Hi Chris,
The holidays always result in down traffic and participation to high tech sites and communities exactly for the reason you mention, Chris, that most people are not working and instead taking some well-deserved time off. And here ar Cisco, as you know, most of the company actually shuts down that last week of the year. So at the start of the year, I did nudge Megan (for those that reading this from outside of Cisco - I manage the overall community and Megan works for me and specifically focuses on the ESS space within the overall Collaboration Community) to restart her reminders and the metrics which we took a slight break due to other priorities before the holidays and then for the holidays themselves.
For longterm success, we need to move beyond prodding :-). I don't have multiple Megans to constantly remind all employee content contributors across the Collaboration Community (Cisco is a large company, there are many). Not a scalable model. As I update the strategic community plan for the next year, I'll be reaching out to you and other contributors inside Cisco for face-to-face meetings to ensure I gather your valuable input regarding employee participation (and other topics) but here are some initial thoughts on employee participation...
People may have the best intentions to participate in a community but until it becomes part of their job, baked into key business processes, part of their strategic plans, and rewarded/supported/prioritized by management then often those best intentions fall to the side as there simply is not enough time in the day.
- Do community contributors have participation as part of their performance plan and have convinced their managers that this is important and priority use of their time? If not, other things will take priority.
- Have community contributors thought about how the community could become part of business processes (perhaps instead of sending information out on an email alias, then post it to the community and direct those people there to get that 1:many onetime dissemination)?
- Have contributors made it part of their strategic plans? How can the community help them reach their business objectives -- think about it strategically and integrate/prioritize it with other activities within the plan ... and measure it.
- Is this on the radar screen of their management/executive team and rewarded/supported/prioritized by them (again, making it part of the strategic plan helps with this)?
So as we move forward that is what is on my mind related to this topic. You'll see the same points be put up on slides at community manager's conferences so I'm not saying anything too visionary here. Many community managers everywhere face the same challenges.
I think we've had some success in this area but have a ways to go. Look forward to working together to remove the training wheels.
Would love to hear others here -- do you agree? are there other best practices you can share? how have you gone about increasing employee participation?
Laura Douglas
Collaboration Community Manager
