Rebecca Showerman

Internal workplace communities, or as Jive calls them “Collaboration Software”, are basically a social media mixing pot, combining the functionality of blogs, wikis, discussion boards, even instant messaging and employee profiles (think Linked In) with your traditional company intranet.

The purpose is to use this software to draw upon the knowledge you already have within your company, in the minds of your workforce, and use it to drive your business ahead.

These softwares focus on:

• Employee Engagement
• Sales and Marketing
• Innovations
• Support

An internal community platform acts as a virtual meeting room where users can interact with their coworkers, form project specific groups, ask questions, post status updates, manage projects, create documents and upload files. Companies can establish individual blogs for each department and use them to store market research or share insight into industry trends. Features like message boards on specific topics like ‘ideas’ or ‘innovation’ are ways employees can share their inspirations and sound off on suggestions.

Internal workplace communities often have the capabilities to facilitate the on-boarding of new employees (or integrate with existing HRIS platforms). Networks can be created where new hires are invited to join to introduce themselves, meet coworkers who can help them succeed, get acclimated to the culture, and learn the ins and outs of the company.

With all this collaboration and transparency employees become more engaged, productive, and satisfied. This gives you the ability to develop employees through the use of informal learning and integrated a LMS through the internal community. Internal workforce communities also help you with retaining employees and retaining their knowledge when or if they do leave the company. For more information check out my previous post on using internal communities throughout the employee life cycle.

If you are struggling with any of the following talent management issues, or you are planing for the future so you don’t have to struggle with these issues then you may want to start looking into an internal community for your company.

• Breaking down barriers that stifle collaboration and innovation
• Identifying the latent professional networks that drive your organization
• Locating company expertise when it’s needed most
• Building a corporate memory
• Retaining Generation Y
• Engaging valued alumni and retirees

Among many other issues your company may face trying to strategically plan for the full employee life cycle, implementing an internal workplace community is your best bet. It’s the one tool that spans all facets of human capital management. Internal workplace communities can give your organization the tools and the power to broaden their existing talents through information sharing, professional networking, informal social learning, and ongoing collaboration. Especially in large, national or even global organizations, being able to collaborate effectively will improve performance and alignment.

Internal workplace communities can assist in all these areas and more, and are really worth looking into if you haven’t already, the basic company intranet just doesn’t cut it anymore in the Talent Age!

On-Boarding

An internal community can help new hires connect with the people they need to know to succeed and cut time-to-proficiency drastically. Tools and strategies like a LMS can be integrated to help train your new talent.

Performance Support

You know the old adage, it’s not what you know but who you know? Well it applies here. Internal communities allow employees to develop professional networks that assist in the development and engagement of employees and drives performance.

Informal Learning

Most of us who have had to make budgets for training and development understand that upwards of 80% of our budgets go to formal training programs. LMS, Seminars, Online courses etc are all awfully expensive. But did you know that only 10% of what we learn comes from these methods? 70% of our learning comes from informal collaboration. Using an internal community you can evolve your LMS strategy to include collaborative informal learning, as well as incorporating tools such as wikis, blogs, videos, social bookmarking, document sharing and more!

Workforce Management

By using an internal community you can have better insight into the informal networks that develop in your organization. This enables bottom-up, socially driven succession planning. Most programs have robust reporting capabilities that allow you to maximize your time for workforce planning, succession planning, and finding the key players in your organization.

Internal Recruiting

In an internal workplace community employees have the ability to develop rich profiles and communities that are active and take advantage of networking make internal recruitment work, giving you the ability to cut back on expensive external recruitment practices like third-party recruiters and expensive job postings, and find more sources of talent in-house that are already aligned with your organizations goals and culture.

Alumni & Retiree Management Networks

How do you keep track and maintain those relationships with valued alumni and retirees, who by the way are leaving with a huge mass of knowledge that you may need to tap into down the road. Maintaining a priceless “corporate memory”, branding, recruiting, etc. an organizational alumni community is a quick way to demonstrate the value of business social networking.

You should absolutely be looking into an internal community if you don’t have one already. Internal communities are a way to expose your employees to all facets of the business, people, and culture of your organization. Having a place for people to share knowledge and expertise, to socialize, develop and grow is the best way to have happy, engaged employees. Tell me what you think? Do you use this kind of technology? Tell us about it!