Companies typically onboard in one of two ways: either they have a very formalized, rigid structure or it’s the exact opposite with no real process at all. When there is no formal onboarding program, new employees must find the information and resources they need on their own. They have little support to transition into their new roles which leaves them feeling lost, increasing the time it takes to reach productivity. Not to mention, you don’t want your employees to feel alone and unsure of their roles, or those new hires might start looking for new jobs. You don’t want a new employee having second thoughts after the first week, especially when it could have easily been prevented with better onboarding.

The formal onboarding process provides a lot of policy, but not a lot of job specific knowledge. You’ve probably been through this type of onboarding before: you sit through orientation sessions with dozens of other new hires, try not to fall asleep during the lengthy PowerPoint presentations, and worst of all, any relevant information is lost because the sessions aren’t documented. The free lunch you get is nice, but it really won’t help you understand the company or your role better.

Onboarding should be much more than just orientation. The goal is to introduce new employees to the company, culture, and their specific jobs so they can start contributing as soon as possible. A great way to onboard new employees is with social. Research shows that 80% of learning happens in an unstructured environment, like conversations with coworkers. If you want your employees to learn about their roles, the company, and the organization’s culture, who better to learn from than their new colleagues? Using social makes this learning possible and makes onboarding a natural and simple process.

A good onboarding process does more than just welcome employees. Research by the Aberdeen Group shows that businesses with a standard onboarding practice had 54% greater new hire productivity and 50% greater retention of new employees. Not only is employee retention important for company culture, but a study by the Center for American Progress shows that it saves companies thousands of dollars. On average, for an employee earning under $50,000 a year, the cost of finding a replacement is about 20% of that employee’s salary, and that percentage increases for more senior level hires. Now, those are just the results for having a standard onboarding practice…imagine what the results would be for a great onboarding process. Social is a smart way to facilitate onboarding and save money for your business.

From the first day on the job, new employees can use social to get to know their coworkers and the company culture, find answers to questions, and access necessary resources. Their onboarding tasks can be automated and streamlined so they don’t feel overwhelmed by paperwork. New employees easily become actively involved in the organization and understand company specific business processes. These social features give new employees the boost needed to achieve faster time to productivity and increase the likelihood of retention.

Social onboarding is a win-win situation for companies and employees. New hires feel instantly connected to their colleagues and organization and have easy access to important documents. In return, businesses have more productive workers who are likely to stay with the company for a long time. So lose your traditional thoughts about onboarding and look for a social solution.

Now, in between greeting the mailman and catching up with friends, you go to work. Just because you’re going to work doesn’t mean you should cut off all social interactions. Not only is it unnatural to limit communication, it hinders your employees’ ability to get work done if they’re in departmental silos, with no visibility into what other teams are doing.

A social solution is a simple and effective way to help employees work together, but getting employees to jump on the bandwagon can be challenging. For users to consider a technology solution as a must have item, it has to easily integrate into business processes and help them work better. Social interaction is such a central part of people’s lives that having a secure social platform within the workplace is becoming a necessity. Employees want to communicate with their coworkers, be able to find experts within the organization, and work with their colleagues to get projects done faster and better.

While communication and collaboration can enrich people’s personal lives, these functions are crucial in the workplace. The sales, marketing, and product teams must communicate easily and work together consistently in order to deliver a great product to customers. If employees are siloed off into their own departments, they can’t share necessary information and the product and company suffer. Social helps employees knock down those barriers between departments so they can work together easily and efficiently. Using social to work with coworkers is also more engaging than discussing projects via email. They aren’t simply passing ideas and updates back and forth; they’re collaborating and learning from one another in real-time, which drives engagement. Employees who are engaged in their work will not only be more satisfied with their jobs, but more productive, leading to more productivity company-wide.

When a technology solution, like social, can drive engagement and productivity in an organization, and easily integrates into the current business processes, it becomes less of a luxury and more of a necessity.

According to a 2012 study by the McKinsey Global Institute, today’s knowledge worker spends 28% of work time on email management and 19% finding the information required to complete work tasks. If you have a question and don’t know who to ask, emailing that question to a group of people might seem logical. However, each person who asks questions this way contributes to this email increase across the organization. Use social to reduce your search time and prevent your coworkers’ inboxes from overflowing.

With social, you leverage your coworkers’ experience and knowledge. Here’s how you ask a question and receive answers with social: You signal your question to a group of employees or the whole company, and the relevant experts offer their best answers and different perspectives. The whole company can see the question and answer process, but only the knowledge holders will come forward and assist. You can also take advantage of workspaces and groups related to a specific team or product. Search tags within those workspaces and find relevant documents to increase your speed to information.

Social makes it easy to find answers, while saving search time and without needing to identify who can answer the question. Also, if your coworkers have the same question, they can follow the discussion and receive the answer. So the next time you have a question, whether it’s where the new café is located, or what the status of a project is, leverage your bright colleagues and let them share their expertise.

To find out more about how social can help find answers to questions, contact one of our experts.

When you have planned adjustments to enhance your business processes, you can minimize your employees’ fear with some proactive steps. Researchers have found that the most common fears about workplace change are caused by a fear of the unknown and a lack of information. These both point back to the idea of not understanding the situation and what the future holds for the company and employee roles.

Communication is one of the keys to effectively introducing something new into the workplace. If your company is implementing a new technology solution, you want to understand why they’re making that choice. Change just for the sake of change is pointless. You have an established work flow and don’t want something that will disrupt that process. The technology should enhance your business process, not make it more difficult. You want to understand how this solution will help you and your employees work better. You want to understand the impact it will have so you can plan ahead and not have to be reactive. Talk to the decision-makers about the technology solution and determine exactly what will change so you can prepare your employees.

When Jamie Roush, Crime Analysis Unit Manager at the Jacksonville Florida Sheriff’s Office, decided she wanted to implement a social solution that would eventually be available agency-wide, she strayed away from the top down method of change management that often happens within law enforcement agencies. When Roush decided to implement a social solution, she made the officers and detectives an integral part of the change. She showed officers the technology, highlighted the benefits it offered them, and provided full access. Once some of the officers started using social, Roush made Socialtext their central knowledge portal and its use became a part of the officers’ daily work flow. By explaining the reasons and benefits of the technology, and then allowing employees to play a critical role in making the change, the Sherriff’s Office was able to make a necessary switch to social, which achieved the desired result of increased communication and collaboration.

If the mere mention of the word change makes your employees break a sweat, don’t worry; it’s a very common fear and you can help them get past it. Figure out why your employees are scared and then make strides toward calming those nerves. If they’re worried about how their roles will be altered or their business processes will shift, talk with the decision-makers. Be proactive so you have time to prepare your employees for these changes and can show them how the new technology will augment their existing work flow.

To read more about our recent expansion, click here.

What were you doing prior to joining Socialtext?

I was a Senior Designer at Rovi and worked on their site to create a more user-friendly experience.

What will you be doing for Socialtext?

I’ll be working with our Art Director to make Socialtext better for our users. I want the Socialtext experience to be cohesive, intuitive, and engaging, so I’ll be enhancing our designs to improve that experience.

What are 3 words you would use to describe yourself?

Creative, enthusiastic, and humble.

What do you do in your free time?

I try to balance my creative pursuits with more active ones. My hobbies include animation, game development, and creative writing, but you’re also likely to find me shooting hoops.

What gets you fired up about working for Socialtext?

Culturally, Socialtext is a great fit for me.  The people are friendly, dedicated, and passionate about the product. I’m excited to add my ideas to the team, have a positive impact on the user experience, and refine my craft.

 What are you most looking forward to at Socialtext?

I’m really looking forward to working with Mark Edelsberg, Socialtext’s Art Director. Mark has designed products I’ve worked with previously, so I welcome this opportunity to collaborate with him.

The authors knew that they needed a space where they could write, edit, and review the chapters, as well as keep track of their progress, so they decided to use Socialtext. Authors didn’t need any formal training to participate; they were encouraged to join the wiki and learn as they went. What ended up happening was that the entire book, from the initial author contract agreements, to the final review by the publisher, was completed on Socialtext.

Getting the authors to jump in and start contributing to the wiki was fairly easy. “Software testers rely on social media, like Twitter, to communicate with testers all over the world, almost like a 24/7 peer conference,” said Michael. The contributors were already familiar with the concept of using social media tools for business purposes, so they were eager to work with Socialtext.

Each author was tasked to write one chapter, and then review two other chapters. Using the wiki enabled this process to happen easily, as authors could post their chapter, review, edit, and offer suggestions on others’ work, and then review their own work based on feedback from fellow authors. Despite geographical distance and time zone differences, this process happened seamlessly and in real-time. The entire project was managed on Socialtext as well, with a frequently updated schedule, list of milestones to reach, and tasks still to be completed.

So, when Michael first interviewed at Socialtext, he was asked what he knew about Socialtext. “I’ve actually been using it for years, and even helped write a book by using Socialtext.” Now he adds his long-term Socialtext experience, and passion for software testing to help improve the Socialtext platform.

If you’d like to read more about Michael and his experience with Socialtext, click here to read his new employee blog post and here to see his software testing blog.

The typical team creation process looks like this: the project’s manager will ask fellow managers which of their team members are available to assist on the project, and then the fellow managers will offer a certain percentage of the available employees’ time. Not only can this take a couple of weeks to put together, but it leads to a more significant problem: you have a team built around availability rather than expertise.

This problem has been rolling around in my head. Sometimes, you just want a quick conversation between a few subject matter experts, and you don’t want to waste two weeks bringing the team together, especially when you might end up with whoever is available, not necessarily the experts.

This led me to the idea of what I like to call micro-teams. Essentially, you reach out directly to the subject matter experts and collaborate immediately, either for a quick five minute conversation, or as a starting point for a long-term project. In order to find the experts, and avoid the problem of only seeking out team members you know personally, you can use social.

By using social, you can search for experts yourself, by looking through profile information. You can also send out a signal across teams, and allow those passionate experts to identify themselves. Either way, you avoid the barrier of interacting with managers to reach their team members. This direct access speeds up the team formation and leads to a higher level of expertise.

Don’t think about a team as a permanent unit. Think about it as a micro-team: a group of experts that come together quickly through social, to reach answers more efficiently.

To find out more about how social builds better teams, contact one of our experts.

Click here to read the full story about the importance of social in CRM.

“The tools that we have today for collaboration are so much more powerful and so much more dynamic than the old model of phone and email,” says Michael Idinopulos, chief customer officer at Socialtext. “These tools make a whole new way of working possible, but you still have to manage employees. Sure, you can collaborate easily, but using these new tools doesn’t mean you stop paying attention to goals and metrics.”

To read the articles, click here and here.