Mediaboss Marketing

Tarrytown, NY (PRWEB) January 31, 2014

Many organizations have trouble answering the question so often heard: Hey, wait how come no ones using our new social intranet? There are six motivational factors communicators should understand before attempting to drive workforce adoption of social intranets and participation with social networking and collaboration tools, says Dom Crincoli, principal at Crincoli Communications LLC.

1/ The Importance of Culture cannot be overstated when it comes to variables affecting social intranet adoption, and the level of workforce engagement and willingness to put forth discretionary effort is perhaps its most reliable indicator.

-Workforce Engagement: Take a look at data gathered from the annual employee survey. Is employee feedback encouraged and is it acted upon? Is feedback gathered once a year, or systemically throughout the year? Have there been layoffs and, if so, how were they handled? Relationships with managers: Are workers micro-managed or treated like trusted partners whose opinion matters?

-The social intranet is discretionary!! This may sound obvious, but you cant force workers to use a social intranet, or force them to collaborate and share ideas. Your workforce may be saying: I dont care about SharePoint or your Open Source intranet with all the social media tools if Im not motivated to work here!

2/ Senior Leader Support: Ciscos social media manager, LaSandra Brill put it this way: An important lesson learned at Cisco is that social media has to make its way into an organization top down (emphasis mine). All too often it makes its way in via the bottom layer young people who know about social media try to make colleagues enthusiastic and launch small projects. This is a positive thing, but it is important that social media are integrated on a strategic level. This entails the need for budget, time and people.

And dont forget, you will face critics within the company. In order to get a good start to success, the top managements support is vital. At Cisco, the CEO, CTO and other executives are active bloggers and often initiate conversations. They show the way to other employees and inspire them through their personal story.

Ive seen too many well-intended attempts to drive social media adoption from small groups within an organization, only to learn that C-level executives want nothing to do with it or offer only token appreciation. These efforts are limited in value because senior leadership must set the tone of transparency, facilitating the cultural milieu required for social intranets to thrive.

3/ Intranet Governance: Accountability for a social intranet must be distributed throughout the organization or it will die on the vine, usually sooner rather than later. Again, Cisco uses a coordinated strategy for social media thats determined by a team of ten called the Center of Excellence. This strategic governance team should be collaborative and cross-functional, and works best when represented by major functional stakeholders from Communications, Human Resources, Operations, Information Technology, and Business Units/Departments.

-Business Unit Tactical Teams (each chaired by a governance team member) should be responsible for managing business unit intranet operations with responsibility for day-to-day decision-making, compliance, creation of customized local standards, along with summarized reporting to the enterprise governance team once a month.

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Understanding Six Motivational Factors of Social Intranet Adoption