post and the comments with it go on to discuss, employee engagement can actually cut both ways depending on the motivation and world view of those behind it. Having said that, I suspect it is actually harder to manipulate people through employee engagement that this article gives credit for. Certainly, its why I worry about the past history of change failure in the projects I'm involved with.

Bearing that in mind, employee engagement with social computing tools is probably no more or no less a scam that any particular employee engagement initiative might be. However, I do see some additional problems with using these technologies that might be perceived as being at the employees’ expense if not thought about with some care:

1. Not allowing people to be social - this means letting people go off topic some of the time;
2. Giving people tools that create more work for them to participate, instead of giving them technology that works so well it becomes part of how they work; and
3. Not being prepared to accept that some people won't want to participate, but also not expecting that some will use these tools to achieve personal career goals (which might mean moving up, but could also mean moving on).

Address these issues up front and I think social computing can contribute positively to an employee engagement initiative.