My first article on the obstacles to the adoption of social media by corporate learning generated a series of requests for guidance on how to overcome those hurdles. In this post, I’d like to present a few guiding principles and key considerations that have proven to be effective in the context of technology adoption.

Start Small

Learning organizations should consider starting with small implementations of social technologies and then evaluate, improve, and continue to build the case for social media in support of learning. Although a limited rollout may not be seen as ideal, these first steps allow the learning organization to collect data on the anticipated benefits and help strengthen the business case. The growth in usage will be fueled by the success stories of the pilot groups (Henriksson, Mikkonen, & Vadén, 2008). A grassroots attitude can be the main catalyst for adoption and sustained usage (Bughin, 2008).

Show Value

As reported in the Melcrum survey, the main reason that organizations were unable to adopt social software was insufficient senior leadership support (Hathi, 2008). Introducing social media should not be a project about technology but one about business results: Decision-makers need to understand, in tangible ways, the benefits of these technologies to corporate learning and the anticipated business results. They need to see how these technologies will enable organizational tasks that need a new solution based on collaboration (Majchrzak, Wagner, & Yates, 2006). In addition, the business case should anticipate the concerns around control over content generation and the threats to enterprise information assets, and provide risk-mitigation strategies.

The duration of the initial phase of getting senior leadership support can be long. In the words of one of my survey participants, “We are slowly moving the needle but it has taken almost a year of education to decision makers about the adoption of social media tools and it is a hard needle to move”.

Securing sponsorship could require that learning professionals adjust how they talk about the value of social media. Although the cognitive benefits and the technologies themselves are important, learning professionals need to present these benefits in the context of anticipated business results and also share stories about benefits that other organizations have achieved.

Learning professionals will need to be comfortable with and embrace the value of learner-generated content

Embrace Participatory Environments

L&D professionals need to understand that trying to fit these tools into the mold of traditional training models is unlikely to work. The pedagogical practices that are the most compatible with social media technologies are not those that involve highly guided instruction (Collis & Moonen, 2008). Learning professionals will need to be comfortable with and embrace the value of learner-generated content (pedagogies such as problem or inquiry-based learning). In these new learning environments, the students are no longer the passive recipients of instruction. The corporate educators' role changes from traditional instructors to that of designers of environments of minimal direct guidance.

Formalize the Role

The research participants indicated that they understood the value of social media and that they were willing to embrace those technologies; however, a problem that they mentioned often was the lack of time needed to moderate these environments. We should follow the example of other areas that have recognized the need to formalize the roles that support social media. Montalvo (2011) explained how the activity in Social Media Manager hiring is similar to the Webmaster hiring of the mid-1990s, and this exemplifies a new set of skills needed by employers. Without a realistic allocation of people and time resources, learning professionals are likely to default to less participative and traditional forms of education.

Don’t Belabor the Tools

As a recent college graduate, one of my first assignments was to help identify tools relevant to the needs of a newly formed business unit. I failed to deliver (in fact, it was a disaster). The reason was that I focused on the “tools” and not on the “needs” and “business” aspects of that assignment. These guiding principles can help you minimize the issues that others have experienced as they worked on introducing social media in their organizations.

References

Bughin, J. (2008). The rise of enterprise 2.0. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 9(3), 251-259. doi:10.1057/palgrave.dddmp.4350100

Collis, B., & Moonen, J. (2008). Web 2.0 tools and processes in higher education: Quality perspectives. Educational Medial International_, 45_(2), 93-106. Retrieved from ERIC database. (EJ799102)

Hathi, S. (2008). Are companies truly ready for enterprise 2.0? Strategic Communication Management, 13(1), 9. Retrieved from ProQuest ABI/INFORM Global database

Henriksson, J., Mikkonen, T., & Vadén, T. (2008_). Experiences of Wiki use in Finnish companies_. MindTrek '08: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Entertainment and media in the ubiquitous era. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library

Majchrzak, A., Wagner, C., & Yates, D. (2006). Corporate wiki users: Results of a survey. WikiSym '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Wikis. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library