January 27, 2012
Social Networking From Within
We hear a lot of discussion about social networking and how it can be used to strengthen customer loyalty, but are companies using it enough within their own organizations to increase employee loyalty?
Social networking allows organizations to build their own virtual communities for the sharing of knowledge and opinion. Large retail chains face the difficult task of managing a geographically dispersed and demographically diverse workforce and customer base. A store in a Chinese neighborhood may carry a completely different assortment (or should) and have different work customs than one in a Russian neighborhood. For smaller demographic groups it is even harder for central management to address local needs. Social networking might allow these employees to affiliate with similar members within the organization to make recommendations to management.
Differences in physical characteristics also present a major challenge to chains. The multistory retail location in Manhattan that receives deliveries overnight through the basement has different demands than the dropped trailer store in the suburbs. The individual techniques employees learn that enable them to deal more efficiently with their environment can be easily shared using social networks. Even situations that occur infrequently can benefit because the cost of communication is practically nil.
A social network also lets the retail management provide a consistent message across the organization and solicit input from employees. This type of "participatory management" may be more appealing in today’s environment and reinforces the employer’s role in directing employee activity.
Including suppliers in the retailer’s network can improve communication between brand manufacturers and store employees. It may be necessary to restrict some types of communication, but by having the suppliers onboard it can make them part of the retailer’s team.
Retailers would no doubt want to keep their social networks private, which is a built-in advantage with enterprise solutions. These applications provide features similar to those found on popular public social media sites. It is also possible to set up different groups within an organization, so that management can have restricted interaction with other members of the management team, while also making non-management groups available, assuming they can work out the ground rules.
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: Do you think retailers should make more use of internal social networking? What are the benefits and risks of using a social network for an organization?
Poll
Why would you invest in this? It violates the spirit of social networking and common sense.
Let’s start with the characteristics of social networks — openness, anarchistic (hosts but no leaders), democratic, and, at least in theory, authentic. Now think of an internal social network — closed, controlled top down, de facto censorship of ideas, etc. — in short a political nightmare.
Now for the common sense part — does anybody REALLY think people would be totally honest on this kind of a network and, if they aren’t, why bother? It seems that if you want this kind of communication a simple intranet bulletin board does the trick well, even if it lacks the pretension of calling itself a social network.
Internal message boards that support insight and encourage honest sharing of thoughts, opinions, experiences and suggestions is healthy — depending on the enterprise characteristics. Teams of employees within operating units, disciplines and servicing customers can share with operations, marketing and senior management. Timely insight is very helpful in responding to unique challenges or heading off what could be significant loss, risk or customer dissatisfaction. Bottom line is that this is not easy to launch and sustain effectively. It requires significant planning and strong controls for input protocol/policies as well as back-end monitoring with commitment to timely response.
Conundrum! I find myself in rare disagreement with Ryan this morning.
This struck me as one of the best ideas for using social networking to really improve the business we have seen. The reason being that it (could) engage the typically younger, more dispersed workforce in retail in their favorite medium(s). There is a reason young people love to work in an Apple store — the stuff is cool! And they get to play with the cool stuff at work. Now granted, stocking the bread aisle is never going to make anyone’s cut for “cool stuff to do.” But if the company at least employs the tools the employees do, won’t that go a distance in improving engagement at least?
To give Ryan his due, IF management tries to turn the frontier of social networking into a Machiavellian machination, employees will reject it. And now that I think about it, his implied assumption that most will is probably justified.
So, conundrum resolved I guess.
Experimentation is good for generating new ideas, products, and services. However, creating a service that duplicates existing tools (intranet bulletin boards) without any added value is not going to go very far. Given the privacy settings on most social networks, ensuring a closed network on a social media site is risky, so why take the chance?
As we see, social media presents more than one opportunity for companies: relating to our colleagues, and beyond just the consumer. This piece mentions a ton of great ideas on how marketers, specifically, can benefit from an internal social media presence.
Social media is all about communication and sharing. I can’t see any apparent disadvantages, unless the social media platform is used negatively. You’d never want disgruntled employees airing their complaints for all to see. But ideally, any company that launches something like this would do so with the strictest confidence in their teams that it would be used for good. If that happens, the opportunities are limitless. Localization, sharing best practices, consistent messaging from management yielding efficiency, are all great reasons to invest in a tool like this.
Again, social media can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Guidelines for use and implementation are crucial to success.
There are clear benefits to using an internal social network for retailers. Why wait until the Christmas party, the employee summer beach party, etc., to get people together?
More importantly, why restrict communications to formal channels such as email which can be imperfect at times?
Using the network medium should allow flexibility and immediacy of communication and lead to closer working relationships among teams and between departments and different locations.
As the head of retail for a chain of stores, I found the intranet bulletin board extremely beneficial. It did allow individual employees to have a voice, and I learned a lot from them. It also requires the leader to have a thick skin. They don’t always love you!
I’m just not sure how an internal social networking site would be different.
Just because a social network is “internal-only” does not mean it has to be top down or one-way in its message flow. On the contrary, having tools for a distributed workforce to communicate across geographies and business lines can be a great value. Much like the “open” social networks for connecting with customers, an internal network can be a great asset across the organization and can help to create visibility for problems, bottlenecks, and solutions which might otherwise go unnoticed or not recognized as quickly.
Even though internal, why start to try and re-define social media? The success of social media has been simple — USER GENERATED CONTENT. Companies can invest in an internal network but a true social network is one that allows users to grow and define what that space means to them.
Having been a marketing strategist in the online space for many years, I would have to say that the majority of retailers, especially the majors, are only recently getting up to speed.
There is a careful balance that must be struck or else the retailer will be viewed as preachy or disingenuous.
Retailers ought to take time and master their public social media efforts first before embarking on an internal social initiative.
Absolutely! Internal social networks are being used to not only provide enhanced levels of engagement but also to deliver superior business value by engaging and motivating employees to generate revenue-generating and cost-reducing ideas.
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Why would you invest in this? It violates the spirit of social networking and common sense.
Let’s start with the characteristics of social networks — openness, anarchistic (hosts but no leaders), democratic, and, at least in theory, authentic. Now think of an internal social network — closed, controlled top down, de facto censorship of ideas, etc. — in short a political nightmare.
Now for the common sense part — does anybody REALLY think people would be totally honest on this kind of a network and, if they aren’t, why bother? It seems that if you want this kind of communication a simple intranet bulletin board does the trick well, even if it lacks the pretension of calling itself a social network.
Internal message boards that support insight and encourage honest sharing of thoughts, opinions, experiences and suggestions is healthy — depending on the enterprise characteristics. Teams of employees within operating units, disciplines and servicing customers can share with operations, marketing and senior management. Timely insight is very helpful in responding to unique challenges or heading off what could be significant loss, risk or customer dissatisfaction. Bottom line is that this is not easy to launch and sustain effectively. It requires significant planning and strong controls for input protocol/policies as well as back-end monitoring with commitment to timely response.
Conundrum! I find myself in rare disagreement with Ryan this morning.
This struck me as one of the best ideas for using social networking to really improve the business we have seen. The reason being that it (could) engage the typically younger, more dispersed workforce in retail in their favorite medium(s). There is a reason young people love to work in an Apple store — the stuff is cool! And they get to play with the cool stuff at work. Now granted, stocking the bread aisle is never going to make anyone’s cut for “cool stuff to do.” But if the company at least employs the tools the employees do, won’t that go a distance in improving engagement at least?
To give Ryan his due, IF management tries to turn the frontier of social networking into a Machiavellian machination, employees will reject it. And now that I think about it, his implied assumption that most will is probably justified.
So, conundrum resolved I guess.
Experimentation is good for generating new ideas, products, and services. However, creating a service that duplicates existing tools (intranet bulletin boards) without any added value is not going to go very far. Given the privacy settings on most social networks, ensuring a closed network on a social media site is risky, so why take the chance?
As we see, social media presents more than one opportunity for companies: relating to our colleagues, and beyond just the consumer. This piece mentions a ton of great ideas on how marketers, specifically, can benefit from an internal social media presence.
Social media is all about communication and sharing. I can’t see any apparent disadvantages, unless the social media platform is used negatively. You’d never want disgruntled employees airing their complaints for all to see. But ideally, any company that launches something like this would do so with the strictest confidence in their teams that it would be used for good. If that happens, the opportunities are limitless. Localization, sharing best practices, consistent messaging from management yielding efficiency, are all great reasons to invest in a tool like this.
Again, social media can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Guidelines for use and implementation are crucial to success.
There are clear benefits to using an internal social network for retailers. Why wait until the Christmas party, the employee summer beach party, etc., to get people together?
More importantly, why restrict communications to formal channels such as email which can be imperfect at times?
Using the network medium should allow flexibility and immediacy of communication and lead to closer working relationships among teams and between departments and different locations.
As the head of retail for a chain of stores, I found the intranet bulletin board extremely beneficial. It did allow individual employees to have a voice, and I learned a lot from them. It also requires the leader to have a thick skin. They don’t always love you!
I’m just not sure how an internal social networking site would be different.
Just because a social network is “internal-only” does not mean it has to be top down or one-way in its message flow. On the contrary, having tools for a distributed workforce to communicate across geographies and business lines can be a great value. Much like the “open” social networks for connecting with customers, an internal network can be a great asset across the organization and can help to create visibility for problems, bottlenecks, and solutions which might otherwise go unnoticed or not recognized as quickly.
Even though internal, why start to try and re-define social media? The success of social media has been simple — USER GENERATED CONTENT. Companies can invest in an internal network but a true social network is one that allows users to grow and define what that space means to them.
Having been a marketing strategist in the online space for many years, I would have to say that the majority of retailers, especially the majors, are only recently getting up to speed.
There is a careful balance that must be struck or else the retailer will be viewed as preachy or disingenuous.
Retailers ought to take time and master their public social media efforts first before embarking on an internal social initiative.
Absolutely! Internal social networks are being used to not only provide enhanced levels of engagement but also to deliver superior business value by engaging and motivating employees to generate revenue-generating and cost-reducing ideas.