Relationships: A Key to Collaboration

In this post, I will look at an important factor in deciding how well a company will be able to communicate with its stakeholders.  For a company to be successful in creating an atmosphere where employees and customers feel comfortable
collaborating with each other, they must first build and maintain trust in order to have successful relationships with their publics.

 

In her 2003 article titled Guidelines For Measuring Trust in Organizations, Katie Paine mentions ten dimensions of trust that are necessary in building mutually beneficial relationships.  These dimensions include competence, integrity, dependability, honest, vulnerability, concern for employees, identification, control mutuality, satisfaction, and commitment.  These dimensions shape every stage of the relationship between an organization and its employees.  The company must be transparent, which is reflected in Paine’s dimensions of honesty, integrity and dependability.  I believe that control mutuality one of the more important dimensions in building trust.  While it would seem that the company would have most of the control in company/stakeholder relationships, it is just as important that they recognize how important the stakeholders are in allowing them to be successful.

 

Once all of these components of trust are in place, the organization may begin to effectively collaborate with its publics.  When deciding on which social media tools to use, the company should keep their stakeholders in mind.  Decisions should not only be made on what would be easiest for the company, but more importantly, on what their publics feel would be the most effective way to communicate.  Whether it be a blog, wiki, social network, podcast, or video podcast, the consumer must be kept in mind.

 

After the company has implemented the tactics that they feel will promote the most collaboration, they must continue to evaluate the relationships they hold with stakeholders to ensure they maintain them.  It makes sense that there are definite overlaps in maintenance and quality indicators, including control mutuality, trust, and commitment.  The better that companies are able to maintain their relationships with their stakeholders the more likely they will be of better quality.  While social media tools are making it easier for companies to collaborate with internal and external publics, in order for these tools to be successful the company must ensure that they are engaging in mutually beneficial relationships with the stakeholders.

Read Full Post »

Best Buy’s Collaborative ‘Blue Shirt Nation’

Over the lifespan of my blog, I have looked at how several companies are using new social media tools to collaborate better with their customers and other external stakeholders.  In this post, I will look at how Best Buy has adopted a new tool of their own to increase internal collaboration among employees.

In 2006, two corporate marketers named Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling, created Blue Shirt Nation.  Blue Shirt Nation is a corporate social network site that aims to flatten the organization through increased communication between employees of all levels.  The network provides a voluntary outlet where employees can share encounters with customers, tips for best practices, and ideas to help the company grow. 

 

According to an article by Patrick Thibodeau titled Best Buy Getting Results From Social Network, the network has already helped the company tremendously.  Today there are over 25,000 regular users of the network, from top-level executives to store clerks.  Employees have the chance to share their thoughts, or comment on someone else’s idea.  An example of this collaboration working to help the employees can be seen through the exchanges surrounding an executive’s idea to change employee discounts.  Shortly following the posting of this idea, many employees gave negative feedback on the idea.  The contributions led the executives to reassess their idea, ultimately deciding not to implement any changes.

 

Below is an interview with Jason Falls from Social Media Explorer-TV.  In this clip Jason interviews Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling to find out more about how they came up with the idea for Blue Shirt Nation and some of their initial goals for the online community.

 

 

 

Best Buy is not the only company that is using social media tools to help foster internal collaboration.  Dell Computers has created their own version of Blue Shirt Nation.  Their device is called EmployeeStorm, which illustrates their enthusiasm over the possibilities that may come from having their employees share their ideas.  Sun Microsystems has also created an online community.  According to their website, the goal of this community is to create a space that is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

 

These tools have helped raise morale, as well as revenues at these companies.  With the amount of success that these new technologies bring to organizations, it begs the question of why more companies are not following suit and creating safe online communities for their employees to participate in.

Read Full Post »