By John Greer, SPHR
Every day we face new challenges brought on by the ever-quickening pace of developments in technology. With the threats of identify theft, spam, phishing, viruses and even USB drives, we're almost afraid of the security holes the next new technology could open up in our systems. At the same time, the two youngest generations of our workforce, Generation X and the Millennials, who grew up with the continual introduction of new technologies, wonder what all the fuss is about. Yes, the same people we are depending on to be the next generation of managers and leaders are looking at us and wondering what we are so afraid of.
About 15 years ago, the topic of emerging technologies came up at a Human Resources Systems Professionals chapter roundtable I was attending. I, working in higher education at the time, spoke up and was touting the value of the then new Internet to everyone in the room. One of my colleagues, who worked for one of the largest regional banks in the area, emphatically replied that her bank would never use the Internet because their IT Director would not allow their network to be open to the security risks of the outside world.
Looking back on that conversation, we see that such a statement was very shortsighted, even a bit ridiculous by today's standards. Yet we say the same things today about the newly emerging technologies of social networking and wikis. We write policies and erect firewalls and Web filters to prevent our employees from accessing and using these new tools. We devote countless hours and dollars to "protect our assets" from the new things, while at the same time many of us actively use these same resources to do our jobs.
There are any number of human resource recruiters, for example, who use social networks such as MySpace and Facebook to check their applicants, to find out the things that aren't listed on the applications. At the same time, their IT departments and policies prevent, or at the very least restrict, their staff from accessing these sites while at work.
A number of larger companies have implemented internal social networks primarily to facilitate communications across the organization. IBM, McDonalds, Oracle and Microsoft have all implemented internal social networks whose primary purpose is to serve as a means to access internal resources and internal consulting services.
Best Buy implemented Blue Shirt Nation, an internal social network, with the initial goal of learning what customers were saying to front-line employees. But in the process the retailer found that the new technology increased employee engagement and reduced turnover. Of the 8,000 employees participating in Blue Shirt Nation, turnover is at 8 percent, significantly below the 40 percent to 60 percent usually seen in similar retail operations. Many, if not most, of these engaged workers are no doubt Gen Xers and Millennials.
Another new technology that has been slow to take off is the wiki. According to Wikipedia, a wiki is "…a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content." Wikis are fully searchable information resources which are generally editable by users. Anyone who sees something wrong with an entry can either correct it themselves or quickly get it corrected.
Wikis can replace the traditional operational procedures manual, that four-inch black binder on your bookshelf, that is hard to find and usually out of date. Instead of a book, employees go on line, do a key word search on their question and immediately get the latest and most accurate information on their issue.
Smart Financial Credit Union has recently implemented an internal wiki with over 2,000 pages of how-to information for front-line, back-office and support staff. SmartWIKI is averaging 200 searches each day from a staff of 200. Most of those questions would have previously gone to our phone center, a call center intended primarily to serve our members.
What are we afraid of? What is there to fear? The issues and fears today of data breaches are as real as they were 15 years ago. And the need for access to information and communications is very real, as is the value it brings to organizations. These needs more than outweigh the risks and potential costs.
Now, as in the past, technology will bring solutions to our data privacy issues. Just as today we have Web filters and firewalls to protect our internal networks and data, in the very near future, technology will bring solutions to address our worries about social networking. In the meantime we need to look at technology not as a threat, but as a tool with both good and bad traits. Instead of blocking access to the latest advancement, we must seek to use it to our advantage. We also need to involve our staffs in finding new uses for these tools. Who better to do so than those who have been using them all their lives?
John Greer, SPHR, is SVP/human resources & development for $330 million Smart Financial Credit Union, Houston.
Also read "How Wired Should Employees Be?
