Summary: ‘Bring your own device’ has transformed mobile access to corporate information thanks to new consumer devices being adopted faster than their corporate equivalents. Could ‘Bring your own profile’ do the same for corporate knowledge by leveraging consumer social networks?
The adoption of enterprise social software continues to grow. Social media command centres are becoming more commonplace, certainly for recognisable brands. Conversation hubs to facilitate knowledge-sharing are replacing older groupware tools and email discussion lists. Sentiment analysis is a relatively new form of analytics, tapping into current moods and trends visible through user-generated content that are less predictable than your traditional statistics but can prove invaluable to enabling smarter decisions and actions. And internet-connected mobile devices are granting access anytime anywhere, putting the individual at the centre of anything and everything he/she/it chooses to participate in.
But in the world of work, there is one aspect that is already proving tiresome. The need to recreate your profile in a multitude of different enterprise social networks. Uploading a photo, adding a description, declaring skills and interests. Signing up for groups, duplicating opinions across platforms. Change company frequently (increasingly likely in the current era), or live life as a freelancer (also increasingly likely), and it becomes a regular chore.
What if, as has occurred with mobile devices, you could bring your own profile to work? Simply grant permission to your current employer to recognise your online career profile as an employee, and former employers to include your profile in their Alumni network. With a history of contributions that would enable the network to auto-suggest what company groups you are likely to want to affiliate with, and could recommend when you are likely to be able to contribute to something the organisation is seeking help with.
Whilst there are plenty of technical details to overcome, there are benefits for both the individual and the organisation in terms of skills recognition and knowledge transfer. The individual is able to integrate more quickly into the corporate social network. The company has a constantly maintained employee directory that can be easily expanded beyond organisation boundaries to include alumni, associates and other interested or relevant parties. And accurate recognisable photos in most cases too!
To do so would mean integrating one of the online consumer social networks. I’m guessing Facebook is an unlikely candidate. Most people observe a separation that means Facebook is kept for family and friends, hobbies and informal events. Of the others, in English-speaking countries, the likely candidates are LinkedIn and Google+. LinkedIn has the weight of maturity and a thriving group system that includes algorithms to suggest what you might want to participate in. People are used to crafting and maintaining their profile for career development. It also offers the potential to integrate with the existing company pages and recruitment services. Google+ has the breadth of coverage, plugging individual profiles into a global search index that enables also sorts of SocialRank based possibilities. As well as social networking tools already popular within some organisations, the Google Hangouts. But it has some work to do still – few people maintain well-populated profiles there (in my experience). Others? About.me is interesting but just a static profile page for now, like an online business card but without the value of context.
I’ve deliberately ignored the enterprise social networking tools such as Jive, Yammer, Kenexa and SocialCast because, for all their newness, they still represent the traditional world of enterprise software. Focused on the needs of the organisation first and foremost. The future of work is about networked individuals with careers, interests and expertise spanning far beyond traditional organisational boundaries. The tools and services demonstrating the most agility to adapt to this new world of work are online and consumer-based.
Featured image: ‘Selfie’ kindly shared on Flickr by Tim Ellis
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