The larger a company is, the more complex it becomes to get information to employees. However, the classic intranet as a haven of corporate information is not used as corporate communicators would like it to be. The most important information resource on the intranet continues to be the canteen’s menu.
In the two previous articles (Part 1: Welcome to the machine age; Part 2: The digitally transformed employee), we described how companies must move to develop more empathy for their employees due to changing business environments. This makes it possible to understand what is “resonant”, i.e. relevant for the employees. Instead of providing employees with a wealth of information that is not relevant to the individual and thus takes up a lot of employee time for filtering the information, companies can benefit from implementing a paradigm shift.
From push to pull
The paradigm shift consists of no longer being the sole information producer and distributor, and instead placing this function in the hands of all employees. Using the principle of virtual networking with people and content, employees can achieve a much higher degree of relevance. Social intranet solutions follow this principle. They collect the content created by all employees in a central location and offer functionalities that ensure the exchange of this content and the networking of people with one other. This makes the knowledge in the company more usable and, above all, more searchable.
But the communications department must give up a certain amount of control and come to terms with not competing in the generation of relevance (anymore). In their new role as platform providers, they will instead enable all employees to create corporate knowledge and network with information and other employees.
“Social” for Managers
The introduction of a social intranet means a change, particularly for managers. They must shift their priorities in favour of even more communication.
In concrete terms, this means:
- More workload through own participation in discussions
- Relevance is created less by position in the hierarchy than by the content one produces oneself
- Communication becomes faster, more accessible and more transparent
- The demand on the authenticity of the manager and thus the disclosure of his or her own personality increases
The economic benefit
With the launching of social intranet solutions, costs can be reduced by the perspective of replacing other IT systems in the future. From an economic point of view, however, it is much more important to increase the efficiency of employees. This increase in efficiency does not in itself have any effect on personnel costs, but the time that many employees spend searching for information and contact persons can be used more sensibly working on projects.
A calculation example and some best practice examples for the establishment of social intranet solutions can be found in our white paper (in German language). White paper Social Enterprise
If you are interested or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: call +49 (0)611 . 238 50 10 or by eMail to kontakt(at)diefirma.de.
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