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Businesses are learning that social networking, used properly, can be an effective business tool. Having your employees involved in the community can enhance the company's reputation and bring in more business - so long as it's done right. Thus many large firms, especially in the technology industry, are actually encouraging their employees to blog, tweet, and participate in forums and social sites on company time.\n\nEven so, you still need to exert some control over how these sites are used. You can't just give employees free rein and hope they'll all exercise common sense. And you can't, in all fairness, blame them for violating rules that don't officially exist. You need a social networking policy that explicitly lays out what is and isn't permissible, both on the company's network and outside of it if they're presenting themselves as representatives of the company.

Businesses are learning that social networking, used properly, can be an effective business tool. Having your employees involved in the community can enhance the company's reputation and bring in more business - so long as it's done right. Thus many large firms, especially in the technology industry, are actually encouraging their employees to blog, tweet, and participate in forums and social sites on company time. Even so, you still need to exert some control over how these sites are used. You can't just give employees free rein and hope they'll all exercise common sense. And you can't, in all fairness, blame them for violating rules that don't officially exist. You need a social networking policy that explicitly lays out what is and isn't permissible, both on the company's network and outside of it if they're presenting themselves as representatives of the company.

A recent MIT study found that in one organization the employees with the most extensive personal digital networks were 7% more productive than their colleagues - so Wikis and Web 2.0 tools may indeed improve productivity. In the same organization, however, the employees with the most cohesive face-to-face networks were 30% more productive.

Employee Participation in the Flow: Prediction Markets, Part 1

Many companies have invested significantly in gathering vast amounts of data, yet they still struggle to extract insights, put them to work for the business and create truly data-driven organisations. The virtuous circle of data explores how organisations can spark a chain of events through top-down leadership and bottom-up employee engagement that creates a culture with data at the centre of decision-making.

Many companies have invested significantly in gathering vast amounts of data, yet they still struggle to extract insights, put them to work for the business and create truly data-driven organisations. The virtuous circle of data explores how organisations can spark a chain of events through top-down leadership and bottom-up employee engagement that creates a culture with data at the centre of decision-making.

Twitter has struck a chord among sufficient numbers that it needs corporate attention and policies. Employees need to understand its potential for misuse and corporations need to understand its potential value...

Not sure what a Workspace is? Cisco employee Mark Spencer faces his technology fears and learns how to work more effectively in the Web 2.0 world.

Jeff Patmore, Head of strategic university research at BT Group talks to Professor Harry Scarbrough before his presentation to WBS Alumni on 19 January 2009. How have 'Web 2.0' tool been adopted in large organisations? What has been the impact on the bottom line and on the employees?

McKinsey have developed an approach to retention: to detect previously unobserved behavioural patterns, they combine various data sources with machine-learning algorithms. Workshops and interviews are used to generate ideas and a set of hypotheses. Over time they collected hundreds of data points to test. Then ran different algorithms to get insights at a broad organisational level, to identify specific employee clusters, and to make individual predictions. Finally they held a series of workshops and focus groups to validate the insights from our models and to develop a series of concrete interventions. The insights were surprising and at times counterintuitive. They expected factors such as an individual's performance rating or compensation to be the top predictors of unwanted attrition. But analysis revealed that a lack of mentoring and coaching and of "affiliation" with people who have similar interests were actually top of list. More specifically, "flight risk" across the firm fell by 20 to 40 percent when coaching and mentoring were deemed satisfying.

McKinsey have developed an approach to retention: to detect previously unobserved behavioural patterns, they combine various data sources with machine-learning algorithms. Workshops and interviews are used to generate ideas and a set of hypotheses. Over time they collected hundreds of data points to test. Then ran different algorithms to get insights at a broad organisational level, to identify specific employee clusters, and to make individual predictions. Finally they held a series of workshops and focus groups to validate the insights from our models and to develop a series of concrete interventions. The insights were surprising and at times counterintuitive. They expected factors such as an individual's performance rating or compensation to be the top predictors of unwanted attrition. But analysis revealed that a lack of mentoring and coaching and of "affiliation" with people who have similar interests were actually top of list. More specifically, "flight risk" across the firm fell by 20 to 40 percent when coaching and mentoring were deemed satisfying.

A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.

SharePoint is unquestionably a success from a licensing perspective, but dig behind the firewall and the picture looks more chequered. For example in a uSamp survey last year, 80 percent of organizations using SharePoint said employees continue to share documents as email attachments. Recently, the UK Met Office abandoned a twoyear SharePoint implementation project in favor of the cloud-based Huddle service. Even where SharePoint is used, people aren't truly collaborating with it. Team sites are often really document graveyards where content is stored once collaboration has stopped.

"By capturing the big data on user activity and using this data to create a more engaging experience, businesses can better engage and motivate employees. As many at Dreamforce 2013 learned, combining big data with gamification is a powerful tool for motivating better performance, driving business results, and generating a competitive advantage."

Bringing Design Thinking to schools - if kids can do it why not employees?

"Gamification has emerged as a significant trend in recent years. Gamification uses game mechanics and game design techniques in non-gaming context - it's a powerful tool to engage employees, customers and the public to change behaviors, develop skills and drive innovation. Our Special Report evaluates the trends, how gamification is being applied in various industries and explores its future opportunities."

"Gamification, as research firm Forrester defines it, is "the insertion of game dynamics and mechanics into non-game activities to drive a desired behavior." To be successful, businesses need to engage their communities in ways that match business goals, whether that's by increasing communication with employees and customers, reducing support costs, or promoting a greater sense of community and recognition."

Why Gamification works for some organizations and not others.

"The focus of 'Mirror' is the creation of an easily used set of applications ('Mirror' apps), that enable employees to learn lessons from their own and others experiences to perform better in the future. The project facilitates learning 'on the job', at the workplace, through collaboration and reflection technologies."

How do you meet the needs of your business and create a social intranet that people actually want to use? Read our 5 stage process to help you simply succeed.