5 Facebook Lessons to Improve Employee Engagement in Your Company

So perhaps your company isn't sold on this whole Myspace/Facebook thing. Perhaps they've dismissed it as a fad for young people, much like how the Internet had been dismissed when it first exploded over a decade ago. You may even be hearing the familiar concerns around "lost productivity" and "control of content" that you heard during the explosion of the Web.

Few today would argue that the Internet is a fad or that it's not important to an organization. But the Internet from 10 years ago is not today's Internet. Today's internet is all about collaboration. Sure there is a lot of over-inflated hype in web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 but there are underlying truths you can benefit from.

Today, according to Forrester, over 60% of Internet traffic is considered User Generated Content (UGC). This is not a "revolutionary" event. It didn't happen overnight. It's simply an alternative means to communicate and collaborate that can be more efficient in some situations. IS it Facebook? No! I sure hope not! But the underlying concepts that Facebook and similar environments have created can teach us several lessons in employee engagement. Lessons that will help your company be successful.

These concepts can be applied to your corporate applications or portals. In fact they can be applied outside of technology into your processes and meetings to drive employee engagement and collaboration. In this post, I've listed 5 Facebook lessons for your corporate consideration.


1. PERSONALIZATION

No two Facebook profiles will be exactly the same. This is because your profile is unique just like you are. In Facebook, the world revolves around you. It's your friends, your applications, your feeds, your notes, your wall, your profile that everyone else connects to. This level of personalization isn't just an "ego fix" (although that's part of it). It drives efficiency. With all the websites on the Internet, you are never going to see them all, nor would you want to. We often hear about how the Millennials spend so much time on the Internet, which there is some truth to, BUT it's only on a few select sites. These sites cater to the individual needs giving them ONLY what they need (and perhaps a few ads!).

Can you see how an employee might benefit from having everything at their finger tips? And don't forget the "human" piece. Companies often say, "you matter" but then only communicate in a "mass communication" or "form letters" that treats you like everyone else. Extreme personalization caters to the individual.


2. AGILITY

In a previous blog, I commented on a Forrester finding that showed only 10% of the knowledge you need, as an information worker, is actually acquired through formal training. The 90% is actually sourced ad-hoc and developed via collaboration. The speed of commerce is simply too fast, to formally learn things. And the cost to deeply understand is often outweighed by the realities that knowledge has a shelf life! Agility in how we get information, how we share information, how we add applications, are all concepts that your teenager understands and employees could benefit from. Are the Millennials different than every other generation in regards to agility? I don't think so. I think the difference is we've been told over-and-over that it just takes time. So we accept it. Even though it's not true.


3. FUN

Can work be fun?! Absolutely. Unfortunately, we've taken the fun out of work often because on misconceptions around productivity. "Don't waste time chatting! Get back to work!" I find it funny (funny peculiar) how we as Enterprise 2.0 practitioners are asked to justify ROI for social media but nobody asks us to show them the ROI on taking that client to the hockey game or what's the ROI of that golf game? We know people collaborate best because of relationships. Not just business clients. ALL people. Yes, even our employees! If you treat employees as machines don't expect any breakthroughs or creative thoughts. Machines are not capable of that.


4. TRUST

Surprise! You are more likely to believe your friends than you are corporate advertising. Forrester also did some recent surveys that show Trust in Corporate Advertising is at an all-time low! Adding social elements to applications, processes, meetings, improves relationships and ultimately trust. Trust is accelerated by the informal. By the, "So how did your daughter do in that soccer game?".

Can you create ways for employees to converse amongst themselves around business messages and still yield productivity results and maintain focus of the message? Yes! In fact, I would argue, you'd be surprised that the employees might even know the message better than the executives if given a chance.


5. COLLABORATION

Facebook would be pretty boring if you were the only face on it. The ability to connect with people, and provide opportunities for self-organization are core. In a past post, I talked about the engagement factors (motivation, opportunity, capability) and Facebook gets it. It's fun and respects the individual. It feeds our ego centric curiosity and we're motivated for more. It's open to anybody. You can leverage "spare moments of time" to update your status and read your aggregated news feed. You have the opportunity. And it's simple! You don't spend time reading the manual to use Facebook. Everyone has the capability.

Ultimately, this allows people to interact and collaborate. In a corporate setting, I would suggest you add some direction to the area you need to focus on, but maintain the elements for engagement.

Theses are my 5 key lessons from Facebook. If you want to read more about lessons from Facebook, take a look at this good post by Derek Abdinor, "Facebook: 10 lessons for the Enterprise".

I know we apply these when designing social applications. What other lessons can you think of that can be applied to a corporate setting?

Facebook Fatigue

I am tired.

I am tired of how much Facebook is discussed on the web 2.0 blogs out there. I'll be the first to admit that I am a Facebook addict and I've written several articles referencing it. But web 2.0 is so much more than Facebook.

As of late, it just seems to be everywhere. Perhaps it's the Microsoft investment, or the responses from Google on OpenSocial. Whatever it is, I am tired of it. To be honest, I really am bored by the recent direction Zuckerberg has taken. It just seems everything is tied to advertising and if Facebook is the poster child for web 2.0, I fear we're going to miss out on a lot.

I can't really blame them. Google stock continues to grow and advertising has been very very good to them. Why wouldn't Facebook follow suit? Perhaps I am just in a funk, and I will find Facebook enlightenment again. Although, I am starting to read other similar posts that have the same tone. Nicholas Carr has a good post, "The Social Graft" with his typical tongue-in-cheek style which also seems to question Facebook's direction (or was that arrogance?).

No doubt, there will be more to come. What do you think about Facebook dominance in web 2.0 discussions as of late? Too much? Too little? Don't care? Some questions to ponder as I close off yet another post about Facebook.

Facebook VS Google: The Battle for the Web 3.0?

Earlier this year, we heard some interesting statements from Mark Zuckerberg, founder of FaceBook as he talked about being the "Operating System" for the Internet. The concept was that as more people adopt Facebook, and by opening Facebook to enable third party application development on their platform, they could in theory, host the majority of the Internet experience.

Many had written Mark off already, as evidenced by his presence on Business 2.0's (a CNN magazine) "10 People who don't matter" list in 2006. But.... Perhaps, Mark's turn-down of $1B+ from Yahoo! was a wise move. If his vision holds out, Yahoo could be an "application" on Facebook. Recently, the discussions around Microsoft acquiring a 5% stake in FaceBook for $500M would estimate the total work to be approximately $10B. Some might now be asking.... Does Business 2.0 (a CNN magazine) matter?

But then along came Google...

According to TechCrunch, Google will launch a set of API's on November 5th that will allow developers to leverage Google's social graph data (data about your social network/relationships). Starting with it's social networking application, but potentially harnessing all of it's applications. That level of social intelligence could start to create a very different type of social Internet experience.

Think about that for a minute... Eek... Did you just get the shivers?

I guess we'll see on November 5th whether Google is serious about being an alternative to the Facebook OS. Perhaps this is the foundation to which the battle of for the Web will be played.

Banning Facebook in the Workplace

One of the biggest aspects of web 2.0 is the growing nature of social network sites such as Facebook (which is growing at a phenomenal 5% a week). Facebook provides a communication vehicle that is rich with multimedia content, and more importantly provides an informal communications environment in digital space.


Recently, Facebook has been banned by several notable organizations in Canada (e.g. Ontario Government, TD Bank) and undoubtedly others organizations will follow suit. Where do you fall in this debate? The standard hypothesis that has lead to the banning of Facebook looks something like...

If Facebook is about socializing and it is known that employees are spending much of their time on Facebook, then employees must be "unproductive".


Personally, I don't have an issue with this. Although I know there seems to be a lot of writers of this topic that view these actions as "short-sighted." or "delaying the inevitable". Although I am an optimist on the potential implications Web 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0 could have on organizational culture, I try to be a realist as well.

Providing a means for self-organization, empowerment, employee engagement, or alternate communication means shouldn't be mistaken for providing the employees the right to do anything they want. Enterprise 2.0, should be about employee engagement and collaboration. It's not about anarchy. If one can't make a strong argument on the business value provided by a set of actions, then an organization not only has the right to question the activities, but has the obligation to shareholders (or taxpayers) to do so.

For Facebook, the "business value" arguments have included "higher employee satisfaction" and "improved communications" but the argument hasn't received a lot of support. However, the elected officials are 'exempt' from the government ban because of the argument that Facebook is a growing communication channel and is essential to reaching their constituents.

I do believe that social networking sites have a place in the enterprise, but Facebook in it's current state simply is not geared towards creating business value. That's not to say, it can't evolve to an enterprise product, or that other tools could emerge based on the "informal communication" concept but they need to be geared towards delivering business value.

Every great leader has understood that it's not just about being smart (or even right). It's also about impact & influence. Influence increases, when the leader is able to relate the vision/mission with those aspects & concepts that touch a personal level. The ability to do that, is enhanced through relationships. My point here is that social networking, and the informal communication offers a new way to create the relationship that in the past required face-to-face interaction. This could be a future productivity application.

For example, how many times have you just phoned a colleague (not a friend) at work just to ask them how their weekend went without any other purpose? When was the last time you sent an e-mail to your boss with no other purpose but to ask about the game last night? Odds are you don't do this. E-mail and the phone tend to be formal communication mediums in the work environment. Heck, you even have to have a subject heading on your e-mail. Now, if you happened to bump into your boss, you might just ask if she caught the game last night. You may even know she is a huge Hockey fan and that she coaches her kids' team. This is informal communication, that leads to stronger relationships.

Don't confuse informal communication with personal communication either. You may bump into a colleague and ask them how they are, just to find out they are swamped with a major project. You likely wouldn't have sent them an e-mail asking, if by chance they were swamped with a new project. Informal connections provide you this knowledge. This may be useful immediately, or somewhere down the line. It may be useful for yourself or somebody else that you connect with.

Facebook, and similar sites do this in digital space. I've allowed for a few 'business' contacts enter my network on Facebook and am amazed how quickly I seem to be 'getting to know' them. Today, I tend to use LinkedIn for my business contacts but it doesn't nearly allow me the same level of informal communication. It would be interesting if Facebook did decided to enter the Enterprise market.

How to harness the good aspects and minimize the potentially negative aspects is the trick. But like most things, the answer is going to be some shade of grey because it sure isn't black or white.

Status: Rex is inviting you t0 comment on his blog.

E-Mail... That was so yesterday...

I heard a comment the other day, which I though somewhat dates me. The person was being asked if they used "e-mail" to which the response was, "Not really... It's kinda formal... Like sending your friend's parents a thank-you note." No surprise the response came from the younger generation.

Many years ago, I decided to create a Yahoo e-mail account just for things that I didn't want my "real e-mail address" from being bombarded with. I thought that I'd keep my "real" e-mail reserved for "real" friends and not solicitations from web sites. This worked well for a long time. My personal e-mail had all my personal communications and my "yahoo" e-mail had all my other stuff.

Over time though, my personal e-mail started to go down in size and my Yahoo e-mail started getting bigger. The funny thing is that the Yahoo growth wasn't really e-mail. It was notices telling me someone commented on my blog, or a response to my blog, or my friend just posted a picture of me on facebook, or a friend just posted something on my wall in facebook. It turned out that...

E-Mail was primarily just a pointer for me to use things that are replacing e-mail....

Why is that? I believe the answer to be "personalization" and "socialization". Is this not exactly what Marshall McLuhan was getting at with "The medium is the message"

In my working day, e-mail is probably the biggest "work" communication vehicle for me today. Easily in the 100's of emails a day. Notice, I view this as communication and not collaboration. No doubt I'm copied on things i don't need to be, invited to things I don't care about, but also a lot of important relevant e-mails too.

Perhaps social networks are ready for the enterprise? If it allows for more personal communication, that increases trust and openness... If it allows for informal communication... The opportunity to collaboration and the willingness to collaborate could benefit?

Still unsure how most big companies would see this though. I am certain first reaction is "waste of time"... Hmm.... What do they think of E-Mail?

Thoughts?