Social Media & The New Workplace

Saurabh Pandey<Google, Airtel, Ibibo, Zdnet, AtomThought>

Major CEO Concerns CIOs should Address

Gartner Symposium, Orlando, Oct, 2010

The New Workplace?

n N=1 & R=g (CK Prahlad)

n Leads to new challenges @ workplace!

The New Age of Innovation, CK Prahlad

Challenges @ the new workplace

How can we reduce the time employees spentTo find the right people and information they need to do their jobs?

CEO

n How can I make sure that new team members kick-startfrom day 1?

Challenges @ the new workplace

Team Leader

n In times of restructuring and layoffs how do we connect our workforce and make them feel valued in such a way that their

Challenges @ the new workplace

valued in such a way that their productivity is not hurt? HR-Manager

n How do I get work done effectively in my globally disperse team?

Challenges @ the new workplace

Project Manager

n How can all of us can Collaborate, Communicate and Share better so as to create Efficient and Innovative products or services that meet or surpass

Bottomline:

services that meet or surpass the Expectations of our Stakeholders and Consumers? All of us

Realities @ Workplace 2.0

1. Communication, Innovation & Distance

Exponential drop in communication frequency between engineers as the distance between them increases.

However the more they communicate the more they innovate-proven many times.

Managing Flow of Technology, Thomas Allen, MIT

2. Emergence of Weak Ties

n People who work together and stay together demonstrate Strong Ties- tend to think alike

n This may decay diverse thinking and innovation

My Idea My IdeaNew Idea

n People belonging to different groups and have developed some sort of relationship demonstrate Weak Ties.

n Leading to diversity of ideas and thought processes

3. Moving from Static to Social Collaboration

Windows Generation Wiki Generation

The young generation employees are moving to an open ecosystem-whether we like it or not!

4.Democratization of Communication

n Intranet and eMail Newsletters are dead!

n All of you here know the pathetic the pathetic employee traction the above 2 tools generate!

We Operate in Silos…

One department in the same building is unaware about the other department! It’s even worse when teams are spread across the world!

Image source: office-modular.net

If we get everyone talking & sharing…

Imagine Airtel Mobile Banking team inspiring Airtel NRI team for NRI fund transfer?

…we can then get a great macro view…

Imagine one division of Airtel getting 5 new ideas daily in their dashboards?

…and get our problems solved faster

Enhance collaboration, camaraderie and feel-good. Let people also sort out small stuff

Another Perspective of Workplace 2.0

Apart

Workflow Portals, eMail

Time

Space

Together

Together Apart

eMail, VC, Phone

Pain!!

Source: Acando Consulting

Enhance communication frequency> collaboration>ideation>innovation

Teams across time and space

Knowledge stored in mind, shared informally

Blogs, Wikis and Social Networks

Very clear need in enterprises to bring disparate teams togetherAnd focus on enhancing communication and collaboration

This is now happening @ Workplace 2.0?

n Using Web 2.0 tools into the enterprise to foster collaboration & sharing among partners, employees and buyers, in order to create delight for everyone.

The smart workplace @ IBM

n 17,000 internal blogsn 100,000 employees using blogsn 53,000 employees on SocialBlue

(Facebook like platform for employees)

n 50,000 alumni on facebook and linked in

n Crowd-Sourced Ideas- Identified 10 incubation ideas, invested USD100M

n Thought-leadership- these blogs are read by clients and prospective employees (also by competition)

n Monetisation & Test Bed: Some of these social tools are being offered by IBM to clients as a part of larger by IBM to clients as a part of larger solutions

n Global teams interact better-look-up the profiles of team-mates- this helps a con-call become richer

n Global Recognition- Ideas are shared on a global level and recognition is also on a global scale

Dell- Customer Involvement

n Users submitted 16000 ideas

n 432 implemented already

n 91000 comments

n Created Customers as brand ambassadors

Started in 2007 to engage buyers & prospectswith the brand. Understand customer needs and trends and fast go-to-market

The New Workplace @ Intel

n Integrating Global teams on a real-time social platform

n OOO teams can find information 24*7 and faster.

n New employees can n New employees can start-off faster.

n Training by group experts online

n Motivates the most introvert to participate

n People may leave but knowledge is retained

Life after Google!

n Can win back alumni at a later stage

n Alumni in position to help Google

n Creates a perception of an employee friendly company to work with.company to work with.

n Opportunity to get an unbiased feedback on work culture

n Opportunity to record and freeze the negative sentiment within the ecosystem

n Multi- way interaction through web 2.0 tools

Crowdsourced-Customer Service

Tango users solve other users problems.Auto-creation of FAQsIdea GenerationEarly Bug identification Identification of Influencers and powerusersWho helped them do beta testing and translateliteratures2 million users in 125 countries. 1 Community Manager

Leaving you with this thought…

Knowledge People

When people walk out,

Knowledge People

Workplace 1.0 Workplace 2.0

Knowledge is captured , stored and madeWhen people walk out, they walk out with the knowledge

Knowledge is captured , stored and madeshareable as well as ready for adding upon.

If people walk out-the knowledge still exists.

This can be achieved only with collaborationEnabled with Social Applications

n Thanks!

q You can catch me on twitter: @pandeysaurabh