The Enterprise Social Network, if properly managed, is a project that can significantly increase your company’s performance. In your ESN project, there are 4 key phases:
- Project Reflection
- Communication and Launch
- Daily Tool Engagement
- Project Assessment
If you have followed our articles and the two previous steps of reflection on setting up your Enterprise Social Network and then launching your collaborative platform, you will now need to maintain, engage, and make your ESN a daily tool for your employees.
PHASE 3: ENGAGING YOUR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORK
Initiate Discussions on Your Enterprise Social Network
Initially, regularly create content designed to encourage member interaction. This could be, for example, the message of the week, results tracking, important documents, etc. Alternate different types of content: editorial content, challenges, questions, etc. Each of your content pieces must be relevant and should encourage participation.
The Enterprise Social Network dedicated to sales forces, Incenteev, allows you to easily track the results and performance of your sales representatives in real time.
Gradually, all your employees will also start publishing their content, but it’s not always spontaneous at first. Therefore, maximize and multiply the reasons to visit the platform and, most importantly, make them want to return.
React in Real Time and Daily
For your ESN to be accepted by your company’s members, you must monitor it daily and thus be able to react in real time. Specifically, track your employees’ indicators and results to intervene and react at the right moment. Then refine and adapt the objectives (collective and individual) and coaching accordingly.
You must absolutely make your ESN a daily habit. To be legitimate and credible, your platform must be the ultimate tool for collaboration, discussion, and motivation. It must be THE place where everyone can find information and exchange. Keeping old communication channels in addition could be a barrier to ESN acceptance, as not all your members will see the need to connect to the platform if they find information elsewhere. Show them that your platform will make them more efficient: 71% of business leaders state that enterprise social networking tools provide faster access to knowledge*.
Recognize the Members of Your ESN Platform
It is very important to recognize individuals for their results and successes. But also remember to highlight their contributions on the platform. Recognized individuals will quickly become advocates for your Enterprise Social Network and will be encouraged to continue their professional efforts, as well as to keep the platform active.
Identify those who will be, in a way, the “ambassadors” of the tool. These are the users who are strongly involved in the Enterprise Social Network project, who are among the first to adopt and effectively use the platform, and who will help you establish a real dynamic of collaboration and sharing within your company.
Your role is therefore to approach the most active participants to encourage and congratulate them. In some cases, the recognition and the company’s policy on this matter need to be reviewed. Indeed, today too few companies take the time and understand the benefit of this approach. Yet, this can be a real lever to boost your project: these members are likely natural facilitators, fond of such tools, and can become the daily facilitators of your ESN. Then offer to train them in more detail on how to use the tool if they are interested.
To be truly credible, it is also important that one or more high-ranking members are on the platform and participate regularly. This demonstrates the company’s and management’s commitment to the project.
Some Ideas to Engage Your ESN?
Here are some content and usage ideas you can publish on your collaborative platform to offer varied topics and encourage member interaction:
- Introduce new employees: create a short HR video introducing a new employee facilitates their integration and encourages discussion (can be made with a smartphone)
- Create a library of key documents for everyone to access at any time
- Share testimonial videos from a sales representative or a client: very simple to make with a smartphone, this type of content highlights the person and allows sharing best practices and successes with the entire team
- Organize collaborative intelligence through a dedicated space so that everyone can contribute their information
- Offer quizzes or YouTube training videos to help your teams progress and allow them to ask any questions they may have
- Monitor discussions daily to react in real time to requests and published information
- Ask questions and conduct surveys to show the importance of everyone’s opinion and ideas. Involve your team in certain decisions. For example, involve the team by asking for ideas for locations or themes for one of your marketing events.
- Facilitate field feedback by creating a dedicated space for this task. This simplifies data transmission for your sales representatives and allows you to quickly identify any problems encountered or commercial opportunities to react quickly.
- Create a dedicated space to track each of your major deals (potentially with the client)
- Manage an information hub for each of your products where sales representatives can ask their questions and quickly find information
Know that video format is an attractive content format, encouraging exchange and comments.
For the ESN to be a success, it must be made a central daily tool for employees: the content offered must be essential and of high added value for the member.
Do not hesitate to personally follow up with those who do not participate to address their concerns and support them.
In summary, an Enterprise Social Network project is not simply about providing a tool. The project must be framed, highlighted daily, and kept active so that it is adopted, actively used, and above all, effective.
The Incenteev team can support you throughout your project and advise you on the content to publish according to your business challenges.
To take into account any necessary modifications and adjust your project, an assessment will be required. We will return to this in a future article detailing this 4th phase.
*Source: McKinsey & Company, 2013
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