Employee collaboration networks spark ideas and teamwork
Employee collaboration networks are gaining popularity among today’s large-size businesses as a technological means to spark innovative ideas, improve efficiency and encourage cost savings. Also referred to as real-time business collaboration platforms, these networks are typically sophisticated software programs that blend email, instant messaging, forums, wikis and file sharing, among other interactive activities to enhance internal employee communications.
Business consultant and managing partner of Meridian Holdings LLC, Rob Wiedefeld, says CEOs and other company leaders, in turn, benefit from these interconnected communication networks. This is because the concept ultimately allows them to backtrack project productivity while fostering positive changes for the company’s future. In some cases, company leaders can rely on these networks to help them weed out project missteps by simply tracking the work contributions and value of a single departmental employee logged into the system, notes Wiedefeld, who has 40 years of business and teaching experience and served at the helm of several companies.
Wiedefeld, also the former chair of business management and a professor of finance, philosophy and general studies at University of Phoenix’s Columbia, Md. Campus, says he thinks of employee collaboration networks in two segments: the purpose of the technology (i.e. cost reductions, employee expansion and project management) to the use of the technology.
“There is a fairly significant part of the business world that will settle on anything new, shiny and glitzy like is the case with a lot of technology these days, but it matters how efficiently these companies implement these employee collaboration networks,” says Wiedefeld. “Otherwise, something like investing in software just becomes an expensive toy, so to speak.”
Gov 2.0 leads by example: going beyond collaborative software
The United States government has spent the past four years embracing employee collaboration networks and implementing them, moreover, to encourage employees to focus beyond a conventional software platform. The collaboration technology used aims to achieve company improvements while its usage by employees boosts morale.
In August 2010, the U.S Department of Transportation announced its plans to launch a website, called IdeaHub, that allows its employees to offer work-related ideas to improve individual jobs or the DOT’s functionality overall. These ideas are voted on by the employee community and if a particular idea garners enough positive votes than a DOT council reviews it for potential implementation as a company practice.
"But IdeaHub is not all fun-and-games,” writes U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood in his blog, Fast Lane. “We expect this tool to encourage: budget savings and increased productivity; increased engagement and workplace satisfaction; greater agility and collaboration within the Department; (and) unfiltered information from our front lines.”
IdeaHub comes on the heels of the four-year success of the Transportation Security Administration’s similar employee collaboration network, IdeaFactory, which also was adopted in 2010 by the Department of Homeland Security. In two years, whitehouse.gov reports that IdeaFactory incited 40 viable ideas that led to systematic alterations including changes “to Standard Operating Procedures and new initiatives that have improved job satisfaction, increased retention and improved the quality of work life.”
Younger workers want collaboration to extend to clients and customers
Infusing technological collaboration in the workforce is greeted with open arms by many of today’s young workers, who want collaborative technology to also be a part of their communications with company clients and customers, according to a 2008 survey published by Accenture.
“Organizations will need to provide new communication and collaboration channels," states the survey, which questioned more than 400 students and employees ages 14-27. "(They) expect employers to provide communication channels such as online chat, instant messaging, mobile text messaging and RSS feeds to communicate with their customers and clients."
The survey further shows that 52% of young employees “insist” on employers providing state-of-the-art technology and is one of their significant considerations when choosing an employer. Seventy five percent of the surveyed population additionally reported they have accessed free collaborative tools from online to enhance their work output when employers fail to make them readily available.
Proper monitoring eliminates employee downtime abuse
Wiedefeld cautions that employers embracing collaborative networking tools should set up a formal monitoring plan or better define employee job responsibilities to avoid a double-edged sword. He emphasizes that such networks streamline employee workloads, but that the additional free time employees reap can be squandered at the company’s expense.
“Time is money and it’s an old cliché, but it absolutely true," he says. “If you can cut in half the amount of time employees do to get the same job you save … and if you use the time they saved effectively than you can save on company costs.”
