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:
Social collaboration software can…
…fundamentally change the way employees access information and do their jobs. “Instead of dealing with emails and instant messaging services, collaboration software allows users to work together through social networks.” Users can post a question and anyone in the company can offer up an answer. The biggest hurdle facing a social collaboration platform is getting users to actually use it. The software has to fit naturally into their existing workflows. Social collaboration makes the collective knowledge and skills in a company available to everyone. Read Eddie Lockhart’s post Change employee workflows with a social collaboration platform for Tech Target to get more on the story.
Nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars…
…are spent each year by companies in an effort to improve employee engagement. But for the most part, companies oversimplify things by viewing personal satisfaction as a proxy for engagement. As a result, they miss key behavioral signals. It’s critical to look at factors like employees’ perceptions and behaviors, and their effect on company performance, to figure out which levers to pull to engage the individuals who work for you. Instead of viewing engagement in terms of low, medium, and high, organizations will be able to understand how employees perceive them, how that perception relates to their behavior, and in aggregate, how those factors drive bottom-line performance. Read Sean Graber’s post The Two Sides of Employee Engagement for Harvard Business Review to better understand what motivates people.
Fauxial Learning is about forcing people…
…to use social media in courses – or even in the workplace – and then confusing compliance with engagement (and even worse) learning, Jane Harts writes in one of her posts. Learning has been social ever since human life was born on this planet and will continue to be so, with or without technology. Individuals will get their work done by talking to peers, reaching out to their network, and bringing their personal learning network and personal knowledge mastery to work. Organizations can no longer exist in silos — either internally or in relation to the external ecosystem. Cooperation and collaboration will yield greater benefits than competitiveness. Read Social Learning is Voluntary; Collaboration Platforms are Enablers by Sahana Chattopadhyay to read more on the subject.
Defining the digital workplace is…
…not a one size fits all, because the digital workplace will vary depending on each organization’s size, culture and structure. But there are some key points that all digital workplaces have, or should have, in common. First of all, work is what you do, not where you go. One other important aspect of digital workplaces is to share information, to be able to use collaboration tools to help other people. Accessing information across all the places is crucial for a productive workplace. Solving problems should also be a main concern – to ask for help from people you may not know in discussion forums and shared workspaces. We found out all this from Mark Morrell’s post What Exactly is a Digital Workplace? for D Zone in partnership with JetBrains. Take a look yourself.
Work is changing at a rapid pace…
…but many organizations still cling to tried and tested methods of working or ideas that have worked in the past. However, reluctance to even trial new ways of working can cost employers their competitive edge. A workforce of the future report, ‘Success or stagnation in the communications industry’ by Accenture Strategy, offers lessons for all employers from research with communications businesses. People Management picks the top five tips for management and HR. One of these tips is to recognize people’s willingness to embrace technology. “You might be surprised at the willingness of traditional workers to embrace digital. We’ve found more than half of employees we have surveyed (57 per cent) see the impact of digital technologies on their work experience as being positive. Only 8 per cent see it as negative.”, report author Ryan Shanks says. Read Five ways to capitalise on digital advances in the workplace by Peter Crush for CIPD to learn more.
Happy Knowledge Sharing!
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