Using the Enterprise Social Network to Build Trust
And to act like a real human
Claire Lew penned an insightful post a couple of days ago looking at the results of a recent survey on trust in the workplace, with some unfortunate insights in how many employees see their top leaders.
From it, they discovered: One in three people don’t trust their employer.
I found this statistic astounding. As I read on, what surprised me even more was that only 24% of employees in this study believe their CEO exhibited highly ethical behavior.
Clearly, there is a trust gap between leadership teams and employees.
(How to repair the trust gap by Claire Lew)
Her tips to would be trustworthy CEOs out there include:
- Sharing what you’re working on
- Sharing personal values
- Sharing stories of overcome obstacles and reaching success
- Sharing personal hobbies
- Sharing the long-term personal goals as related to the company
I couldn’t agree more with her. These are all great ideas for humanizing the CEO to the employee base at large. But how do you reach them all? This is where an enterprise social network (ESN) comes in.
ESNs vary from one implementation to the next with differing degrees of governance and controls put in place and wide ranges of objectives that they set out to attain. The products that companies use as these social networks vary greatly in capabilities and features as well. But, put all of that aside and let’s look at what they all have in common:
ESNs provide a communication platform for social conversations to take place and spread throughout an organization.
Typically, ESNs take on a more informal vibe than the traditional intranet space and rightly so. These modern intranets give employees a platform to have a voice and be heard. There are bound (hopefully) to be lots of voices, engaging in wide varieties of topics. The CEO can interact with these voices in both small and large ways.
Many companies (and CEOs) will probably lean toward a conservative approach that ensures the CEO has a proper “platform” with approved talking points and guidelines for where to post, comment, and engage. That’s great. Necessary even. It isn’t going to win over many skeptical employees on the trust front, however. For this approach, I would suggest a specific area within the ESN where employees can go to engage with the CEO. A place with a defined process for asking questions and getting responses, for viewing a consistently delivered address or message via blog or video preferably, and where more formal communications can be accessed. Again, this is all needed and should be accessible on the enterprise social network.
However, the CEO may find more gains in employee trust by finding smaller ways to engage with employees outside of the officially sanctioned, approved channel. Things like noting an employee’s recent accomplishment with a short update and @mention. Dropping in on a conversation and weighing in with an opinion (not a directive). Commenting on official communications. Replying to other executives with either support or even questions. Liking that funny meme that is getting a lot of reshares.
This is how the average employees use the ESN, and I’d argue this is exactly how the CEO should use it too.
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