More and more of us are working remotely, rather than commuting into an office each day. According to ONS figures, the UK now has 1.3 million home workers, and a further 3.7 million who sometimes work from home, or use it as their base. The trend is continuing upward. Remote working can be an ideal way to work for many, allowing more flexible working patterns that fit in with family demands, often leading to greater productivity, and contributing to a sense of autonomy for many. However, remote working can have its problems. Some remote workers feel isolated without physical contact with colleagues, self-motivation is sometimes a struggle when working entirely alone, and home workers can miss out on knowledge-sharing and community building opportunities within their sector. How can remote workers remain part of their professional community?
Communities
One of the difficulties faced by remote workers is that the working world is still built around physical communities, rather than virtual ones. We expect that the norm is to work in an office for five days a week, and so working from home is an exception, not the rule. That means that remote workers are often overlooked when workplace communities are developed. Even basic things such as access to internal IT systems are not always extended to remote workers. Yet, to work effectively from home, workers need to be able to play a real and active part in their professional community or communities.
Knowledge
To progress in a career, we need to be involved in sharing knowledge, both giving and receiving it. Knowledge helps us develop as people and professionals, and helps us contribute to the professional development of others around us. Whether a social worker needing to find local rehab center listings for a client, or a stockbroker looking for inside investment information, we all rely on knowledge sharing to do our jobs. Working remotely does not need to mean lack of access to that knowledge, provided there is a community and culture that supports remote working in place.
There are two kinds of remote workers: those who work remotely for a company as an employee, and those who work as self-employed freelancers or consultants. The two groups can overlap, with some freelancers working wholly or mainly for one organisation. What all remote workers need to be effective is to be able to collaborate effectively with those they work with and for; to be able to contribute to and benefit from the communities in which they work; and to gain appropriate reward and recognition. Effective businesses are normally good at doing these things for their in-house staff, but do not always manage to extend the privilege to their remote workers.
Remote Communities
Remote workers need to be part of a day-to-day remote community. As they are working remotely, their primary community is a virtual. Basic things like access to intranet and inclusion on relevant email lists helps bring remote workers into the companies they work for. However, for remote workers to really be part of their professional communities, a more active approach to community building is needed. Internal social media can be a good way for remote workers to feel part of a workplace, as they can use it in just the same way as other workers can: they are not disadvantaged by not being physically present. Those who freelance for many different companies can often find online communities aimed at them. Social media is not just a ‘social’ community. When used in a professional context, it can be a great way to share opinions, reports and best practice. It can be more effective than personal interactions, which can tend to be more haphazard and have a smaller reach.
Physical Communities
While remote communities are essential, it is important for remote workers to have some face-to-face contact with others too. That might be with their direct colleagues and managers, and it might be with others in the same industry but working in different roles. Companies can help by including remote workers in conference and social events, and perhaps allow them use of hot desks. For those working freelance, joining networking groups and meeting other freelancers (even if in another industry) is important.
We all need to feel part of a community, at least some of the time. Simple steps to help remote workers make virtual and physical contact with colleagues and others can go a long way to helping them feel part of a profession and being able to contribute their knowledge to that profession.
Much has been written about best practice for developing and nurturing on-line communities , such as Communities of Practice (CoP), and the accepted wisdom is that technology by itself - no matter how good – will NOT deliver vibrant and successful communities. ‘Build it and they won’t come’ should be the mantra, as Google Wave so amply demonstrated (and I know this was not an on-line community in its purest sense before I get flamed!).
I’ve previously tried to illustrate this using  the analogy of baking a cake, where the cake’s ingredients e.g. sugar, butter, flour, eggs, milk are the component parts of an on-line community. To bake a really good cake you need all of these ingredients – missing out any one of them can result in something which either looks or tastes nothing like a cake.
Similarly missing out one of the ingredients in an on-line community will lead to potential failure of the community. Clearly some ingredients will be key – e.g. technology is going to be pretty important if it’s an on-line community! Members/users are important because they ARE the community. But let’s not forget the other ingredients, such as the community facilitator (also variously known as the community manager, steward or moderator) the business sponsor, the subject matter experts, the mentors, the librarians etc. Some of these roles may be combined, but  the functions they perform are distinct.  For now, I want concentrate on the role and function of the community facilitator, for I would argue that this role is the difference between the success and failure of an on-line community (and especially a CoP) – and I have the empirical evidence to prove it!
For any prior readers of this blog you will know I had (and still have) a key role in the development of the local government on-line community platform. Currently over 65,000 registered users and 1,300 CoPs.  Using various metrics available on the platform, I can clearly see the correlation between a successful community and the capability of the facilitator. If this role is so important to the health of the community, what skills and attributes are needed to be a successful facilitator? I’m still not entirely sure, though I do know it’s not a case of just providing some training – though this does help.  It’s more about personality; enthusiasm; willingness to share; being sensitive to the community environment; and energy….lots and lots of energy. Not the sort of things you can learn or teach using a pedagogical approach. I recall co-hosting a community facilitator’s story-telling session using the excellent Anecdote story-telling  guidelines. We got ten or so of the LG Improvement and Development (previously IDeA) exemplar community facilitators together to share their experience of what worked so that we could perhaps identify some key lessons that could be shared with all the other community facilitators. One recurrent theme was how hard they worked at making the community successful. There was nothing really unique or special that they were doing, other than putting energy and enthusiasm into their role. They believed in the goals for their community and worked at helping the community achieve them.
So, coming back to my original theme – what makes a successful on-line community? The community facilitator is the answer, and though it’s clear we need some useful technology to support an on-line environment, that alone will not deliver success.  If you will excuse me for switching metaphors, an on-line community (CoP) without a good facilitator is like have having a battery-driven toy without the batteries – and hence the title of this blog. This concept is supported by the accompanying slides, developed for a recent IBM webinar hosted and arranged by my good friend and colleague Luis Suarez (@elsua)  – and available for download from Slideshare.
To conclude – a brief story about a recent response to a proposal I received from a large government body who wanted a cost effective solution to improving knowledge sharing for their dispersed staff. There was a limited budget, and I identified a fairly low-cost collaborative technology solution that was well within the available budget. However, I also included a dependency on having a community facilitator/manager to ensure the success of this nascent community. Unfortunately the cost of the community facilitator/manager was more than twice the cost of the technology, and consequently the solution was starting to look expensive and unlikely to be accepted and implemented by the client. Yes, I could have just quoted the cost of the technology and then left them to get on with it, but then again, I’m not a technology vendor and I don’t believe in perpetuating the myth that technology delivers successful on-line communities. It would have been like leaving them with a battery-driven product but not telling them that the batteries were not included!
I hope the slides are useful for anyone involved in bulding and sustaining on-line communities – and if you happen to be a community facilitator, you have my utmost respect!
I think that most community of practice (CoP) facilitators or moderators will recognise the challenge in getting conversations started within the community. The ratio of ‘lurkers’ to ‘contributors’ is one of the standard indicators that should be measured for any CoP in order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics and health of the CoP.  It’s unreasonable to expect that everyone will be a contributor, and the fact that members don’t contribute doesn’t mean they are not getting some value from the CoP. However, there’s nothing wrong in encouraging more contributions, and I’ve seen various incentives used to increase contribution rates.
I thought this particular scheme being implemented for the local government CoP platform was particularly inventive, and I’ll be interested to see how successful it is (I have access to the platform-wide metrics). This message was sent out to all registered users of the CoP platform:
Dear CoP member,
It hasn’t been long since communities of practice welcomed its 50,000th member, yet we’ve hardly had time to register such a momentous milestone before that number is actually closer to the 55,000 member mark. And with a pool of over a thousand different communities to choose from, the potential benefits to the local government and wider public sector of those members sharing what they know grows significantly every day.
It’s no surprise to hear that the secret behind the platform’s success is its members – you! Without you, there would be nothing to share, no one to share with, and the variety and vibrancy of many communities wouldn’t be close to the level they are today.
To celebrate reaching this milestone, we want to say thank you by giving something back to all you sharers out there.
So, from February 16, we’re beginning a new campaign, Everyone 
’s a sharer! where the first hundred CoP members each month to make their very first contribution on the platform will receive a small-but-tasty appreciation of our gratitude, with further reward going to each month’s top sharers, as well as to those members who make the highest number of contributions.
We’re also looking into starting a recognition system for those who make a lot of contributions to communities. In the coming months, members who make over 50 contributions will see a bronze heart appear on their profile; 100 contributions will be silver; and 150 gold.
So get involved by contributing as much as you can to your communities, and share your knowledge. Because after all…
… Everyone ’s a sharer!
Hopefully this post might stimulate some more ideas on how to increase contribution rates from those involved in CoPs. I would add this mantra for CoP facilitators/moderators: “Know who your contributors are….and look after them!”
I had a meting today with an organisation – HeartsnSoul – who want to create a community web site to bring people with learning difficulties together with potential employers. They want to encourage use of personal blogs for their users and have a virtual meeting place (e.g. forum) where their users can ‘meet’ potential employers.
I am looking into the issues and dependencies for providing all this through our existing CoP platform , but I think the interface design requirements may exceed the available budget and there may be implications for the future management and maintenance for what would have to be a separate bespoke development.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with designing, developing or using similar sites (i.e. with heavy emphasis on accessibility and usability), blending social media applications with a simple and intuitive front end design? Or perhaps anyone with experience in this whole area of bridging the digital divide for socially excluded groups. If so, I should be very grateful if you would contact me.
Came across an interesting item about the relationship between communities and technology. Will be interesting to see how true all this is as we roll out the IDeA CoP platform to local authorities in the UK.
At last the penny has dropped. It looks like the government has taken notice of the trend for blogging and online community spaces. At least Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills has in a recent speech called Democracy and Education .
I’ve long advocated that the best way to encourage a learning and sharing environment is by enabling Connections rather than relying on Collections of codified knowledge stored in a database or in a web site. In other words, bring people together who share a common goal or issue; connecting peers and/or connecting experts with practioners. All of this is embodied within the new KM Strategy I have developed for the Improvement & Development Agency. A brief introducton to the strategy can be found on the IDeA web site.
Came across an interesting web site the other day – Demos – which provides a refreshing perspective on e-democracy and empowement of us ordinary citizens. Was thinking of popping along to an event they are running on Thursday 11 May (Demos, 136 Tooley St, London SE1, 5-6.30pm) The blurb states "Web 2.0: Where’s the democractic dividend?
Is Web 2.0 a new way for companies
to sell to consumers? An opportunity for consumers to take control of the
corporate communications channel? A metaphor for a new kind of democratic social
interaction? A tool that allows well-networked elites to increase their
networking capabilities? All of the above?" Should be interesting.
Also worth taking a look at Mysociety, which is a good example of a community site working in the public sector. Some great facilities for e-campaigns and finding out a bit more about what your MP has been up to! There’s an article about Mysociety on the Improvement & Development Agency (IDeA) web site – check out article on Mysociety .
The Dissident
Briefly checked out a new (? – well, new to me anyway) community web site at www.myplace.com. looks pretty neat and has some rich functionality – blogs, etc. I’m sure it could be adapted for business purposes, e.g. for developing public sector communities. Note to self: do a more detailed analysis of Myspace.
The Dissident.
