Every Friday, we prepare for you a short digest with news covering subjects related to employee engagement, collaboration, organizational culture, knowledge sharing, leadership and the future of work.
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Here’s this week’s brief:
“Collaboration is the very reason…
…the organization you work for exists. It brings people together to collaborate on a shared goal or purpose. The better you collaborate as an organization, the greater the chances your organization will survive and thrive. Within an organization, people should be pursuing the same overall goals and share the same motivations, regardless of what kind of tasks they are performing or what subordinate goals they might be pursuing”, Oscar Berg believes. “When you share your knowledge, information and ideas openly with other colleagues, it will become available to anyone who needs it in their work when pursuing your shared purpose as members of the same organization.” Read Oscar’s latest blog post Is working out loud and sharing really collaboration? to learn more.
“If you want collaboration to happen…
…across an organization it must be effortless for your employees — it’s that simple. Any obstacle is a reason not to bother. Your initiative will lose momentum and collaboration will ultimately fail. Culture, internal politics and technology form a triumvirate of barriers to collaboration which businesses must overcome, but there are ways to clear these hurdles. Findings have shown that user-generated content encourages up to 15 times more engagement and collaboration in employees compared to authored pages, so encouraging employee contribution is essential. We often hear, “I don’t want Facebook in our business,” so consider stakeholder perception when introducing collaborative tools. Try asking, “where do you go when you need to find something out?””. Read Nigel Williams post for CMSWire Remove Your Collaboration Roadblocks to get the whole story.
“Do gamification strategies really…
…motivate employees and customers? Are they valid ways to recognize, reward and encourage a deeper learning of concepts for better business outcomes — and push people to achieve their goals? Or is gamification nothing more than a well-orchestrated bribe to get people to do what they should be doing anyway?” Antoinette Siu sat with Brian Burke (Gartner Analyst,), Karen Hsu (VP, Badgeville) and Adam Holtby (Research Analyst, Ovum) to get some answers. The latter believes that when used effectively, game mechanics can be a valuable tool for building status and reputation systems that can improve the motivation and performance of employees. Gartner defines gamification as “the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.”. Read Antoinette’s article Discussion Point: Is Gamification More Than a Bribe? for CMSWire to get your answers.
“SaaS, social and collaboration technologies…
…are publicly killing off zombie technologies. The enterprise applications that replaced the mainframe and custom-developed software are now being replaced by Software as a Service (SaaS) in the cloud. Much like on-premises enterprise solutions allowed employees across a city to use the same software to follow common business practices, SaaS solutions allow employees from many cities and companies to use the same software. By paying a subscription, usually per user, the cost of the service becomes an ongoing operating expense, and saves the effort of raising capital to replace technology. With the advent of social media and collaboration technologies, email becomes another zombie technology. It is now possible for workgroups to engage in a richer, real-time dialog by connecting with other groups via video streaming, social platforms, blogs, instant messaging, and other collaboration tools.” Read Idea to retire: Zombie technologies in the workplace by Paul Cook, Stephen Elkins and Marc Ott for more on these technological trends.
“Enabling employee collaboration can be…
…a struggle for many companies in the digital age. When budgets are tight, we tend to focus solely on driving the bottom line. But employee engagement and team collaboration are a struggle worth overcoming. Research shows that when the lines of communication are broken, a company’s performance suffers. According to Holmes Report, around $37 billion is lost every year from lack of communication between employees. When employees collaborate and communicate effectively, not only are they more engaged, but company performance improves. Gallup revealed that when employees are engaged, companies reap the payoffs.” Read Five tips to get the most out of your team by Warren Barkley for CIO Review to get more on the subject.
Happy Knowledge Sharing!
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