Reciprocity Rings in Organizations
Companies often ignore the power of social capital. They forget that their employees can be more creative and better problem solvers when they have access to other smart people within their company. Strong networks foster cooperation and collaboration and save employees time.
We’re not talking about employee directories on corporate intranets. Employee directories are important and there’s a reason why they’re still considered the intranet’s killer application. However, employee directories just put you in touch with other employees, they don’t tell you who you should get in touch with and whether that person will help you. This is why social capital and tools furthering the social capital in a company matter.
I recently came across an interesting tool called the Reciprocity Ringâ¢. This tool builds connections in a similar fashion to LinkedIn and instills the practice of reciprocity across organizational boundaries. How does it do this?
Users setup a quick profile, view the tutorials and after that may post requests and make contributions to other requests. The system records each request and facilitates a response from the other members in the ring. Users learn to tap into their networks and help others. Moderates can assess how participative each member is. That information can also be shared with other members so you only help those who have a track record of helping others in turn. But what really makes the reciprocity ring succeed is that before doing the tutorial all the potential members of the ring have to participate in a face to face moderated training session.
Collaboration is a hot topic. But for collaboration to be successful; employees need to know who they’re collaborating with and what benefits they may get in return. Companies with intranets that have reciprocity ring type functionality, user centric employee directories and rich user profiles (descriptions of employees next to their contact information) are the ones that can foster collaboration the most. Most importantly, to foster collaboration that truly fuels employee productivity, you have to start in the offline world - you need to make a “real world” connection. This is where the reciprocity ring has potential.
