Social Media Tools: Icing on Your Learning Cake!

Look inside any publications or resources of workplace learning & performance and chances are that you’ll be surprised to see social media featuring with almost unprecedented regularity. Questions that might crop up in a learning professional’s mind could sound like-

Is it yet another fad? Is the trend sustainable? Are we going for a overkill?

And possibly, some more like these!

Speak to people in the fraternity and possibly you find the opinions divided. But no one seems to disagree on one thing- Social media’s compelling trend has already set in the workplace and one can ignore it at one’s peril!

Still few companies encourage their employees to go active on social media and harness its power for organizational effectiveness. Majority of them, in fact, hold a cynical outlook towards such platforms. Generational gaps make things even more distinct- Baby boomers downplay social media and its power to transform workplace whereas Gen Y employees will go to the extent of snubbing off companies as prospective employers who hold unfavorable social media policies at workplaces!

I was pleasantly surprised hearing one of the hiring managers narrating this interview process wherein she was literally quizzed by one of the interviewees asking about her company’s social media practices when she offered the candidate to ask any questions if he had at the end of the interview. This is just an example and a precursor of things to follow in coming years at workplace.

The question that needs to be asked of learning and performance professional is - ‘How do you usher in Social media in workplace learning with least disruption and resistance?’

Before I try to answer the question, let me provide a perspective on social media. Social media is a broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest of the world. They are the creation of web2.0 technologies. Despite their apparent omnipresence, an article from T+D magazine cites ‘So far, only a minority of firms are actual “power users” of Web 2.0 technologies for the purpose of enhancing learning. Just 9 percent of learning professionals surveyed said Web 2.0 technologies play a major role in the learning function in their company.’ So it’s evident that when it comes to formal learning plans most of the L&D professionals would rather fight sigh of these platforms.

Think of company intranet and Sharepoint sites- if there were any studies conducted to establish how motivated employees are visiting and taking formal classes, participating on discussion boards, posting comments and seeking work-related solutions, I am sure results would be far from encouraging for those running such LMSs.

 Let’s try to understand the factors behind such an attitude.

·         Learning through such platform is perceived to be too formal and rigid in format- Andragogically not very encouraging.

·         They appear to be intruding into learners space

·         They’re uni-directional in the sense that content flows in one direction- from company repository towards learners. Little scope for collaboration in learning!

Now let’s attempt to see how social media platforms such as micro-blogs, twitter etc. overcome the above challenges. By the very nature of being informal learning platforms they are received more openly by the learners if positioned in a right manner and with due seriousness accorded by executives.

Why so? One need not split hairs to see the logic-

§  Once given right thrust, these media are informal and less time consuming- they are ‘non-intrusive’ as one executive summarized them

§  Learners have the freedom to collaborate on any given topic- in a sense, co-create the whole learning experience. One gets a sense of being creator and contributor

§  Learners are motivated to learn from peers’ experience and offer their own solutions to people who need them

What kind of learning is most suitable to such informal tools?

While formal and structured learning would continue to be delivered through various traditional modes- class-rooms, e-learning or blended, these social media will play out synergy in terms of reinforcement tools thereby enhancing learning sustainability. They add learning effectiveness of such formal tools. The challenge for learning professionals is to strategically integrate such informal tools into their mainstream training.

A critical success factor here would be buy-in from executives and functional leaders. The seriousness will be top-down and initial success will largely depend on how committed are your executives and leaders in driving such learning collaboration. Many executives have natural penchant for such new technologies and avenues while even bigger population of theirs will have love-hate relationship with social media. The key is to know their disposition towards social platforms and try to work around it instead of rushing in with such tools blindly.

Culture and beliefs do change albeit slowly.

Go on and read the following real-life experience of a mind-shift. Names and identities have been changed to keep anonymity.

An initiative to bring about a mind-shift in coaching & mentoring using micro-blogs: A case study

MedDevice is a 163 years old medical equipment and devices company with global operations. Traditionally, the company had been a pioneer of several medical equipments and enjoys tremendous equity among medical fraternity. Recently, it has entered into Indian market and has strategic commitments to grow the market which contributes miniscule to its global sales. The start-up in India has a team of 65 sales consultants with 12 people managers. Keeping up with its strategic vision, they have hired professionals from various established competitors and the team brings in diverse background experiences and practices. Managers have different experiences when it comes to people management and practices in coaching & mentoring people. In order to achieve strategic objectives both on business and people front, the country leader realizes the importance of bringing a uniform people coaching and mentoring culture within the unit.

After a thorough consultation with business leaders and identifying the training needs, a two-day formal course on Coaching is developed in house and delivered by its L&D function to all people managers.

The course comes with a pre-work survey, pre-read and pre-work materials. The workshop got local and global praise and recognition for being meticulously designed and effectively delivered.

The head of L&D of MedDevices, however, is far from being contended. His work has just begun. Sustaining initial excitement and learning of participants is the litmus test. After all, it’s similar to bring about cultural changes, shifting established mindset of leaders and creating a self-sustaining drive for coaching and mentoring. He contemplates Social learning tools such as micro-blogging and discussion boards. After initial thoughts, he zeroes in on existing BlackBerry technology that every manager has access to. Using BlackBerry messenger, he creates a platform titled ‘Confluence: The convergence of ideas’. To initiate, he started with a particular discussion query pertaining to Coaching & Mentoring over Confluence to which participants are expected to express their thoughts and comments. Gradually but steadily, all participants are drawn into this micro-blogging activity and the momentum builds up. Six months later, there is a definite shift in the mindset of all people leaders with their coaching roles. The qualitative improvement of all people managers in their interactions with team members is all there to see. This innovative effort was also recognized through a best practices entry in a training award category of a reputed magazine.