I worry that some people believe this sort of rubbish. According to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) the average UK worker spends ninety minutes a week misusing corporate internet connections.
The CBI said that workers are spending roughly an hour and a half out of their week visiting web sites that have no relation to their work whatsoever. Cumulatively, it said, this costs UK businesses some £10.6bn in lost productivity over the course of a year.
The CBI polled some 503 businesses, who it said employed nearly one million workers between them. Two thirds of those who took part admitted that they think that their staff use work time – ie, not lunch, or formal breaks, to look at non-work sites. It identified social networking, web-based email and shopping and holiday sites as the biggest draws. Overall, they estimate the annual cost, per employee to be the region of £1000. According to the report, this costs UK businesses £10.6 billion (yes billion) a year in lost productivity.
Firstly of all, do they really expect us to believe that if there was a complete embargo on ‘non work related websites’ that we’d be saving the economy getting on for £11 billion? This assumes that these employees wouldn’t be doing other ‘wasteful’ things with their time if they weren’t surfing the web - like reading a newspaper or doing su-doku, or otherwise expanding their knowledge.
Secondly, they seem to have concluded that any serendipitous use of the internet is wasted time. What about all that information that has been both consciously and sub-consciously absorbed during this browsing experience? I wonder if they’ve quantified the times when some apparently useless nugget of information has been stored in the sub-concious and then used at some later date to contribute to the well being of the person (e.g. some health information), or maybe even applied to the workplace in a way that has improved productivity?
I’m saddened that a respected industry body such as the CBI should publish such report like this that draws some very debatable conclusions on a potentially flawed hypothesis that serendipitous use of the web is bad for business. Maybe they’d have us bring the workhouse back?
I just hope that managers will not use this report as further ammunition to restrict workers from using the web for anything other than browsing their own company’s web site. Let’s not apply 19th century working practices to 21st century workers!
The Civil Service have published a set of guidelines for on-line participation by civil servants (blogging etc.). As Whitehall Webby Jeremy Gould notes, this is a much slimmed-down version of a weightier tome that has been in production behind the scenes, and which may appear as a set of more detailed operational guidelines for using social media/Web 2.0 tools.
The initiative is to be applauded, and I particularly like the succinctness of the guidelines, which is most un-civil service-like, but in keeping with the overall concept of agility and flexibility that one associates with the brave new world of Web 2.0.
The Power Of Information Task Force are seeking feedback on the guidelines. Have your say!
All of those organisations trudging zombie-like towards implementation of Sharepoint as a social media solution might do well to read about the result of a ‘face-off’ between IBM’s Lotus Connections and Microsoft’s Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) products, as reported by CIO Magazine.
According to the article, whereas both vendors showed their products could integrate with existing e-mail systems (especially e-mail systems that they sell, such as Notes and Exchange), IBM’s Lotus Connections looked, at minimum, a year or more ahead of SharePoint in its social computing capabilities out of the box.
The guidelines for the face-off presentation were that the vendors present what a customer gets ‘out of the box’, i.e. without the third party plug-ins, or the extra products and professional services that (Sharepoint in particular) needs to make it a usable environment. The report states that as far as social computing goes, this wasn’t flattering for SharePoint.
The Sharepoint wiki was static and lacked robust version control and had sparse editing features. Microsoft’s MySites - social networking profiles for the enterprise - looked a little better but still left much to be desired in terms of design.
One example of the difference in presentation of the social computing tools was if someone wanted to examine their place within the hierarchy of an organization, it was presented textually like the inbox of an e-mail system. In IBM Connections, it was presented mostly with pictures of the people and big buttons in which to interact with them over e-mail, phone, or IM.
Clearly Microsoft realises it has to up its game if it is to be taken seriously in the social computing world, with partnerships with Atlassian and blueKiwi going some way to address the Sharepoint product limitations. Quite what this means in terms of providing the user with a fully integrated and seamless social computing environment I’m not sure. There is also the issue of cost, since presumably these partnerships will be licence-based and paid for by the customer on top of the Sharepoint licence. I just hope that the Finance Directors do the math before signing the contracts!
Personally, I’m doubtful that Sharepoint will ever be a pure social computing product. Its strengths are in task-based processes and information organisation, not community knowledge sharing and collaboration. However, and as always, I’m open to alternative views on this point!
Euan Semple pretty much hits the nail on the end with his post on why companies (organisations) will fail with their approach to Enterprise 2.0. The fundamental reason is they still don’t get it, and not helped by the hype from the big vendors (no names) who push the technology and ignore the culture. Euan lists 8 reasons for failure:
1. They think it is about technology.
2. They aren’t prepared to deal with the friction that allowing their staff to connect generates.
3. They will assimilate it into business as usual.
4. They will try to do it in a way that “maximizes business effectiveness” without realizing that it calls for a radical shift in what is seen as effective.
5. They will grind down their early adopters until they give up.
6. They will get fleeced by the IT industry for over engineered, under delivering solutions, think that Enterprise 2.0 failed to live up to its promise and move on to the next fad.
7. Lack of patience
8. It is not companies who do Enterprise 2.0 it is individuals.
I would add a 9th and 10th to the list based on my dealings with Gov:
9. It has to cost a lot to be of any value
10. One size must fit all
Point 9 is a reflection on the fact that I’ve offered Gov departments access to and use of the local government social networking and social media platform at little or no cost, but ‘Gov’ is determined to forge ahead with their own multi-million pound solution, which will take years to implement. I guess you could argue this is covered in Euan’s point 6, but the point I’m making is that an Enterprise 2.0 solution that costs so little to implement and use is perceived to have no value, and consequently is not given serious consideration by decision-makers.
Point 10 is the conditioned behaviour of many large organisations to harmonise and standardise, developing monolithic solutions to complex business requirements. Web 2.0 offers flexible and agile solutions that can easily be knitted together and (more importantly) changed and adapted to meet the needs of individual workers. Enforcing a one-size-fits-all solution will only encourage more of what is happening now - staff going off and finding their own solutions.
What does anybody else think?
I will be presenting at the Limehouse software user’s group today, 10th June, on the topic of Web 2.0 and the issues that local authorities face in bridging the digital. I will post my slides to Slideshare after the event.
Ingrid Koehler over at the Policy and Performance blog writes about how Web 2.0 is being used to support improvement initiatives in the local government sector, and in particular the positioning of (virtual) communities of practice for engaging with staff across the sector. This point is also emphasised by John Hayes, Director of Services at the IDeA.
A tangible example of the power of Web 2.0 for networking, collaboration and consultation will be evident in the forthcoming Customer Insight Online Conference, scheduled to run from 10th to 20th June 2008. What is an online conference? To quote:
An online conference, just like a ‘real life’ conference, is about getting people together to discuss a common interest and learn from each other. There are speakers, participants, panelists and discussions. It just takes place in an online platform and over a longer period of time, allowing people to dip in and out.
It’s greener – saving all that travel and paper, less expensive and many people find it more convenient and easier to engage with. The proceedings of this conference will be distilled into a learning report for practitioners and policy makers.
There will be a wealth of useful learning and an opportunity to chat with a range of colleagues through the medium of online discussion, video, photos and more. You do not have to be a technical wizard to join in. The conference platform is easy to use and throughout the two week period, we will send you regular round-ups to support your engagement and help you direct your own participation for maximum benefit.
If this is of interest to you, you’ll need to sign up for the event using the online registration form on the Communities of Practice website.
Tools for Communities Wiki A companion piece to a forthcoming book Stewarding Technologies for Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. Like all Wikis, this is a work in progress. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. The vision is to provide a community perspective on these tools and their key features.
GroupTweet GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via the Twitter API. It allows you to set up a private group on Twitter for sending and receiving text messages (tweets) to members of the group. This tool might be a great introduction to Twitter as quick information sharing tool for a small community of practice and people who are new to Twitter.
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.
Interesting commentary from Dion Hinchliffe about the changing business landscape being heralded on the back of the Enterprise 2.0 space, which Forrestor predicts will be a $4.6 billion (£2.3 billion) within 5 years.
Dion goes on to reference the two major methods by which these new applications take hold. The first is the traditional model where the IT department or some part of the business decides at a high level to adopt these new tools and begins the process of evaluation, acquisition, deployment, training and adoption. This being the traditional model that most IT large-scale software acquisitions still use today.
The other model is where individuals take it upon themselves to find the best solutions to a given problem at hand and solve them creatively and collaboratively at a grassroots level. This model is becoming increasingly more common, particularly in organisations that are less strongly hierarchical.
I should note that I’m witnessing this ‘push’ model at first hand through the rapid take-up of social networking and social media applications across the local government sector as part of the development of communities of practice across the sector. The conundrum here is that this is happening across almost exclusively hierarchical organisations.
I fully concur on Dion’s conclusion that:
“The challenge will be learning how to apply these new models effectively to business while not strangling them with the traditional aspects of enterprise software that can greatly limit their potential and have led to poor outcomes and excessive structure in the past. The good news: Most likely they will be hard to stop as Web 2.0 applications become increasingly commonplace in our organizations over the next few years. The bad news: Most organizations will take years learning how to create environments that fully allow the leverage of these tools.”
This latter point resonates with my own experience in promoting Web 2.0 technologies and processes for facilitating more effective collaboration and knowledge sharing across the traditionally silo’d mentality of public sector organisations. There’s a tendency for some people to get mesmerised by the technology at the expense of investing time and effort in creating a collaborative workplace.
I believe it’s a classic case of applying the ‘80:20′ rule, i.e. for every £20 (or $20) spent on the technology, organisations should be investing £80 (or $80) on ensuring its being used effectively. In other words, don’t assume that everyone in the workplace has the skills to collaborate effectively, and recognise that sometimes the culture may be working against open collaboration.
I attended an “Enterprise 2.0″ event last week where Ian Lloyd gave a very thought provoking presentation on the impact of Web 2.0 on accessibility. Ian is a web developer working for the Nationwide Building Society, and clearly knows his stuff when it comes to designing websites that will accommodate assistive technologies - such as screen readers, voice to text and screen magnifiers.
This was particularly relevant to the work I’m presently doing in building on-line environments for support of Communities of Practice in the public sector, where accessibility standards and guidelines for websites is far more rigorously enforced than in the private sector. Conforming to standards such as W3C Web Accessibility Initiative is a given, but websites must also conform to guidance such as Delivering Inclusive Websites, issued by the COI.
Personally, I have some sympathy with developers of ’social media-rich’ websites (which I’ll categorise as being ‘Web 2.0′) in that it’s quite difficult to find the right balance between accessibility and making the site appealing to a mass audience. Clearly Facebook comes to mind here. However, I’m not sure that vendors/developers do enough to ensure that they have catered for the disabled minority. For example, the Captcha processes used on a growing number of websites are fairly difficult to negotiate even for someone with 20:20 vision.
I don’t necessarily think that Social Media has to mean poor accessibility, yet there seems to be a sort of tacit acceptance that this is the case . I’m now far more aware of my obligations in striving to make the CoP platform available to a more diverse audience and will be taking steps to in the next development phase to ensure we’re meeting the required guidelines and best practice.
Two very useful resources for anyone interested in issues around accessibility and diversity are Abilitynet and the Shaw Trust.
