Types of Social Intranet Features
But before I delve further into the reason why social collaboration is lagging behind, here is an overview of the different types of social features and tools that are being deployed — separately or integrated:
Content creation and knowledge sharing Blogs, podcasting, video sharing, social bookmarking, tagging, commenting on content, rating content. More and more organizations are using these tools.
Network and discussion
Forums, microblogs and status updates, social network functions ('become friends', 'link'), extended ('rich media') profiles.
Except for forums, these functionalities are still used to a limited extent.
Real-time communication
Presence/absence status, chat (IRC) and instant messaging, desktop and room-based videoconferencing, and real-time collaboration on documents. While videoconferencing and chat have been used by most organizations for years, working on a document simultaneously is still relatively new.
Collective intelligence
Online idea boxes, crowdsourcing and wikis. This category of functionalities is used the least. There is a logical explanation for this: successful use of these tools touches the heart of the organisation (culture): they intervene more than other tools in the way our organisations are set up and managed.
LivePerson CEO sets a good example with a video blog (source: Intranet Design Annual 2012, Nielsen Norman Group).
The management part of the intranet, which allows content to be published, is often complex. At NCR Corporation, they pay extra attention to this and the employee is guided through the publishing process in a step-by-step plan (source: Intranet Design Annual 2012, Nielsen Norman Group).
Interesting developments in this social media mix:
Blogs or wikis are the most common. 50% of the organizations surveyed use blogs or wikis organization-wide or at department level. This is followed by the ability to comment on content (40%) and sharing videos (30%).
Podcasting is used the least. In 60% of organizations, this is not used at all. Not so strange, since podcasting in my opinion is not really a logical tool for online collaboration.
The limited use of tagging is striking. Only 9% of organizations have implemented this organization-wide, 15% partially and 39% do not use it yet. And that is a shame. Tagging content creates new information flows and makes finding relevant information a lot easier. A possible explanation is that tagging has a fairly major impact on the basic architecture of the intranet (i.e. the platform on which the intranet runs — to the extent that there is an integrated platform).
The MAN Diesel & Turbo SE wiki (source: Intranet Design Annual 2012, Nielsen Norman Group).
Ratings: 'Intranet theater — a bit of show but little value'
Personally, I am very charmed by the rating concept (Like, +1, ★). By having employees rate content, you as an individual user can see more quickly what is hot and what is not. Linked to a social network functionality, you can see which content is rated as good by, for example, your direct colleagues or peers. However, the McConnell report contains an interesting side note from one of the respondents that got me thinking:
“We have a 5* rating system — people rate, but we don't do anything with the information and, secondarily, it's not clear on what basis they rate the doc, ie do they like the news? The style? The picture? So hard to say. I call it intranet theater brother cell phone list — a bit of show but little value.”
Although rating content works very well on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, the mechanism may work less well on intranets. With millions of users and similar amounts of content, rating helps determine relevance. Or at least popularity and topicality. For intranets, with a relatively limited amount of content and number of users, this is less true. And what do 10 'Likes' really say about the quality of the content?
First of all, the advantages. What does online collaboration yield? An overview:
Streamlining processes
Reducing the amount of email
Cost reduction and avoidance
Solve problems and make decisions faster
Less time needed for employee training
Faster time to market
Better informed employees
High employee engagement
More knowledge sharing
Experts are found faster and more often
Cross-pollination and innovation
As Boudewijn Bugter noted earlier , organizations mainly see the added value in knowledge sharing and the involvement and informedness of employees. Soft value, that is. Harder metrics such as a faster time to market or cost savings are seen less.