Four Reasons Internal Social Fails

I presently work for a very conservative firm that has a tradition of being hostile toward the Internet in general, and social media specifically.  Speaking to others, this is not at all unique, and the same sense of hostility exists in many organizations, from large corporations to small startup companies.   Even where policies are fairly liberal, there is a distinct sense that a company may sternly react against any employee who uses social media at all, even in their personal lives.

There are legitimate fears of negative publicity when employees say less-than-positive things about the organization and its brand, as well as fears about security leaks when employees share information that they have gained in the workplace (private information about customers, sensitive information about strategic initiatives, etc.) – so corporate hostility toward social media is understandable, though quite overblown in many instances.

But even while corporations fear social media, they covet its power and want to leverage it to their advantage, providing internal tools that mimic the capabilities of social media in hopes of having a more collaborative workforce and exposing institutional knowledge that is currently bottled up in the heads of employees.   And to their dismay, these tools are almost universally disused: “corporate social” is generally an empty playground in which very few employees participate.   Why should this be?

Poor Tools

The most common complaint is that the social media tools that companies provide their employees are several steps behind similar tools that are available to the general public.   The internal blogging tool is not as good as WordPress, the internal social directory is not as good as Facebook, the internal image-sharing tool is not quite as good as Pinterest, and so on.  Every internal tool is a poor imitation of a better tool that people are accustomed to using in their personal lives – less features, less functionality, and more difficult to use.

But while this is a common complaint, I do not believe it to be the root cause.  A few individuals may find the internal tools frustrating and useful in comparison to the current capabilities of public tools, but those public tools were very popular in their “Version 1.0” releases when they had far less capability than they presently do.   Social media is about the people, who will make use of whatever capabilities a tool provides and abide its limitations if their urge to communicate with one another is strong enough.

So my sense is that “poor tools” is a discouragement to a few, but not a discouragement to the many, and that upgrading to more feature-rich tools will not solve the problem.

Small Population

Another problem with internal social media is a very small population.  It’s obvious in a small company with less than fifty employees that the most effective way to communicate an idea (or anything) is simply to email it to those who might be interested, which is significantly less than the entire population of the firm, or even of a given department.  

But even in large organizations, the population of active social users is still quite small.   If you look at the general public, there are estimated to be about 2.1 billion users of the Internet, only about half of whom participate in social media.   Of those who participate in social media, 90% are passive listeners, 10% share content created by someone else, and 1% actually produce original content (the numbers add to 101%, but that’s because the 1% who publish original content also share content created by others).

Apply those same proportions to a company of 50,000 employees and here’s what you get:  the total audience is 25,000 (likely smaller because using social media at work is seen as “goofing off” even if it’s internal social media).   Only 2,500 of the employees post content from other sources (links to articles and the like) and only 250 of them contribute original content.

That’s a very small audience compared to the public internet, where there are an estimated 1.4 billion social media users (140 million distributers, 14 million content creators).  And because social media pays nothing, those who contribute are rewarded by being read – no readers equals no incentive to write.  This is a significant discouragement.

Cultural Inhibition

By far, the greatest inhibition to internal social media is the discouragement of participation by the corporate culture.   Companies were traditionally hostile to social media, and hostile to the employees who use it: every time you post a comment, you are jeopardizing your job and career.   While companies trawl the public forums in search of errant employees, there is still safety in the masses, as it is unlikely that the internet-scanning algorithms will recognize an employee’s post about their own firm unless they name the firm, name themselves, and declare their status as an employee.

So what is found on internal social media is generally cheerleading by sycophants who are attempting to curry favor from management by making positive comments about ideas that are already endorsed by the culture.  “Way to go, boss, that’s a great point you just made there,” is the substance of most of the commentary – which is to say that most of the content is insubstantial and the corporate intranet is not a safe place to propose new ideas that challenge the culture.   Criticizing or contradicting the canon is certain to draw negative attention to the messenger, while the message itself will largely be ignored.

With little to gain and much to loose, employees see internal social media as a threat to their continued employment rather than an opportunity to be heard and recognized for their good ideas … unless their idea is to agree with their superiors.   Those who are serious about ideas, which are the ones who feed social media in the general public, are skeptical and (justifiably) fearful of internal social tools.

Knowledge is Power

Finally, there is the notion that knowledge is power and that sharing knowledge means abdicating power.   This was commonly seen when “knowledge management” systems attempted to get employees to share their success stories and secrets with others – and flatly refused to participate.

The motivation is obvious where there is direct competition among employees: successful salesmen who are rewarded for their success do not want to share their secrets with other salesmen because it would jeopardize their status as the top performer.   If everyone knew their tricks and got better sales, then the quota would be raised and they’d have to work all the harder to pull ahead again.

But even in situations where competition isn’t direct, there remains indirect competition: accounting clerks might not get commissions for their performance, but their performance ratings, pay increases, and opportunities for advancement are all linked to their performance in comparison to their peers.   And there are many instances in which one employee takes the credit (and the reward) for someone else’s good ideas – so it makes little sense to make idea-stealing easier by posting them to an internal; site.