The Workplace Blog

I came across an HR perspective on Facebook in the Enterprise (PDF) via Web Stratetgy just now. Written for HR professionals, the article discusses how HR managers should approach the use of Facebook in the enterprise. I found this sentence which addresses improper Facebook user rather amusing -

A responsible way to handle this is for employers to negotiate a reasonable conduct policy with employee representatives, and make it clear to them what is expected of them in their private lives, both offline and online.

I don’t think a responsible way to handle improper Facebook usage is to negotiate a conduct policy with employee representatives. Rather, employees should be trusted to use Facebook appropriately. In the cases where there are misuses, those issues should be resolved in a private manner between a manager and his/her direct report. Don’t control unless there’s an absolute need to control.

If you want to learn more about Social Networks, read Danah Boyd’s primer which I’ve commented on at Going Social Now.

This time its Forrester Research that has recognized the wiki with its Groundswell award for social media innovations within the enterprise. We’re thrilled at the recognition and hope it’ll encourage our employees to use the wiki even more than before.

Our wiki has gotten immense attention since it launched a little over a year ago. However, like any other wiki, it requires constant nurturing and caring. We’re not resting on our laurels. We’re now deciding whether to establish a wiki evangelist within the organization to promote usage among those employees who are less excited about it. Some simply do not have time to upload files but want them published, others get frightened by the edit page. And a few can’t understand why it is so search driven without any traditional and safe global and local navigations systems.

So we’re trying to figure out how to create more wiki champions, maintainers, gnomes, and zenmasters. We don’t want contributors for hire within the organization. We’ve posted a job description for a wiki evangelist on the wiki itself and are editing it every few days as we try to define the role. I’ll let you know how our search goes.

This blog would be amiss if it did not make at least a passing reference to the Microsoft Facebook investment. What does this mean from an enterprise perspective? Quite simply that Facebook can get into the intranet market. Pictured is Bill Gates’s Friends page on Facebook.

We rarely talk about Facebook as a potential intranet application. Sure there are some really large company groups on Facebook but those are typically used for alumni networks. Few if any are actively used to communicate and collaborate within an organization.

Well, this investment represents an opportunity both for Microsoft and Facebook. Now that white collar workers are starting to use Facebook more and more, their personal and professional lives can blur here too. And in fact, why shouldn’t they? Web users are gravitating to fewer interfaces and more familiar web experiences in any case.

How can Microsoft capitalize on this trend? Simply by building mini intranet type applications for the Facebook environment. Facebook in turn needs to provide a secure document repository solution. As soon as it does that, it will have the two most important elements of an intranet - a corporate directory and a place to store documents.

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague Phil Kim about his new company Oncero. It is a social networking company targeting the recruitment market. His idea - connect employers with qualified candidates by encouraging users to share their contacts in a trusted network. Phil wants to enable recruiters to push out jobs in a particular way and track how those jobs get passed around from people to people. So what’s the incentive for a person to join the network? Referral money for everyone who plays a role in the referral process. Not a bad idea given how much money there is in the referral business. It would also be a nice change for the referral bonuses to be spread more evenly among all the people who support the hiring of a candidate.

But he has two problems. Firstly, we all have social network fatigue. If I am asked to join another social network, I’ll probably scream. I suggested that he optimize his Facebook application and hope that Google’s rumored open social network really takes off. I’d rather do more within my existing networks than have to join something new. Secondly, I’m not sure whether I would want a recruiter to know who I am passing a job opportunity onto. Next time round, that recruiter may just spam my contact and I’d have upset a friend. Phil is experimenting with different privacy settings to find the right balance between providing the recruiters with the campaign management metrics they need and protecting a member’s privacy.

Internet News featured the Office 2.0 conference in an article titled, “Wrestling With Web 2.0 In The Enterprise.” They covered the Morgan Stanley presentation and also touched upon ideas from the Social Computing panel.

MindAlign 2007 from Parlano is probably one of the best collaboration application that I have not heard of. Until that is, Microsoft acquired them today.It serves a very important synchronous communication need - how to manage multiple IM conversations across different teams in real time.

It provides persistent chat for the enterprise and partners connected to the enterprise. So imagine you work on five different teams and have conversations with team members from each of those teams. Wouldn’t it be nice if your IM program let you organize your discussions into groups based on the different teams? That’s what MindAlign 2007 does and it integrates well with Microsoft’s Live Communication Server and Sharepoint. Now if only, it could be plugged right into my company’s wiki based intranet.

Avenue A | Razorfish is owned by Microsoft Corporation.

I stumbled upon this list of seven must read intranet blogs put together by James Roberston of Column Two. I was pleasantly surprised to find The Workplace Blog mentioned with this description - “Published by Shiv Singh in the US, this blog comfortably sits at the intersection of intranets, portals and web 2.0.” Thank you. He also lists useful content management, usability and information architecture blogs.

Social Computing Magazine republished my post on how Facebook is blurring our professional and personal lives. It seems a lot of people are worrying about how Facebook is making our personal lives more public. However, some like David Deal at Avenue A | Razorfish, are comfortable with the idea of mixing the professional and personal on Facebook. He says that when people sign up, they are aware of the risks involved and implies that our professional lives are personal too. Interesting point, after all strong professional relationships always evolve into personal friendships.

While reading the Wall Street Journal last Friday, I came across an article that highlighted one company that was giving its employees money to purchase phones. Rather than impose a corporate standard and mandate every employee to conform to its cell phone choice, the company gave its employees the freedom to choose which phones to purchase. The employees bought their own phones, filed their expense reports and took more responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the technology.

I was fascinated. Why can’t much more of IT function this way? Sure there are compatibility, privacy, security and support issues to take care of in such as scenario. But these can be addressed or certainly contained. For example, I work for an organization that is filled with smart technologists. They don’t need an IT department to tell them what is the best cell phone or computer to use. They’d much larger purchase their own phones and choose how to link to the corporate network.

Our economy is increasingly being driven by trust, it is time we trusted our employees more. And there’s no better way to do that than by putting more of an IT budget in their own hands. Click to Gartner’s High Performance Workplace to read more about this emerging technology subculture which they call “employee-enabling” versus “MIS-centric”.