Cisco Community Central: Enterprise Social Software : Don't Think Profile, Think Identity

When organizations discuss the business value of social networking, the conversation invariably includes a discussion on employee profiles. Strategists, sponsors, champions, and management teams often (not always but frequently) make the assumption that employees will create and maintain their own profiles. These profiles will include rich information not captured elsewhere in corporate systems. Rich employee profile data that is broadly accessible by co-workers will enable the organization to improve its ability to locate experts, discovery new sources of talent, connect people across the globe working on similar business activities, and enable better community-building. While these benefits are all possible, I consistently find that profiles are a common adoption hurdle faced by project teams across virtually all industry sectors.

 

I think part of the reason for profiles becoming an adoption barrier is that we are forgetting the identity aspects of profiles and how employees want themselves to be represented and viewed by others. Think about it. When a worker is hired, assigned an employee number, assigned to a cost center, assigned a labor grade, assigned to a particular department, and assigned specific roles to perform. In essence, the employer ascribes the identity of an employee to them. From an enterprise perspective, the employee has no identity other than the one the organization has defined for that individual. When the organization suddenly one day asks its workforce to create their own profiles, employees can be taken aback.

via www.myciscocommunity.com

My first blog post over on the Cisco community site for enterprise social software (registration required):

Comments

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