Reference no: EM132836844

As companies become more dispersed in the global marketplace, businesses are turning increasingly to workplace collaboration technology, including tools for internal social networking. These tools can promote employee collaboration and knowledge sharing, and help employees make faster decisions, develop more innovative ideas for products and services, and become more engaged in their work and their companies. Adoption of internal enterprise social networking is also being driven by the flood of email that employees typically receive each day and are increasingly unable to handle. Hundreds of emails and messages must be opened, read, answered, forwarded, or deleted. For example, too much email is what drove Hawk Ridge Systems to adopt a Glip, a cloud-based social tool for its 200 employees located in 15 offices in the United States and Canada. Glip features real-time messaging, group chat, videoconferencing, shared calendars, task management, and file sharing all in one place. Glip helped Hawk Ridge operations manager Samuel Eakin go from 200 to around 30 emails per day. Another driver of enterprise social networking is "app fatigue." In order to collaborate, many employees have to log on to numerous apps, creating additional work. Contemporary enterprise social networking systems often integrate multiple capabilities in one place. A recent survey of 421 professionals conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services found that collaboration tools could be effective in boosting efficiency and productivity, while enabling users to make better business decisions. The products also expanded the potential for innovation. However, not all companies are successfully using them. Implementation and adoption of enterprise social networking depend not only on the capabilities of the technology but on the organization's culture and the compatibility of these tools with the firm's business processes. When firms introduce new social media technology (as well as other technologies), a sizable number of employees resist the new tools, clinging to old ways of working, including email, because these methods are more familiar and comfortable. There are companies where employees have duplicated communication on both social media and email, increasing the time and cost of performing their jobs. BASF, the world's largest chemical producer with subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries, prohibited some project teams from using e-mail to encourage employees to use new social media tools. Social business requires a change in thinking, including the ability to view the organization more democratically in a flatter and more horizontal way. A social business is much more open to everyone's ideas. A secretary, assembly line worker, or sales clerk might be the source of the next big idea. As a result, getting people to espouse social business tools requires a more of a "pull" approach, one that engages workers and offers them a significantly better way to work. In most cases, they can't be forced to use social business apps. Enterprise capabilities for managing social networks and sharing digital content can help or hurt an organization. Social networks can provide rich and diverse sources of information that enhance organizational productivity, efficiency, and innovation, or they can be used to support pre-existing groups of like-minded people that are reluctant to communicate and exchange knowledge with outsiders. Productivity and morale will fall if employees use internal social networks to criticize others or pursue personal agendas. Social business applications modeled on consumerfacing platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will not necessarily work well in an organization or organizational department that has incompatible objectives. Will the firm use social business for operations, human resources, or innovation? The social media platform that will work best depends on its specific business purpose. Additionally, employees who have actively used Facebook and Twitter in their personal lives are often hesitant to use similar social tools for work purposes because they see social media primarily as an informal, personal means of selfexpression and communication with friends and family. Most managers want employees to use internal social tools to communicate informally about work, but not to discuss personal matters. Employees accustomed to Facebook and Twitter may have trouble imagining how they could use social tools without getting personal. This means that instead of focusing on the technology, businesses should first identify how social initiatives will actually improve work practices for employees and managers. They need a detailed understanding of social networks: how people are currently working, with whom they are working, what their needs are, and measures for overcoming employee biases and resistance. A successful social business strategy requires leadership and behavioral changes. Just sponsoring a social project is not enough-managers need to demonstrate their commitment to a more open, transparent work style. Employees who are used to collaborating and doing business in more traditional ways need an incentive to use social software. Changing an organization to work in a different way requires enlisting those most engaged and interested to help design and build the right workplace environment for using social technologies. Management needs to ensure that the internal and external social networking efforts of the company are providing genuine value to the business. Content on the networks needs to be relevant, up to date, and easy to access; users need to be able to connect to people that have the information they need and that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to reach. Social business tools should be appropriate for the tasks on hand and the organization's business processes, and users need to understand how and why to use them. For example, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center had to abandon a custom-built enterprise social network called Spacebook because no one knew how its social tools would help people do their jobs. Spacebook had been designed and developed without taking into consideration the organization's culture and politics. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Dimension Data found that one-fourth of the 900 enterprises it surveyed focused more on the successful implementation of collaboration technology, rather than how it's used and adopted. Despite the challenges associated with launching an internal social network, there are companies using these networks successfully. For example, Covestro, a leading global supplier of coatings and adhesives, polyurethanes, and highly impact-resistant plastics, made social collaboration a success by making the tools more accessible; demonstrating the value of these tools in pilot projects; employing a reverse mentoring program for senior executives; and training employee experts to spread know-how of the new social tools and approaches within the company, and demonstrate their usefulness. Using IBM Connections as the social business toolset, Covestro's efforts are now paying off: 50 percent of employees are now routinely active in the company's enterprise social network. Although ROI on social business initiatives has been difficult to measure, Covestro has benefited from faster knowledge flows, increased efficiency, and lower operating costs. Another company that has made social business work is ModCloth, a popular online apparel, accessories, and home décor retailer noted for its fun and engaging customer shopping experience. The company's business is based on strong social media ties with customers, with 134,000 Twitter followers and 1,600,000 Facebook "likes." Because social networks played such a large role in ModCloth's growth and development, the company was eager to adopt social networking tools for internal communication. ModCloth adopted Microsoft's Yammer as its social business tool. ModCloth started piloting Yammer with a small test group, and used a People Team to promote the tool. Yammer caught on quickly with employees, and was soon being used by over 250 employees across four offices in the United States. Every new ModCloth employee is introduced to Yammer on his or her first day of work. Yammer helps new hires learn their coworkers' names and feel they are part of the company. Yammer has proved very useful for connecting people and ideas, saving ModCloth considerable time and money. For example, Scott Hernandez, ModCloth Head of Talent Acquisition, has used Yammer to identify promising hires for engineering through referrals from ModCloth employees. Yammer has helped save teams from duplicating work that has already been done. ModCloth's User Experience group began designing a research campaign to find out what users wanted in mobile applications for the company, posting news of the project to Yammer. Within hours, a member of ModCloth's Social Team posted the results of a large user survey on mobile expectations, including a detailed spreadsheet with customer feedback data that it had already completed. The User Experience team was able to save two weeks of work. The Esquel Group, based in Hong Kong, is a supplier of cotton textiles and apparel, doing everything from cotton farming and fabric production to garment manufacturing and finishing. Its core business is making cotton tops for fashion brands such as Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, and Nike. This company was attracted to internal social networking as a way to unite its different lines of business in various locations. Esquel chose Microsoft Yammer as its enterprise social networking tool. Esquel employees communicate in a variety of languages, so it especially appreciated Yammer's translation capabilities. Management sees many benefits in being able to "listen" to its workforce. When people post complaints on the network, it is able to find innovative solutions and new ideas. For example, workers in Esquel's garment operation posted a complaint on Yammer about having to wait in a long line to recharge their cards for purchasing meals in the company cafeteria. Four months later, the company had a solution-a kiosk that instantly transferred funds from payroll to the meal card. Ideas posted on Yammer were used to improve Esquel's quality control process. Instead of using measuring tape to ensure that sleeves and collars matched specifications, an employee in the quality control department used Yammer to float the idea of an electric ruler. The concept was refined through more Yammer discussion. Instead of taking measurements and writing numbers down, staff can capture measurements faster and more accurately electronically. Yammer also helps Esquel replicate innovationand efficiency-promoting solutions throughout the company. Traditionally, an innovation at one site often is not rolled out to other locations. Yammer provides a channel for news of innovations and better practices to spread more easily throughout the organization. Esquel's industry is one where companies often move to lower-wage countries as labor costs rise. Rather than relocating operations, Esquel prefers to achieve savings through improvements in productivity. By helping employees work more efficiently and effectively, business social networking has helped Esquel save approximately $2 million each year. Sources: "Top Four Social Collaboration Software Fails," searchmobilecoputing.techtarget.com, accessed February 7, 2018; "ModCloth: Keeping Employees Engaged While Scaling Up," and "Esquel Group: Social Technology Weaves an Enterprise Together," blogs.office.com, accessed February 7, 2018; Margaret Jones and Cordelia Kroob, "The Growth of an Enterprise Social Network at BASF," www.simply-communicate.com, accessed March 12, 2018; Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley, "What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools," Harvard Business Review, NovemberDecember 2017; Sue Hildreth, "What's Next for Workplace Collaboration?" searchcontentmanagement.com, March 2, 2017; Arunima Majumdar, "3 Reasons Why Collaboration Tools Fail to Make the intended Impact," eLearning Industry, January 20, 2017; Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, "Collaboration Technology Boosts Organizations," Insight Enterprises Inc. (February 13, 2017); and Dimension Data, "2016 Connected Enterprise Report," 2016. CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 2-13 Identify the management, organization, and technology factors affecting adoption of internal corporate social networks.

Compare the experiences implementing internal social networks of the organizations described in this case. Why were some successful?

What role did management play in this process?

Should all companies implement internal enterprise social networks? Why or why not?