In Jim Collins book ‘Good to great’ one of the key differences between a good and great company was the people; having the right people on the bus and then involving the people in helping to solve the challenges the organisation faced. 

Given the current level of consumer confidence never has it been more critical for organisations to apply their collective brain power to maximise their customer proposition.  But with so many external influences on your organisation, perpetuated by the Internet, how do you fight back?

Employees often hear ‘news’ first via blogs, social networks, online news channels, industry magazines, national newspapers etc and can feel frustrated and demotivated that the internal communications machine is not as efficient.  They read about the numerous challenges across their industry yet see internal waste and inefficiency with (in their mind) little opportunity of fixing this.  But if you have highly motivated individuals who themselves want to be more than just good at their job, how do you tap into their wealth of knowledge and creativity to deliver significant value to the organisation? 

• Is the concept of an internal social network really something that can help? 
• Is Facebook, with all its negative connotations really some kind of corporate saviour? 

Primark for example think yes; they have one of the biggest Facebook Groups with over 90,000 members extolling their virtues.  We are not of course suggesting that Facebook et al are the answer but social networks have developed the online skills of your employees which you easily can tap into.  The majority of your employees will be comfortable with communicating online as most will have some kind of profile on one of the many social networks.  So, without any required training employers can tap into this online capability of their workforce and use it to involve them in solving the business challenges, engaging them in how to make their workplace the best workplace, improving customer service, identifying how to make products/sales great and many other ideas. 

HR is constantly challenged as to how they deliver strategic value yet this kind of people communication strategy has to be driven by thought leaders from the HR community.  Imagine IT implementing a new technology system:

• That the employees see as great and feel re-energised and motivated.
• Is adopted overnight from both the workplace and home.
• Requires virtually no training. 
• Senior management gain access to business improvement idea’s and feedback immediately.

Maybe it sounds too good to be true but the thought of doing nothing is surely too painful to comprehend?   

The concept of corporate social networks although still relatively new is growing rapidly across America and is easily extended across any Global organisations due to the Internet.  But with the cost of technology no longer being a barrier to entry there is no real excuse for HR to ignore this opportunity to involve their people and transform their performance.  But, although this concept should be compelling to the majority of our experience suggest organisations will react in the following way:

1. Do nothing – probably 85%.
2. Read more about it but then do little if anything – maybe 8%.
3. Attend some relevant seminars – hopefully 5%.
4. Start a feasibility project – the minority 2%.

Whilst the above figures are not exact they are not going to be too much of an exaggeration which leaves the thought leaders, and forward thinking risk takers a massive opportunity to transform their business; whilst the majority just try to be good and blame the economy for poor performance!