Social Glass

I’ve been traveling from Australia to Colorado during these past few days and was thinking of a scenario where Enterprise 2.0 would add significant value.

The Scenario

Imagine working for a consulting firm that has implemented Enterprise 2.0 with the Discovery and Collaboration capabilities I outlined a few days ago. The first think you do as a new hire is setup your personal profile, including resume details, likes, interests and possibly an avatar. This serves two purposes. The first is satisfying HR’s requirements that your skillsets be registered somewhere so you can be located when an appropriate role on a project becomes available. The second is establishing a single instance of “you” that will be used to link you to blogs and wiki entries you author and documents you might bookmark. It’s important that you have only one identity so that you get credit in this environment of reciprocal altruism.

The enterprise search system (i.e. Google Search Appliance) then indexes your profile making you discoverable to fellow knowledge workers. Because you’ve entered resume information, you’re searchable by more than just your name and title, you’re also searchable by resume content (i.e. “telecom service management platform“).

You might then post a blog about your past experiences, or create a wiki page on a topic you’re an expert in. This helps you get credit for the work you’ve done with previous employers and also elaborates on the resume content you’ve posted with your profile - narratives are generally better than a list of accomplishments and skills. This exposes you and the reason you’ve been hired to the rest of the enterprise and increases the likelihood that you’ll add value sooner. So, after a few blog and wiki entries, you’re now discoverable not only based on profile, but on the content you’ve just authored.

After discovery (either by an HR person or fellow knowledge worker), you’re now assigned to a project. So you register with the “project group” on your social networking page and now collaborate with others on the project. Others in your project group can get a quick rundown on who you are by checking all the wiki and blog entries you’ve authored and your social profile. Project management can then better integrate you into the team and refine your role to suit your background and career aspirations.

Why don’t companies do this?

All of this seems too easy to me. I don’t know why companies don’t do this. Instead we’re faced with 4 HR systems (one for CV compliance, one for listing skillsets, one for forecasting etc) and no standard for capturing the wealth of knowledge new employees bring to the table.