HEAR HEAR

Two years ago, employers were gung-ho about the power of social media to understand the pulse of employees. And tracking what employees posted on new-age sites such as Facebook and Twitter even became a dedicated HR function at several firms. Somewhere down the line, this seems to have lost its early charm, with employers feeling that employees are merely ranting in public domain… things sometimes got out of control, and hardly any valuable suggestion came through. But it's certainly not the end of public debate.

The power of social networking continues to mean a lot to organisations. Employers still listen into conversations in the public domain, but at the same time, they are increasingly tuning into in-house social channels as they provide more relevant, specific and contextual communication rather than random thoughts.

Companies say that intranet sites — though restricted and structured to a large extent compared with the external medium — have brought in a remarkable difference to the way they engage with employees and have spurred innovative thinking and knowledge-sharing within the organisation.

Right from voting for the banks to have salary accounts with, and whether the Cloud model would suit a particular client, to even selling bikes and cameras, intranet sites (with their own blogs, communities and forums) are the flavour of the day.

Says Satyajit Gangopadhyay, Managing Director, Ness Technologies (India): “External social media such as Facebook was used by employees to vent their feelings without any context.

Things were also getting out of control on these sites and it was difficult to get meaningful communication and messaging though the external media. While we could gauge the general feeling of employees, we could not take any major decision based on that. We don't actively track external social media now nor is there any company support to that.”

According to Mohandas Pai, Director – HR, Infosys Technologies, while some employees still express opinion that matters or can be taken as serious feedback, some are just letting off steam. “People who are not articulate enough to speak up generally use this to rave and rant. Some people also like the fact that they can remain anonymous and still give their opinion. We don't take such comments seriously.”

At the same time, employers are also eager to give employees a forum through intranet channels to voice their opinions in a structured manner and obtain meaningful ideas that spur innovative thinking and even bring about policy changes.

Last year, SAP Labs created or modified over eight employee policies based on feedback received via employee blogs in the company portals. “For instance, based on the tone and need expressed in our blogs, we were able to set up a crèche for our employees' children, to having policies around work-life balance,” says Bhuvaneswar Naik, Vice-President, Human Resources, SAP Labs India.

T. Hari, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Satyam, which has an intranet tool called ‘Freevoice', says: “Mahindra Satyam in its current state of affairs, from getting a new identity and now in the process of integration, views social media as a very important channel to engage with all stakeholders of the company. Freevoice has been developed as a medium to encourage free and innovative thinking and to empower associates to voice their thoughts directly to the decision- making authorities.”

The company has a dedicated digital marketing team following comments about company and its policies on this site. HR, in conjunction with the digital marketing team, constantly monitors the air waves, gathering queries posted, and provides responses accordingly. “The fact that associates know that there is someone listening and responding to their queries helps establish a stronger and a deeper connect with them,” says Hari.

Three years ago, storage infrastructure solutions provider EMC developed an internal community called EMC|ONE — today it has more than 40 per cent of its population as registered users and gets monthly hits running into several lakhs. EMC's India Centre of Excellence (CoE) is driving this effort with the same intensity as it is being driven at a global level, says Sundar Balasubramanian, Director and General Manager, Strategy & Business Productivity, EMC India Centre of Excellence. There is also the EMC Community Network, which includes a battery of EMC bloggers.

The India CoE recently started the iCOE initiative, which gives a chance to employees to not just express their ideas but also work on an SLA (service level agreement) based model where their feedback is heard from support staff to the leadership level.

“SLAs are woven into the process in such a way that, while raising a particular suggestion or a voice for cause, it gets responses in pre-defined time. This adds a predictability dimension to the social-media efforts and reflects our commitment to social-media,” says Balasubramaniam.

Says Rajesh Lalwani, Director, Blogworks, a social media consulting firm: “Internal social channels are a fantastic way to bring about collaboration and knowledge-sharing. The work environment automatically improves. This is really the way forward, not just for big companies but for smaller organisations too. As you go along, more and more of small and medium enterprises will join the bandwagon.”

Unlike the public media which is unstructured, the intranet is structured and hence it is a lot easier to make policy decisions, says Gangopadhyay of Ness. Also, given the security restrictions and confidentiality reasons, employees cannot share knowledge of customers and projects on a public forum.

But it is not as if internal channels are devoid of negative or controversial opinions. “There are instances when people with hidden identities do express biased and controversial opinions on these mediums. Based on the context and credibility of the opinions, responses are either filtered or answered suitably,” says Hari.

Some companies even have policies around what employees post on social media. “The days of free freedom have gone as organisations are educating employees on what they can say or cannot say even in the public domain.

Some organisations such as Dell have also identified and trained brand ambassadors among employees who are authorised to speak about the company,” says Lalwani of Blogworks. “While ranting in any domain — external or internal — cannot be stopped, employees are also realising that any change has to be brought about in a meaningful manner.”

swethak@thehindu.co.in

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