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In light of our attendance at the HRTech Conference this week in Chicago (come visit us in Booth #258!), I was inspired to write about how technology has influenced my department specifically.

Since I became the administrator of my company’s Enterprise Social Network (ESN), I have accumulated a wealth of experience with this new “intranet 2.0” business, and how it can really make the on-boarding process easier for new hires (and for me, of course).

Many of my HR counterparts often ask me about the benefits of using an ESN. Just the other day I sat and tried to write down the number of ways Enterprise Social Networking can assist an HR department, and what ended up on paper was an endlessly long list. Yes, I still write on paper.

So instead of sharing that insanely long list with you, I decided to try and consolidate all those points into five top benefits – specifically related to how our own ESN helped one of our recent new hires join and become one with our workforce.

Connect. Peer-to-peer and management-to-employees.

The new hire was able on his first day, through our ESN intranet, to reach out to several employees with similar interests. Connecting on common ground with a peer helps to make the first day nerves of any new hire lessen. I also observed that within 24 hours, some members of our European office had written a greeting on the new hire’s profile page welcoming him to the company. As a global company, being able to allow employees all over the world to connect and interact comfortably with each other instantly is huge.

Share Knowledge. Reduce the silo effect of internal knowledge. If you lose an employee the knowledge doesn’t necessarily go with him or her, nor is it lost in the abyss of a network share drive.

The new hire I mention was a replacement that we unfortunately couldn’t get on board before his predecessor left. Through our ESN intranet he was able to find work already in progress, key documents, and other files that he needed to help him start working on day one.

Collaborate. Through connecting and knowledge sharing, collaboration amongst teams, across departments, and company-wide becomes natural.

Again on day one of employment, the new hire had already posted a blog on the intranet home page. He also started a forum in his department’s community page asking for advice and “need to know” information in regard to a specific client. His department is geographically dispersed, and it would have taken a while prior to our ESN for him to work out whom he should ask… then email…and then wait on a response. Through a blog and forum he communicated with his whole team, and they shared the “need to know” client detail among within a departmental community.

Communicate. The ease to communicate anything, from policy changes to new hire information, helps to keep a workforce engaged.

It always helps both the new hire and the existing workforce to know who works where and in which department. It also helps to have faces attached to colleagues’ names because it makes a geographically dispersed company feel “whole.” Announcing the new hire’s information on the ESN intranet home page without having to rely on IT meant that he was introduced to the company on the day he started. (Sorry IT. It does sometimes take a while for you to update intranets!) A photo and a link to his profile were also included in the announcement. This led to him connecting with other members of the workforce immediately.

Nurture and reflect a positive corporate culture. You want to be able as an HR department to embed and grow the culture of a company

Our company ESN intranet helped to give a very strong and positive first impression of our company culture to the new hire. He began finding key information quickly and connected with coworkers in a natural manner.

The biggest congregation for HR professionals, SHRM is right around the corner. I was an exhibitor for BroadVision at last year’s show, and although I won’t be able to attend this year, I noticed that a lot of communication and advertising about the event is taking place in the social media sphere, highlighting how new social tools can help HR improve the workplace.

Almost all HR professionals agree that the company intranet is one of the most powerful ways for HR departments to connect with employees. However, IT departments administer many traditional intranets, which often come with large manuals on how you can update your HR pages yourself (and in my experience this usually involved a 50-page binder of instructions). Some IT staff members may very kindly agree to update that important policy for you—but they’re busy people, as all departments are.

A year ago, I became the Admin of our company intranet – BroadVision Connect (BVC) – which is powered by Clearvale. I was assigned to be the Admin because a) I am the HR head and company intranet falls under my belt, but also because b) the platform was designed to be easy to use so even someone like me who has ZERO IT background or training can do it.

Of course, I work for BroadVision. But take the following into consideration:

Imagine an intranet where you, as an HR professional, have control to post an updated policy in a matter of minutes. Moreover, you have the added bonus of posting it with restricted access if you desire. Worldwide organizations like ours have very different policies and procedures. With BVC, we can post them all on our intranet, tailoring the access to each region. No more need to send emails to inform employees of a change in policy; additionally, you have no need to make sure that only the specific region or department that may be affected is included on the email distribution list.

We no longer have to keep policies and procedures on an HR shared drive where, if an HR staff member leaves, we must navigate through a potentially confusing filing system just to find the most current version of a document—and then wonder if it was ever distributed! Instead, our HR team worldwide now has access to all HR documents, encouraging synergy between different regions and styles of working. Now, the department is more streamlined and is able to collaborate much more easily.

Our company intranet is now a tool in our HR arsenal that helps to foster team building and knowledge sharing. When employees can connect to each other and share their ideas—peer-to-peer—natural thought leaders come to the forefront. We have seen leadership skills demonstrated by employees located in remote offices that we had not witnessed previously. Several of our employees have also demonstrated new skills and interests that have led us to re-adjust their career paths, to the immense satisfaction of the employee and with great benefit to the company.

With an ESN intranet like BVC, every employee has a voice, tools for innovation are widely and easily distributed, experimentation becomes easy, and employees become aware that their capabilities are more important than titles.

Some of you may wonder about the extra workload it takes to set up a company intranet. Of course, at the beginning it took us a little time to set up the home page — choosing the widgets we wanted and identifying contributing staff members to set up and populate a few communities prior to launch. It took less than a week, a few hours a day, for me to organize and populate BroadVision Connect a year or so ago. The site maintains itself now. Honestly, sometimes the hardest part for me in setting up a Community is deciding which logo I want to use!

Like most companies BroadVision has had its share of tough times. Before BVC, it was very hard to keep employees informed and the communication channels between management and employees open. During this period we had a high number of voluntary terminations. As part of our exit interview process we asked employees to let us know which factors contributed to their decision to leave. Not surprisingly, “Lack of Communication “ and  “Culture and Morale” where in the top five selected by every employee.

It’s very hard to hear this, but at the time we had few resources to help us change these sentiments. That was in 2008, and since 2009 we started using Clearvale to build our intranet. As the year progressed I noticed one big difference—we experienced a sharp decrease in the number of voluntary resignations. In fact, they decreased by half. I’m confident that BroadVision Connect was a contributing factor. How can I know this? We conducted the same exit interview on the few voluntary resignations we had, and not one of person listed “Lack of Communication” or “Culture and Morale” as a contributing factor! Now as an HR professional, that’s the kind of ROI that makes me smile.

Oh and one last comment—Self Governance! We have not had to remove or edit one single post on BroadVision Connect since its inception. Not too bad.

“Going social” seems to be a very popular phrase today in both personal networking and the corporate world. As the HR Director of BroadVision and the main Administrator behind our Intranet, which is built on the Clearvale footprint, I can’t help but notice a lot of changes because of “going social” and what it means in the workplace.

For example, I’ve been receiving some very interesting emails lately from companies trying to promote their HR services, and I’m finding more and more that they seem to focus on Social Media. Here are some selections from emails I received just this week:

· “When you source with social networks, you need to understand the rules of the game.”

· “Social Media – The Most Cost Effective Way to Recruit!”

· “…a fifth of employees would turn down a job if it did not allow them access to social networking sites or personal email during work time.…”

· “Recruiting Through Social Media: How To Find Top Candidates.”

· “Each generation gets jobs their own way. The Great Generation got jobs from their neighbor. Baby boomers got jobs from newspaper ads. Generation X got jobs from online job boards. Generation Y gets jobs from social media.”

· “Employees want to connect with each other, and more importantly, they want to connect with the company and senior management. A study by Towers Perrin found that employees overwhelmingly want to know ’that leadership is interested in them.’”

· “Social networking critical to employee satisfaction.”

One of the quotes mentions Towers Perrin. Towers Perrin conducted a study entitled “Capitalizing on Effective Communication.” The study highlighted Social Media and Networking as a way to leverage effective communication, and the research came up with some findings that we have seen while using our own intranet here at BroadVision:

“Companies that are using social media to engage employees are using these tools to address a variety of topics. The most prevalent topics are collaboration and team building, adapting to change, and promoting health and wellness”

The study also measured the reasoning behind companies not implementing or expanding the use of social media. 45% of participants said it was due to limited staff or resources and 40% due to limited knowledge. It’s an interesting finding because if the market understood more about the ease of implementing and maintaining some type of ESN, and discovered the potential ROI, then concerns about limited staff or knowledge would vanish.

But one of the most compelling findings of the study was a simple one: Successful companies communicate with their employees. Seems like common sense to me, but some companies just don’t interact effectively with their workforce. I think that we used to be rather guilty of this ourselves until we began using a proper tool to help us facilitate better dialogue with staff of all levels.

Improving communication is something that many HR departments strive for, and rightfully so. As the study states: “Companies that are highly effective communicators had 47% higher total returns to shareholders over the last five years compared with firms that are the least effective communicators”. Wow—an impressive figure indeed. And if “going social” helps contribute to the higher return while improving communication within the organization, I for one am all for it.