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SOCIAL LEARNING: THE COMPLETE GUIDES, FROM TOTARA LEARNING

SOCIALLEARNING

7 ways toget engagement

by Totara Learning in association with Julian Stodd

www.totaralms.com/social

PART TWO

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There’s infrastructure, then there’s engagement. And the two are very different. As anyone who’s tried to implement a new system will tell you, the challenges are more about encouraging and supporting behaviour change than the system itself.

This Guide is about how to understand and generate engagement in social learning tools such as Totara Social, facilitated by the features and functions of the system. It’s intended to help you get traction with building a community, and help people make effective use of the tools.

IT’S FOR: Learning Managers and others responsible for driving engagement and implementing

social learning in their organisations

IT’S ABOUT:7 practical steps to building awareness,

trust and performance in a social learning space.

1:Don’t lead with work

2:Find your amplifiers

3:Reach out to the quiet ones 4: Narrate – share the stories

5: Be clear on ownership 6: Moderate fairly and consistently 7: Make it safe to share

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Getting engagement in social learning: 7 steps to successOrganisations often deploy systems and lack engagement. Why? Usually because the permission is not there to experiment, the trust is lacking or there is no clear purpose.

For a social learning system to be a success, we have to engage with the community to help understand their needs and shape our approach accordingly. People struggle to adapt to suit systems: systems need to be adaptable and be configurable to the context of the community. With that in mind, here are 7 steps you can take to increase the likelihood of social learning adoption and success.

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1. Don’t lead with work

It’s often best to try to initiate engagement through non-work related activities: start with more social communities, with storytelling and sharing activities. For example, you could run a competition with prizes, asking people to share ideas and create a shared space around a theme, such as the company’s social club or charity fund-raising events the company may get involved in. Encourage users to carry out the mechanical actions required (posting, registering, joining) but focus on the activity, not the task. Make it low risk – joining groups about personal interests is a good, non-threatening use of social tools in the workplace.

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PRO TIP: SHOW, DON’T TELL

“My advice would be to start small and get some quick wins to build momentum. It

is very important to showcase the power of social learning, thus adopt the show not tell principle. Don’t just talk about it, demonstrate the benefits with case studies.”

– Con Sotidis @LearnKotch

IN PRACTICE:

You can create a group, start a blog post, ask a question or share an idea about anything in Totara Social – so if tackling a complex work problem seems too intimidating a place to start, maybe look for an easier start point – the next social outing for your team?

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2. Find your amplifiers As the community starts to engage, look for your nodes and amplifiers; the early adopters and people with high reputation – people who are followed and influential. Engage with them, and encourage them to harness team leaders and project managers to drive higher adoption in more business-oriented contexts.

Users will soon see the benefits in efficiently sharing ideas, collaborating and breaking down the information siloes. View your own role as facilitating them in building their community, not your role to build it. Socially connected people with high reputation will build engagement far faster than you (unless you are that person!).

IN PRACTICE: In Totara Social you can like others’ comments and posts, vote for their ideas, comment on their posts – all of which will help to encourage more contributions.

You can thank and reward amplifiers with kudos, for example using ‘likes’ or awarding badges.

Leaders who already have authority make for great social learning models. Focus on senior leaders and encourage them to step forward, join communities, share their insights. If your CEO is open and authentic, it sets the social learning tone for the whole business.

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3.Reach out to the quiet ones

As the community starts to engage, reach out to the quiet people. Most people are lurking and consuming, not contributing. So speak to them, in person if you can. Find out what they’re thinking about the community, and what, if anything is holding them back from being more of a contributor.

Don’t assume it’s a matter of attitude or technology. Assume they have valid reasons: find out what they are. Then see how you can facilitate them to be successful. How can you support them in being more effective as opposed to how can they adapt to your system?

At the formation stage of the community, it’s all about engagement: how can we support it, how can we best support and generate further engagement? So reach out, talk to people and avoid falling into the trap of thinking it’s about content or willingness. Generally people are disengaged for good reasons. Give them better reasons to engage and support them as they learn.

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4. Narrate-share the storiesIt’s often valuable to have a formal voice, even in social systems. Not the voice that issues edicts and warnings, but the voice that provides commentary.

Narrate how you see the community forming, growing and developing. Tell stories about the communities. Pick out individuals who are contributing effectively, offering support, those who are making a difference. Reward them with recognition and social authority. Share the success stories.

You can use your narrative voice to set challenges such as competitions, awards and opportunities. Use it to ask questions about what support the community wants.

Don’t use it for transactional discussions: use it to add value and share success. Use it to recognise and reward, to challenge and support.

IN PRACTICE In Totara Social, you could create a blog that is a weekly or monthly round-up of the most shared or valued content within the community. Single out and celebrate great contributions and success stories.

PRO TIP: HR NEEDS TO SHARE BY EXAMPLE

“I personally think too few HR leaders are embracing social learning. Many are simply not active on social media and not seeing the potential of social learning. How can we expect HR leaders to be guiding and leading their organisations on the “new world” of human capital management, when they are not embracing and are not actively participating in this “new world”?

– Con Sotidis @LearnKotch

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5.Be clear on ownership It’s important in each community or group space to understand who owns the conversation. Inappropriate intervention or moderation will kill engagement. Clarity about ownership is vital. You can vary ownership between fully formal and progressively more social spaces.

For example, if you have a group for ‘Marketing’, you may have that as a formal space, an organisational space that aligns directly to a physical team. The online group is a place you can share news, direct activity and hold discussions. But if you have a group for ‘Innovation’, you may want it to be more free-form to encourage higher levels of creative engagement. The context will inform how you moderate and engage in different ways.

As it is with offline groups, the dynamics and types of engagement will vary by group. If you engage in the same way in every space it may all become too formal and the levels of engagement will therefore likely be lower. Conversely if you just stand back you will neglect your role in forming and guiding community growth There’s a balance to strike. You don’t want a classroom but nor do you want the wild west. In each group space always be clear about ownership.

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6. Moderate fairly and consistantly

Moderation is a facet of ownership. Moderation needs to be clear, purposeful and above all transparent and fully engaged. Ideally the community will take ownership of itself although to encourage engagement and ensure that the community is a safe place to be you’ll want to provide a safeguarding role, even if it’s a very light touch.

You need clarity about when to ATTEND to something, when to just OBSERVE it, and when to call in expert SUPPORT. Moderation isn’t just about stopping people swearing: it’s about nurturing and guiding. If you ever do have to STOP something, you need to offer feedback that is personalised and relevant to the context. Have a conversation rather than publically rebuke people as that rarely changes the undesired behaviour.

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7. Make it safe to share When we establish collaborative online social spaces we have a responsibility to ensure nobody is disenfranchised. If you encourage people to share and they’re subsequently not treated with respect, they will stop contributing and community momentum is lowered.

There are many ways to be left behind; lack of technology skills, not knowing they have permission to contribute, poor communication or lack of understanding of the rules (or rules that change). Common areas to fail are around privacy, permanence and movement.

Privacy is a failure to recognise who can see what? People may think that they are contributing in a private group or to an individual but in fact the space is public (or becomes public subsequently).Typically there is a systems approach to privacy issues where we think that safeguarding is a function of the technology. Whilst that’s critically important there is a social aspect to privacy as well. Part of our role in building and moderating communities is to safeguard and guide people.

Permanence is where contributions come back to haunt us. Do you have clarity about permanence and is the policy understood by the community? Are all groups permanent or will they be archived, deleted or locked off at some future date?

Movement is where a contribution is made in one space but ends up somewhere else because someone quotes or copies and pastes the content. Do people understand this and are we making them aware of it? It’s important to be clear on privacy, permanence and movement otherwise people will not feel that it is safe to share.

Think about how to support people. Think about how to safeguard them and show them respect. Think about how to share the rules to avoid unintended issues arising.

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IN PRACTICE: BE CAREFUL SHARING ACROSS THE EXTENDED ENTERPRISE

• In an Enterprise Social Network you need to ensure that when sharing takes place there’s no inadvertent sharing with members of the extended enterprise that may cause issues. For example, a manufacturer may have multiple resellers or partners in their network who are competitors.

• In these circumstances extra care is needed. The level of administrative control, including multi-tenancy, in Totara Social ensures that the appropriate people are managing user accounts and participants are engaging with others who they know to be part of their organisation.

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Takeaway Build engagement through flexibility, co-creation and trust

Engaging users in social learning spaces requires some flexibility. It’s good to provide some initial structure and create social spaces for groups you are aware would likely become early adopters. You also need to be highly agile in your approach and view your role as enabling community building rather than managing it all. Provide the opportunity for people to create and manage their own communities within the overall framework.

It’s important to experiment. Create some spaces, but don’t try to create them all. Create some groups (easy to do in Totara Social) and in parallel offer support to others in their efforts to start their own group spaces. Reward initiative with reputation and social authority. Use your official voice to recognise enthusiasm, innovation and effort.

Community building is about co-creating relevant spaces with participants. Ask what spaces they want. How do they want to use the system and how willing are you to engage in supporting that activity? For example, if a project community wants a private space to let off steam will you oblige? Are you willing to provide closed groups? If so, are there clear rules about privacy, permanence and movement of that data? If it’s not clear trust won’t be fully established and people will engage less. Never assume permission. It’s a quick route to undermining trust. Employ the 7 steps in this Guide to build and hold trust in your social learning spaces.

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IN PRACTICE: 3 WAYS TO SUPPORT HOW YOUR COMMUNITY MANAGES COLLABORATION SAFELY USING TOTARA SOCIAL1 The system administration functions in Totara Social enable you to define the rules of how your social spaces will operate.

2 You can allocate certain roles to members in Totara Social enabling who can do what, including whether groups can be openly joined by others versus requiring permission and how private or public you want your communities.

3 You can use the multi-tenancy features within Totara Social to allocate ownership of different organisations to specific administrators. Communities within each organisation can then define their own rules of operation.

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GET IN TOUCH:

Contact Totara Learning or your Totara Partner to see Totara Social in action

www.totaralearning.com/social