Workplace HR & Safety HR Email Report, March 29, 2011, notes a recent study indicating blogging can increase employee productivity. The referenced study dated March 14, 2011 entitled “ A Structural Model of Employee Behavioral dynamics in Enterprise Social Media” by Y. Huang, P. Singh & A. Ghose indicates “…leading organizations have systems in place in order to encourage their employees to blog” (Lee et al. 2006, Aggarwal et al. 2009, Singh et al. 2010a)(p.1). “”Prominent adopters are General Motors, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Infosys, Google, Charles Schwab etc.”(p. 1).
The study goes on to elaborate how blogging is a low cost method of sharing ideas and collaborating. It suggests some employees will get noticed as “experts” on certain topics and may receive direct and indirect inducements including promotions. The “experts” will often attract a following and thus encourage more blogging and contributions to the topic. While leisure-related information is often a by-product of blogging and is mixed with content specific information, it helps contribute to overall employee productivity in that it is generated from a relaxed employee consciousness. The researchers go on to summarize their findings with an inclusive statement that “…prohibiting leisure-related posting will be counter-productive for organizations since it leads to a reduction in work-related posting too.” (p. 34).
However, the study also posits that “…employees’ motivation to blog may not always be in alignment with a firm’s objectives.” “…[A] unique attribute of social media is such that it allows individuals to engage in both work and leisure-related content generation. Hence, firms often observe that some employees’ blog postings are not relevant to their work knowledge or expertise. If unchecked, such behavior can undermine the very goal of enterprise blogging. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the employees’ blogging behavior in an enterprise social media setting in order to help firms devise strategies for influencing user behavior” (p. 2).
References and Other Resources:
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/news/news-detail/index.aspx?nid=1360
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