In the coming years, enterprise social networks are destined to become a tool used at most businesses. It speaks to our preferences as a society – people simply love using social media to connect and share information, and it’s really only a matter of time before this spills over into their work lives as well.
However, there are certain steps you might consider taking prior to implementation in order to maximize this tool’s effectiveness. Employees may be excited about the recent implementation of your new social network, but you need to consider strategies to keep the momentum going.
Steps You can Take to Ensure a Successful Process
Reviewing job-specific processes for particular benefits can be a challenging process and take a substantial time investment to fully analyze. However, there are some steps you can take to help determine the success of your company’s social network:
- Map out employee job processes. Interview and observe your employee’s job processes. Be sure they know anything they say and do is kept completely anonymous – otherwise you may observe employees working extra hard to make sure no one fires them.
- After you’ve gathered that information, determine what workplace inefficiencies a social networking tool can realistically solve. Connecting people and identifying expertise, capturing dispersed knowledge, harnessing the wisdom of crowds, improving workflow through streamlined collaboration, and increasing innovation through open idea sharing are just some of the benefits you’ll want to look into.
- Determine an action plan with specific use cases—centralized company announcements, specific project collaboration, information sharing via topics—aligned with for your organization’s needs. Once you determine the most effective method of implementation, be sure to follow through and train your employees on proper usage. Then you will see value-added business results.
Implemented Properly, Enterprise Social Networks are Effective
As with just about any business process, if you take the time to think through and plan ahead, you ensure the overall success of the implementation process. And, eventually, this means a healthier bottom line for your business.
