How to Transform Your Company into a Social Business: Seven Steps for Success

Transcription

1 September 2012 How to Transform Your Company into a Social Business: Seven Steps for Success We Accelerate Growth

2 If Unified Communications was the tagline of choice for the tech industry just a few years ago, the new mantra among vendors and users alike is Collaboration. Indeed, many traditional UC technologies including Voice over IP, conferencing, presence, chat and social media are now often called collaboration tools. But is changing the name enough to change the way these applications are used? And is the trend toward collaboration all marketing hype, or can it have real benefits for organizations? At Frost & Sullivan, we believe that in the near future, the most successful enterprises will be the most collaborative. Even today, our research shows that companies are using social media programs for a variety of goals, including education, fostering team spirit, and driving collaboration. (Please see Figure 1.) And we believe that certain technologies can help support the transition to social business. Keeping Staff Informed of the Company s Undertakings is the Major Goal of Staff Relations Social Media Programs Goals of Staff Relations Social Media Program, by Organization Size (U.S.), 2011 Base: All whose organizations use social networking technologies for internal purposes Size of Organization Total sample Small Medium Large Keep staff informed of company 61% 63% 60% 60% direction and initiatives Training/training notifications 47% 46% 47% 47% Foster team spirit 41% 44% 43% 39% Increase job satisfaction 41% 43% 46% 38% Project collaboration 37% 35% 42% 36% Recruting 37% 35% 45% 34% Reduce turnover 21% 20% 25% 19% Don t know 11% 12% 5% 14% Total number Indicates significantly higher than comparison group at the 95 percent level. Note: All figures are rounded. Source: Frost & Sullivan analysis. But just as important as the tools themselves are the business and cultural changes that must accompany them. Because technology can not transform an organization into a social business unless employees actually use it to collaborate. And that is the hardest change of all. How to Transform Your Organization into a Social Business Once you have decided to deploy social software, you will have many options for vendors and specific tools. These include complete packages from single vendors, such as IBM s Connections suite, which comprises everything from micro-blogging to profiles; and stand-alone applications and services such as 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 2

3 Jive, Yammer, and others that mimic one or two elements of social as it is commonly used in the consumer space. (Yammer, for instance, is very similar to Facebook; it was recently acquired by Microsoft but remains a stand-alone product for the foreseeable future.) Frost & Sullivan research shows that many organizations use internal enterprise social media sites, especially among large companies. (Please see Figure 2.) Large Companies More Often Use Their Own Social Networks, While Medium and Small Ones Use Facebook There are significant differences across organizations in the use of social networking sites. Large companies tend to use their own social networks and WebExConnect considerably more than medium and small ones. Large Medium Small Top* Social Media/Social Networking Sites Used by Organizations, by Size of Organizations. (U.S.), 2011 Indicates significantly higher than comparison group at the 95 percent level. Company s own social network 58% 64% 76% N= Facebook Twitter 43% 45% 56% 75% 82% 90% LinkedIn 40% 40% 55% WebExConnect 18% 25% 37% YouTube Myspace 13% 21% 30% 35% 40% 46% *with overall usage with at least N=90 Base: All aware of specific sites and whose organizations use social networking technologies Note: All figures are rounded. Source: Frost & Sullivan analysis. But for most organizations, choosing which software to deploy is the easy part. The real challenge comes when it is time to take full advantage of the new technology and actually transform the business from a traditional one in which employees work in silos, or occasionally with local team members as needed and into a social one, in which employees routinely collaborate with one another on projects, brainstorm ideas, tag-team for client service and support, and reach out to one another for specific knowledge and skills on a daily basis. Better still, in a truly social business, this collaboration happens on a global level across business units, geographies and time zones, allowing all employees to benefit from everyone s experience, regardless of where they re located or what work they are tasked with at any given time. To make such a shift, most organizations will need to rethink how they motivate and reward their 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 3

4 employees. They will also need to ensure that the roll-out of any new technology is embraced fully by all the employees who should be using it; it is no longer enough to simply give workers the tools you think they need in a social enterprise, you should be giving them the tools they tell you they want. Below, we highlight several steps to take to help create a social business. Note that our focus in this paper is on internal social collaboration. Many companies are exploring ways in which to leverage social media with customers and business partners; that is a worthwhile effort, but not the subject here. Get Buy-In From Key Stakeholders The first step toward a successful social media deployment requires getting buy-in from key stakeholders within the organization. Unlike with many other types of technology, these stakeholders will not be limited to IT or the CFO or even a single line of business (as might be the case, for instance, with productivity or customer relationship management software). To ensure the business actually makes the transformation from one that focuses on individual performance to one that stresses collaboration and social connections, everyone from the CEO to entry-level employees must embrace the change. The best way to get them to do that is to involve them in the process from the start. Remember, you are trying to turn your business into a social one; that means, by its very definition, that you want to engage employees at every level of the organization, and tap into their skills and experience. Executives: You will need sign-off from the higher- ups to get the right technology in place, of course. But you will also need leadership to change its approach to corporate culture, employee goals, definitions of productivity, customer relationship management, and so on. The change should include instilling a virtual open-door policy that encourages employees at every level of the organization to engage with executive management, and vice-versa. Explain to execs that they will need to take the lead on social, actively using the technology to share information and embrace new ideas. If the C-suite is not committed to becoming a social business, the transformation simply will not take place. IT: The tech team will be integral to the deployment process, and they will be required to integrate social media tools with other business technology already in place in the organization. They will also be in the best position to evaluate costs, as well as management and training requirements for any new software or services. LOB Managers: Social media has the power to change how business gets done so line-of-business managers must be involved from the beginning to help define and shape those changes. Being on the front lines, they know the current gaps in business processes and should be actively involved in finding ways to improve them through social collaboration. They will also need to weigh in on any management changes to employee expectations, drivers, and compensation. HR: Human resources can be an excellent resource for management when it comes time to literally change the ways in which employees are motivated and compensated, as well as setting appropriate policies around the use of social media within the organization. This is especially true for highly regulated industries. HR should also be involved in training on the new technology, especially when it comes to the social and cultural mores around its use. Employees: Since it is the workers who will be expected to actually use any social media tools that 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 4

5 are deployed, they must buy in to the overall goals of any social media project. No company can transform itself into a social business overnight, but the sooner employees get on board to use new technology to change the way they work, day in and day out, the sooner those changes will take global effect and deliver measurable results. Furthermore, many of your employees have been using social media for a long time now, with or without your knowledge and consent. The upside to this is they have already developed a set of best practices and daily tasks that you can leverage to improve the business overall, by implementing them across the organization. Use Bleeding-edge Employees as Evangelists As mentioned, many employees are already using social media tools every day to better perform their jobs. Whether they rely on public consumer services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or private closed systems such as Yammer, these early adopters use the tools to make and deepen connections with their colleagues and business partners; share ideas, garner feedback, and gather information; identify resources; and collaborate on projects and proposals. Companies should leverage these frontline employees and use them as evangelists to promote social networking throughout the organization. This can be done on two levels: 1. Involve early adopters in the initial technology discussions. Although these employees will almost certainly be using free consumer services to support their social media efforts within the workplace, they will have developed a good understanding of what it takes to make a great social networking application. Not all business-grade tools are as usable as their consumer counterparts; before you settle on any particular product or service, it is a good idea to field-test them with employees who are well versed in the use of social media, and who can give you great feedback on what any given application is lacking. Some missing capabilities will rightly be deal breakers; others may be on the vendor s roadmap, or exist but be hard to find or use. In any case, you should take advantage of these experienced users point of view if they would not willingly use the technology in question, it is unlikely anyone else will. 2. Rely on early adopters to identify and codify best practices and spread the word about social media throughout the enterprise. Once you have settled on and deployed a social media toolset, you will need to do more than just ask employees to use it. Social media is less like or Microsoft Office which everyone needs, and no one questions and more like a lineof-business application like CRM or ERP. To make it effective and get the most value from your investment, you need people to use it. That requires a set of best practices for doing so, which employees who already use social tools can help you develop. And because social media is only as good as the network of people using it, you need to spur usage across the organization. Make your early adopters leaders of the initiative, get them involved in training, have them develop FAQs, position them as mayors of your corporate social universe. The goal is for the technology to go viral and just as consumer sites have started targeting known influencers within their communities, you should do the same. Develop Policies and Procedures for Being Social Social media requires usage policies to be effective. Frost & Sullivan research shows that the larger the 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 5

6 company is, the more likely it is to have written policies regulating use of the company s computers and access to social networking sites. (Please see Figure 3.) Written Policies are Applied in Over 50 Percent of Organizations Written Policies Regarding Use of Company computers/network to Access Social Networking Sites, (U.S.), 2011 The larger the company is, the more likely it is to have written policies regulating use of the company s computers and access to social netorking sites. 12% 10% 9% 15% 36% 32% 19% Don t know 59% No Yes 52% 59% 66% 31% Total Sample (N=2006) Small (N=721) Medium (N=403) Large (N=882) Indicates significantly higher than comparison group at the 95 percent level. Note: All figures are rounded. Source: Frost & Sullivan analysis. Many companies are starting to develop rules for how employees can and should use public (and non-secure) consumer services and customer-facing applications. But guidelines are also needed for the use of internal collaboration tools. Frost & Sullivan research shows that the majority of companies allow access to social media, at least to some employees (70 percent of those that have written policies and 82 percent of those who do not). Some of the rules you set for public-facing applications will apply internally as well. For instance, it is important to emphasize cordiality and respect; a social networking site such as Yammer should not be used for personal attacks, or heated and polarizing discussions about politics, religion, or the Yankees/Red Sox divide. On the other hand, unlike with public services, private social media tools can and should be used to highlight problems within the organization, whether they are related to a specific topic or common processes. All issues should be raised with respect but they shou zld be raised, because doing so online can encourage people who might not otherwise feel comfortable to speak up about their concerns, as well 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 6

7 as share solutions. Both are important to the organization you want to know about the challenges employees face, and you want them and others to find solutions to those hurdles as quickly as possible. Other social tools require other kinds of policies. For instance, if you are in a highly regulated industry, you may need to control who talks to whom on social sites, and about what. (You will also need to make sure you deploy technology that can be archived and searched for compliance purposes.) If you deploy a profile application, you may need to require that employees fill out their profiles by a certain date, and that they update their information on a regular basis and then hound them to do so, just as you would when requiring them to sign confidentiality agreements or other HR-related documentation. If you enable micro-blogging, you may choose to limit topics to work-related issues, or create groups of interest for personal discussions to develop a sense of camaraderie and community. Most important of all, if you are deploying enterprise-grade technology, you will likely want to limit employees work-related social networking to those tools, at least so far as internal collaboration goes. Regardless of what policies you set, you then need to codify them and get them out to users. Treat them as you would any other company policies. Train and Educate Once you have deployed social media technology and set policies around its use, you must train and educate employees on how to make the most of it. Social tools should, by their very nature, be intuitive and easy to use. Most vendors will make that a point of pride when they talk to you about their technology. And indeed, most social media applications and services are simple to start using, without any input from managers or IT. But like other kinds of technology, social applications often have hidden features and capabilities that only power users ever bother with but which other employees can benefit from, given the chance. Furthermore, training should not focus only on the use of the technology itself (the ins and outs of how to post an update, say, or edit a profile); it must include best practices for use in the broader business context. In this way, the best social media training will include common use cases around business processes, and show how employing the new technology will speed and improve an employee s work product. For instance, you might give an example of how the marketing team, while working on a campaign to support the roll-out of a new product, can use social media to engage relevant product managers in the early stages, and then tap employees outside the specific product group for feedback on the campaign itself. Change Your Management Practices When we ask business leaders about their concerns over social media, the biggest by far is that employees will use it to waste time or for personal reasons, negatively impacting the company s bottom line. That, of course, runs completely counter to the point of deploying the tools in the first place and it is a largely unwarranted fear. Just as managers worried about the effects of (depersonalization!), the Internet (everyone will spend all their time at work shopping!) and instant messaging (I don t need my employees chatting with their friends all day!), so too do they fear that social media will serve only as a time sink for their valuable employees time. That may happen in the beginning like any new technology, social media does present a new-and-shinytoy effect. But after a few days, or weeks at most, most employees will learn how to use the tools effectively 2012 Frost & Sullivan Page 7

8 to improve their productivity and help them do their jobs. Still, for social media to have a profound effect on the company culture, management needs to change first. To encourage employees to collaborate, for instance, managers must allow them to reach out to, and make connections with, people outside their business unit, incorporating ideas and experiences that might at first appear unrelated to the topic at hand. But to make that as useful as possible, the same managers must ensure their reports are using the tools effectively: Are they updating profiles on a regular basis? Posting content and deliverables to a community site? Searching out experts with the knowledge and skills needed for a particular project? Managers should themselves be well versed in the use of their company s social media technology, so that they can both use it and show their teams how to do so to improve their specific business processes and work product. Managers must also come to terms with the fact that social media will allow, if not encourage, at least some level of complaining among the ranks. Generally speaking, this is a good thing. Few organizations could not be improved upon, and it is often the rank-and-file employees who see problems and challenges on a dayto-day basis. By shining a light on such issues and inviting feedback from the larger community social media can help managers and executives identify areas for improvement. For instance, if an employee posts a complaint about how hard it is to file an expense report, and a dozen more like her post, accounting should pay attention. Better still, they should offer suggestions for a work-around and then look at ways to fix the problem in the future, posting those results as soon as they are available. That is what savvy companies do today when customers complain; they should treat employee complaints in much the same way. But managers should also use social tools to pro-actively improve business processes. This may be as simple as adding a step to any given project that involves seeking out and getting feedback from colleagues, based on their skills and experience. It may involve scanning micro-blogging sites for trending topics, then figuring out how to incorporate them into the business on a routine basis. Or it may mean establishing clear guidelines and expectations for employees to hit social targets a certain number of interactions with colleagues outside their business unit, say, or points allotted for taking a leadership role when it comes to solving problems and resolving issues. Redesign Compensation and Bonus Structures If you really want to encourage employees to get out of their siloed worlds and collaborate on projects, you need to change the way you motivate them to succeed within the organization. To be successful, that will require changing compensation and bonus plans. For instance, if today you tie compensation and bonuses to time-sheet compliance, you might want to consider tying it to social impact instead. So instead of measuring metrics like project-completion hours, measure sociability: How often does the employee post to the company s social media site? How many followers does he have? How well developed is his profile? How much documentation has he made available to his colleagues? Does he regularly respond to requests for information and advice? In short, does he have social clout? By tying compensation and bonuses to social performance, companies will make it a priority for employees. Of course, other performance metrics still matter, especially as they relate to customer satisfaction and revenue generation; social points should complement these, but not replace them entirely. The point is to

9 focus on how well a given employee is leveraging social technology to improve his and his colleagues performance and, hopefully, the company s bottom line. Remember: Not All Business Processes Require Collaboration As valuable as it can be to support a social enterprise, not all work benefits from collaboration. Sometimes, people need to be left alone to actually work. Understanding where one person s job ends and another s begins is critical to social media success and it can trip up organizations that embrace the social world too quickly, or too much. For instance, at the start of a project it can be extremely valuable to get input from experts inside and outside a particular business unit, or to tap people with specific skills for their knowledge and advice. And after a project is finished, it can be helpful to garner feedback on its success from a wide group of knowledgeable employees who may or may not be directly involved in its execution. But during the project, it may be best to leave employees alone to create the necessary work product and documentation. Furthermore, not everyone is a virtual social animal. Just as some people are introverts in the real world, others feel awkward interacting with colleagues, managers and direct reports online. Recognize that in any successful organization, there should be room for all types of people and personalities and find the best way to utilize a given person s talents and proclivities. Conclusion Social media is here, and it is here to stay. Frost & Sullivan research shows that almost 80 percent of survey participants use social media for professional purposes, and more than half report that their organizations officially use these technologies. But simply deploying or allowing access to social tools is not enough to drive collaboration within the enterprise. For that, companies must change more than just their technology; they must change their approach to doing business, the ways in which they motivate and compensate employees, and, in some cases, even their corporate culture. This paper is produced by Frost & Sullivan on behalf of Allstream. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from over 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit CONTACT US 877.GoFrost ( ) myfrost@frost.com