Identification of unexpected influencers in the company.

Social Network Analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities. Conducting a social network analysis can help companies to reveal their unexpected influencers.

Problem:

When a company wants to break down its geographical barriers and become a more global organization, it is suggested that the leaders should informally enlist influential employees to assist with change management. But first company needs to identify which employees are most connected with others and which one’s did the most to forge relationships across different departments in two distinct locations.

According to Cigna’s chief learning officer if you ask a company’s leader the names of the influencers of their company, 75% of the names would be incorrect. He further says that, "There are hidden gems in every organization, at every level. That’s why you need to use scientific survey methodology to identify them."

For example in an organization the CEO would identify employee X as an influential person, not knowing the people working under employee X, if he is given a proper Social Network Analysis, He would identify that his assumption on employee X would be incorrect. Under this analysis, employee Y would be identified as a great networker. Hence, if this analysis is done effectively, the right employee would be considered for any organizational tasks in future.

Today’s computer networks, including the internet and wireless networks, create human-connection grids that are larger than ever. This may the reason why social network analysis, which has existed for decades, is becoming a more popular be way to understand a change in the organization.

Discovering who does the most to connect, communicate and collaborate with fellow employees is a semi outcome of any analysis. Also known as UCINET, it is a data-driven methodology supported by software to quantify and illustrate the number and strengths of personal connections. Most analysis are based on a survey of employees or managers, but they can also be based on e-mail traffic, an employee who has conversed a lot via email could be considered as a great social networker under this analysis.

Organizational hierarchies are likely to exist as long as organizations do. But companies also have informal networks, which flatten hierarchical structures and diminish the relevance of an official pecking order. The majority of work is so complex that no one person has all the knowledge, experience or skills to handle it. Formally or informally, people collaborate to get work done.

In order to recognize the employee with the best network and connections, a survey amongst the employees would be helpful to analyze and reward the employee for any networking events overseas.

Data that the company would need in order to have efficient survey results are:

·         Age

·         Annual income

·         Department

·         Whether he/she works with the global centers

·         Sex

·         Number of mails sending each day

·         No. of friends on LinkedIn

·         Who do you go to for information

·         Who do you go to solve problems

·         Who do you go to get career advice, etc.

The most important network measures are as follows:

Degree - How many people can this person reach directly?

Betweenness - How likely is this person to be the most direct route between two people in the network?

Closeness - How fast can this person reach everyone in his network?

Eigenvector - How well is this person connected to other well connected people?

How will SNA help?

After conducting a good SNA it will help the company to know who is the most efficient employee in the company who is helping to keep the global networks strong among the same company but in different countries. Also it will help to know which employee has major connections apart from their own departments.

Social Network Analysis is also being applied in the company in different areas other than talent management, Examples are as follows:

Mergers and acquisitions - A Social Network Analysis can be used to understand the acquired companies’ informal networks and identify their go-to people.

Workspace configuration - A research and development division in a large company analyzed its organizational network to determine the interdependencies among employees, to identify informal leaders and to discover where connections should be happening but were not. Employees within the division worked in the same building but on different floors. As a result of the analysis, the division’s workspace was reconfigured so that people who needed to work together closely were on the same floor. Follow-up analyses have shown that person-to-person connectivity has greatly improved.

Onboarding - In some of the cases clients assign mentors to new hires, based on the mentor’s network. And if a new hire is replacing someone, clients give the newcomer a map of the departing employee’s informal network and make introductions.

Staffing decisions - If a company wants to open offices around the country, one fast-growing company can’t hire employees quickly. By periodically conducting a social network analysis, the organization can identify hires made within the previous 12 months who had built the most extensive informal networks and were thereby deemed candidates for promotion to assistant manager positions.

Brain drain concerns - Companies can use SNA to identify which soon-to-retire Baby Boomers have the most network connections, then set priorities for knowledge retention and succession planning. In succession planning, for example, if two employees have similar resumes but one has a more robust network, that employee might be the better replacement.

In conclusion, Social Network Analysis is an important tool that measures the effectiveness of a great employee. Managers in today’s world will be able to use this tool to reward deserving employees who will benefit both the company’s and personal growth. Using this tool, employees will feel the fairness in decision taken place by the management with respect to growth in the organization, thus also effecting the efficiency and effectiveness of the employee. 

Reference:

- http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/tse-portal/analysis/social-network-analysis/

- https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.casro.org/resource/collection/E0F10496-BE87-48E8-8746-521D403EE4A2/Paper_-_Michael_Lieberman_-_Multivariate_Solutions.pdf

Kamini Dhruv

MIB

Hult International Business School