internal social networking

Over on Davepress, Dave Briggs has published a characteristically thoughtful post about anonymity online. In a nutshell, Dave argues people should be open about who they are as this builds trust in online spaces.

It’s fair to say this has long been recieved wisdom for those managing internal forums and social intranets. By requiring users to post using their own name and logon, the theory goes, you encourage self-moderation. Intranet managers will tell you proudly that they’ve only had to remove a handful of posts in years of running forums.

For the most part, I think this is the right thing to do. Dave’s post alerted me for the first time to the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, which is as applicable within the firewall as on the greater internet.

But although it’s generally true, it doesn’t follow that it should always be the case. Anonymity does have its uses – many people (myself included) have a public and private self on the internet, just as we might reveal different sides of ourself inside and outside of work.

I wonder, then, if there’s a case for anonymity inside the firewall? Although that sounds like an oxymoron, it just might work, in the right circumstances. Hear me out on this one… If openness enforces self-moderation, doesn’t it also run the risk of encouraging reticence? Of silencing criticism?

An organisation which struggles to encourage honest critical dialogue might find they are better able to achieve this by giving people the anonymity they need to speak freely.

Even where anonymity is given, it isn’t always believed. To give an example, in almost any organisation’s staff survey, around one-third of employees never really believe it is anonymous, and a sizable proportion of those will hold back on saying something negative for fear of the consequences.

The central issue is one of trust. To participate usefully and honestly in online forums, employees need to trust that their employer – an in particular, their own line manager – won’t hold what they say against them, or criticise them for having participated at all.

While most employers would say their senior management culture is one which is accepting of ideas, fear of line management – either real of perceived – is a commonplace even in otherwise well-functioning organisations. Similarly, people are often reluctant to say anything which could be perceived as being critical of immediate colleagues in case it upsets the apple cart.

Self-moderation does indeed enforce good behaviour, but the side effect of this is that it enforces compliance, silences dissent and prevents disruption. Yet disruption can be productive and useful. It generates ideas. It questions.

What would happen if you let employees hide behind a nickname and avatar and say what they really think? Would they take part? Would you be surprised what you hear? And would you do anything in response?

Which brings me back to the issue of trust. Trust is a two-way relationship. For organisational dialogue to work productively, both sides need to trust each other. Employees need to trust managers to listen, and leaders need to trust their colleagues to make a useful contibution.

In some organisations, the cloak of anonymity could help to establish the first part of that trust relationship, and reassure colleagues that leaders are, in fact, really listening; once it exists, it’s easier to step out of the shadows with a greater degree of trust and openness.

Has it really been a month since I last wrote a proper blog post? What a busy month it’s been, too.

I’m moving on from my current job, taking a break before starting a new role in January.

This is my final day, so after the frantic period of activity running up to this week’s staff awards event I’ve settled down to write my handover notes.

Distilling two years’ work into a few pages is proving quite difficult. What’s struck me most is the frequency with which I’ve suggested my replacement “speak to so-and-so” to get a particular task done.

My email account will be closed and eventually deleted after I leave. That means the many detailed, lengthy and sometimes just plain weird discussions I’ve had with colleagues will vanish into the ether, just as the results of face-to-face conversations I’ve had will leave when I do.

This all underscores the value of human memory. I had no handover notes at all when I started here, so learning how to get even simple tasks done was a long and complicated process.

As people leave their employers they take with them detailed knowledge of people and processes, built up over years or even decades. While replacement staff may be easier to find in the current job market, their knowledge of the organisation will take much longer to develop.

Employers, as well as new employees, would benefit from finding improved ways to capture this organisational memory.

Internal social networking can enable that inter-generational transfer of knowledge between new employees and old-timers.

It needn’t be technologically complex, though. At an event I attended earlier this year, Euan Semple spoke about talk.gateway, the bulletin board he introduced at the BBC.

“Staff members shared more information outside the organisation and with people in other countries than they did with each other. We had to give them an infrastructure or mechanism to talk to each other online,” he says. “I wanted to introduce social computing tools on the intranet and started with a bulletin board.”

talk.gateway allowed staff to ask questions, find solutions and connect with each other. Crucially, though, it’s archived and searchable, which means discussions can be viewed even after the people involved in it have moved on.

More and more organisations are introducing internal Facebook-style social networking, including some in the public sector. Carl Haggerty’s innovative internal social networking pilot in Devon Country Council led to a sharp decrease in helpdesk calls, as employees solve problems by using each other’s knowledge.

Networks like this also enable newer employees to ask questions of and learn from longer-serving ones, helping people settle in and get up to speed with the job.

My (as yet unappointed) successor will have to make do with twelve pages detailing my key processes and projects. I wish them well, and look forward to the next challenge – watch this space!