Enterprise Social Networking: People Productivity in a Web 2.0 World

White Paper Enterprise Social Networking: People Productivity in a Web 2.0 World In an era of heightened competition and a changing workforce, new models of social and real-time interaction and networked, community- based collaboration are creating exceptional business value. Contents Introduction 2 Why Web 2.0 is important for business leaders 2 Key Web 2.0 concepts 2 The fusion of formal and informal learning creates a powerful new model of blended learning: Learning 2.0 3 The need for a connected corporate community 3 Enterprise social networking forms the core of a connected corporate community 4 Enterprise social networking puts Web 2.0 into action for the enterprise 5 Web conferencing plays an important role in enterprise social networking 5 Leveraging enterprise social networking to get more value from your talent management initiatives 6 Engage new employees with peer-to-peer onboarding 6 Reward people based on formal and informal measures of success 7 Understand your talent 7 Unify formal and informal processes in a single talent management platform 7 The Saba Advantage 7 One platform for enterprise social networking and end-to-end talent management 7 Conclusion 9 White Paper n Saba Live Introduction are in a jar, the average of their guesses is likely to be highly accurate – and likely more accurate than the estimate of one Why Web 2.0 is important for business leaders individual would have been. Similarly, if a group of 10,000 The notion of Web 2.0 as the foundation for the latest movie-goers reviews a particular film, the group’s consensus generation of web applications has received a lot of press on that movie is more likely to be reflective of its audience lately. While it may not have fully lived up to its hype yet, appeal than the comments of any one reviewer. it is already beginning to change the way that business executives – Human Resources (HR) and Training included – are approaching talent management. The philosophies and technologies underlying the Web 2.0 evolution give HR organizations a way to proactively address the realities that they have long known: that true people productivity requires “ Web 2.0, is a major paradigm shift in the way people think. Thinking is now informal collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams, distributed across minds, tools and and that true organizational knowledge rarely follows traditional media, groups of people, and space ” managerial lines. Web 2.0 also provides the mindset needed and time. to create the type of environment in which the younger generations of workers expect to work: a connected corporate community. Chris Dede Harvard Graduate School of Education Key Web 2.0 concepts There are three important concepts underlying Web 2.0 that can play a vital role in your company’s ability to take better advantage of the informal interactions that drive productivity, learning, and innovation: These are the concepts at play on sites such as Amazon.com or Netflix, which allow users to make more informed decisions 1. User-generated content, based on recommendations and behavior of others (the 2. Collective intelligence, and “people-who-liked-this-movie-also-like-this- movie” concept). Collective intelligence is a fundamental strength of a site like 3. The social networking that brings it all together. Wikipedia: Millions of users who are continuously reviewing a Used in conjunction with each other, these concepts become large number of entries can be even more accurate than the the levers that drive exponential value from collaboration and small group of experts that edits traditional encyclopedias. The knowledge sharing. success of this site also shows the power that comes from User-generated content is typified by information resources mixing user-generated content with collective intelligence. In such as Wikipedia or YouTube.com. On these web sites, a learning situation, the collective intelligence of learners can user-generated content is everything: take away the users, help organizations determine what formal learning and which and there is no content. The community – not some individual informal contributions from experts actually help their people author – creates the content; contributes it; governs it by learn most effectively. In collective intelligence scenarios, the determining its accuracy, usefulness, and relevance; and the simplicity of the process (for example, a simple point and click community’s collective wisdom ensures that the resource is on a number of stars to contribute a rating and a high volume updated as needed. of responses are the drivers of success. Collective intelligence describes how the grouping of opinions, Social networking refers to the growing number of online observations, or impressions – if collected in a way that does communities of people who share interests and activities, or not introduce bias – leads to better information. For example, who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of if 100 individuals are asked to estimate how many jelly beans others. Social networking has –produced powerful new ways to communicate and share information because it creates a 2 critical mass of people who are able to easily connect and share information with one another and who understand enough about each other to trust in the collective intelligence they generate. “ Getting other points of view and other pieces of knowledge into our learning The fusion of formal and informal learning creates a system that might otherwise have powerful new model of blended learning: Learning 2.0 escaped is key to our success as an Let’s look at how these new concepts are transforming the learning function. The U.S. Department of Labor has ” organization. estimated that 70 percent or more of work-related learning is Brad Anderson informal. With such a high percentage of workforce learning CEO, Best Buy dependent on institutional knowledge or organizational memory – shared informally peer-to-peer – being able to effectively capture and capitalize on this community knowledge is critical to your success. Instead of just attending formal training or scheduled meetings, people can also collaborate and learn continuously through multiple channels, with networked learning geared to their specific needs or assignments.