The situation is paradoxical: not all companies have sought the commitment of their employees, a foolproof operation or a focus on agility; it has never been as difficult to implement as it is now, with the economic environment weighing in on individual and collective dynamics.

Enterprise social networks (ESN) have been popularly regarded as possible lever to promote engagement within companies. However, implementation has been slow, and so far, the results have been mixed. In many cases, internal social networks, from the point of view of the collective, have not translated into actual utility. Why is that?

Be wary of  » experimental laboratories ».

Giving ESN to employees as an experiment to see what happens – this does not amount to much.  » People « work » we often hear. Despite the good intentions, the ESN becomes a strange artifact which the company then maintains for the sole purpose of justifying the experimentation. A brief look at the data supports this. No problem,  it’s just an experiment, you might think. On the contrary: you wind up suggesting in the minds of your employees that ESN…are nothing. The job then becomes more complicated as we must now move on from a negative a priori.

Being unsuccessful with a ESN project tends to suggest to management and company employees that a ESN is useless.

In short, this type of project requires that the first shot be the good one, if not it requires a lot of effort afterward. Having all the will is not enough to guarantee something worth having at the end.

In the effort to start well, ESN projects tend to begin with a long list of specifications followed by an intensive tool selection process. The drama. Because what follows is a long, never-ending list of prerequisites, something resembling Santa’s list. The tool selection is process is endless. We need additional specific developments. The project cycle lengthens. The mountains give way to a mouse of finished product, not very brave as a result. Lots of money is spent, and already, top management begins to associate the words ESN with « expensive », « long », « complicated ». So…what to do?

Include in the implementation of ESN a priority objective and make it quantifiable

The implementation of ESN requires identifying a « real » business problem that the ESN will be able to address. A problem that through the use of the ESN can be made measurable. Example: if the goal is to relieve the mail boxes of employees, you can focus on measuring how many emails are eliminated through the usage of the new ESN tool.

Integration ESN into the business processes

Why do employees visit their intranet? Because there they want to submit their vacation requests. Because they must enter their time sheets. Because they want to look at their performance indicators. Not to watch the latest news, even if in fact they do end up doing so by chance. The success of a ESN goes through similar stages. If it serves to exchange nothing useful, it will be doomed for failure. On the other hand, if it supports business processes, everything changes. If discussions on a particular project are made over the new tool, in this case the ESN, employees will associate the tool with the business process, and use it « by design » in their daily activity. To achieve this, the ESN must have an API that can be integrated directly in the ESN so that the discussions can be made visible and interactive within other business applications, without having to necessarily log into the ESN.

Design the solution according to the tool 

Yes. As crazy as it may seem, my belief is that the selection of the tool must be made quickly, and be made functional far in advance. Why? By favoring a solution hosted on a cloud, and then adapting it to what the tool may be, the project cycle is then reduced, the implementation becomes quick, there are no specific developments, and energy can be redirected towards what’s more important: the success of the project. Because deployment is not the end but the beginning.

Involve top management? No – convert them into champions

So obvious, but so important – and difficult. The middle and top management must be beyond reproach. Cannot implicate them. No. They are the champions of the subject. The embrace by employees comes is inspired by them. Necessarily.

Jean-Louis

Article published on French.fr (in French only).