A relatively bijoux session at this year's LocalGovCamp highlighted some great ideas for the use of internal social networks within government and some good practices for getting started. Such Local Gov social networking luminaries as @tomsprints and @reinkanen provided some great input to the discussion.
For those of you who weren't able to attend, here's a summary of the main points discussed.
- Internal social networking is really taking off within government and appears to be addressing an unmet need. Organisations are taking advantage of free to use tools (such as Yammer) to get started, but few have taken the full advantage that this new channel presents
- There are quite a few examples of really useful things in the sector being achieved through the use of internal social media. Of note are:
- Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch Highways agency, who made this video that explains in real terms what the use of internal social media means for the man on the street (or, in this case, the man standing by a dam)
- Monmouthshire, who recently won a creative councils award, making use of Yammer to connect together their foster carers and develop a sense of community
- Northwards Housing, who make use of internal social media as a way to connect people together and driving internal communications
- A number of central gov organizations who are currently undertaking some very interesting pilots
- Kent council connecting their community wardens together
- We talked about some of the keys to success as being:
- Start with things that are very simple, valuable and engage a lot of people, allowing them to build the community. Examples of this might be existing communities (e.g. social clubs) or using internal social as a route for disseminating communications messages and allowing for them to be discussed.
- Build on this with other uses that are related directly to what people do on the day to day. Note that this is a cultural change first and foremost and people have to understand what's in it for them before you can reasonably expect them to participate.
- Note that sharing of information drives comments and engagement, so start by asking people to simply share what they're working on, or where they're stuck. You will see trends start to emerge that will be worth supporting more widely so you can amplify what's happening.
- Note that people will initially act in ways that reflect the organizational hierarchy and may not be encouraged to contribute. You will need to help challenge preconceptions and grease the wheels, even if it means phoning people up or visiting them at their desk
- Eventually bed this into everything you do, right down to including an introduction to openness / social ways of doing business into your induction process
- Some of the other benefits we discussed were:
- Open conversation defeats politics. It is incredibly easy for bullying / political games to be conducted over email and bringing the conversation out into the open highlights what might be happening and provides a potential route to resolution
- Engagement and participation right from the top sets the right example that people can then follow
- The ability to remove the perception that certain conversations are 'above your pay grade'
- The usefulness of internal social media at improving people's familiarity with the tools and therefore becoming better at using them in an external context.
- Internal social media is very good at solving particular shapes of problem, particularly:
- When you have a message to distribute where you want the community to provide feedback
- Where you have a group of people who would otherwise provide feedback via one bottleneck, where they would be better off just talking to each other (e.g self-help groups for Excel, connecting people performing similar jobs together rather than them all asking their managers individually)
- When you have a community that doesn't meet regularly but would benefit from sharing experience and knowledge (e.g. people that are often remote or work flexibly)
- Practical next steps:
- Take an 'inbox challenge' with yourself and your colleagues. Look in your email over the last few weeks and, based on an understanding of what value internal social could bring, see what conversations should really be moved to the new channel. Then do it.
- Evangelise, but start by listening. Understand what people are trying to achieve in the day to day and then link the use of this new channel to solving their problems.
Thanks hugely to those for sharing their experiences during the session. I'd be very interested in other relevant experiences if there are those willing to share.
For more information, @glenocsko runs a Local Government group on Yammer at www.yammer.com/localgovernment for further experience sharing (Disclosure: I am not a member of this but around 600 gov people are at the moment).
