From the comments that came in to the internal social networks case study it is evident that to improve adoption you need to use both the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ strategies.
Ira recommends that it helps to drive traffic through interactive content such as contests, blogs and chats with senior managers. After you have satiated their thirst for relevant information you can begin serving company related information side by side.
Guru on the other hand passionately debates human nature and why staff is inclined to ‘de-stress’ and how social media channels externally provide them that ‘release’. That said, he believes there is no better way to get adoption but by removing access to external sites till employees get used to the forums internally.
I also got a comment on Linkedin’s Communication Professionals group and JD GERSHBEIN, a seasoned professional felt that insecurity and redundant content contributes to ineffective usage of internal business networking sites. In his words:
“Very challenging to sell participation in an internal company group. In many cases, these virtual communities have redundant content without any free exchange of ideas. In this day and age of shaky (at best) job security, people feel inhibited to voice their real opinions on the social platforms, fearing that they may say something that will come back to haunt them.”
When I reflect on Shruti’s predicament it feels that there is more that she can do to get adoption.
In Indian culture hierarchy plays an important role and it helps to get leaders on the forum first if she needed staff to participate actively.
Look for bright spots among staff already using the forum – and get them to be your champions. Convert their successes into war stories that will encourage others to use the network. For example, it is possible that a project managed to solve a nagging issue online and it helped reduce time to market. Can that find a place in your internal communications?
Share how the network contributes to a person’s productivity and improves their chances of career progression. Incentivize their effort – be it for a solution they provided or a white paper they wrote.
Remove roadblocks of participation. There may be infrastructural challenges such as too many logins to get past to access the site. Make life simpler for the audience.
Let supervisors of top contributors know of their supervisees’ support in harvesting internal knowledge. That goes a long way in sensitizing leaders as well as motivating employees to participate.
