Improving Communication within Online Public K-12 Education

Social Networks in Organizations

Hult International Business School

June 5, 2016

By: Dorothy Robertson

I have encountered extreme communication mishaps while working at my previous job as an executive assistant for an online public school. This online public school has locations in 27 states with some states having numerous locations. Under the parent company, there are three branches of the online education system and approximately 2,500 employees. It has a traditional corporate structure with the headquarters location on the east coast and local schools branching from California, Texas, Florida and numerous states in-between. The corporate hierarchy works for the headquarters (HQ) office but it does not work directly with the local level schools

HQ sends information to regional directors who then pass the information to the principals at the local schools. There are times when the principals ask individuals directly within HQ for data they need or questions which need to be answered. There are many different departments which need to be in constant contact with each school. At the location I previously worked for there always seemed to be staff who were unsure of information being passed down and what was required from them at the local school and HQ levels.

The purpose of my social network analysis will address the communication barriers to help improve efficiency of the organization. In addition, there will be ability to see if there is a direct relationship between high performing schools and the people which they are communicating with.

Fortunately, due to the nature of the school, the data which is required will be easy to collect. This corporation works with big data and is always analyzing student and employee performance. There is an annual survey which is distributed each year regarding employee satisfaction. All of the company employees complete this survey and the completion rate varies at each branch from 80%-100%.

Currently these surveys only address employee satisfaction with human resources, teams and leaders. It would be fairly simple to add the following questions:

1. Have you communicated with XXX department at HQ?
1. How frequently do you communicate with “Person X” within the XXX department at HQ?
2. Do you feel that your communications with individuals at HQ lead to your success within the organization?
2. Have you communicated with any individuals at other schools (not at your local level)?
1. How frequently do you communicate with “Person X”?
2. Do you feel that your communications with individuals at other schools lead to your overall success within the organization?
3. How frequently do you communicate with XXX at your local level?
1. Do you feel that your communications with individuals at your local school level lead to your overall success within the organization?

The frequency questions will be asked based off the school year with the following meanings:

0: Never

1: Occasionally

2: Frequently

This is a simple scale that will make it easier to interpret the data on all three levels. It is also difficult to remember who you have communicated with 9 months ago, so this scale would be the most logical due to human error. The communications will be defined as “consulting with other individuals via phone, email, Lync-messenger and in-person to further your success within the organization.”

In addition to the survey, there can be an analysis of how many emails and messages sent through Lync. The Lync data would be extremely difficult to analyze because employees do not always consult with others about work related information. This is also true for the emails which is why I proposed the above survey.

I do see a potential problem of completion levels of the survey decreasing by adding on additional questions. It can potentially be very time consuming for those who consult within many different locations.

Once the data has been received about the communication within other department the other attributes will be added. The attributes that if feel will be interested to analyze are as follows: of location, job position, gender, age, time with company and satisfaction level with boss/team/company are all addressed on the satisfaction survey and will be added to the attributes list.

The next step will be to analyze the different attributes based on the frequency of communications at the different levels. It will be very interesting to look at the E-I Index for all of the levels to see if some departments are more homophily or heterophily. According to the National Center for Education Statistics 75% of k-12 teachers are female (Fast). It will also be helpful to see how the communications between similar departments at the local and HQ levels interact with each other and other departments. We will be able to analyze if the more successful schools have a number close to 0, meaning they would communicate freely within and outside their departments.

I would then look at a clique analysis. This would be important to see who are the key communicators within each location and their relationships outside of their departments. I would like to further look into their roles within the company. I would hope to find that the local school leaders would have more cliques than the local level teachers.

I would also like to look within NETDRAW to see the nodes based on their cliques. This way I can start to see the subgroups and see the big picture of the organization. I predict that we would find there are more cliques within each school level than cliques between schools and HQ. Within HQ we will start to be able to see how departments are communicating within and outside of the organization. It will be interesting to see if there are some individuals who are biased and only pass information to certain people or if they are assigned to specific people and they keep only the assigned relationship or if they take initiative and discuss issues with individuals outside their responsibilities. This is an important step to see how communication is happening and where we can start to improve the overall success of the schools.

The degree measures will also be very important. This can be an interesting analysis for each job position and how they communicate with each other. It would also be interesting to see if the school who have been opened longer have more in-degree connections from local schools and more out-degree to HQ. The out-degree to HQ would be an interesting thing to look at because the longer the school has been open the more ability they have had to establish stronger connections within HQ.

This study will be a great way to see if there needs to be a different system in place to the organizational success. While I only mentioned a few factors, these were the factors that I would find to be the most interesting. I would like to do a complete analysis on all of the other social network measures to see other potential issues.

In conclusion, I personally feel that an in-depth analysis of this organization will be beneficial for all parties. In can help eliminate inefficiencies and create a better sense of community within the national organization. This can help lead to a higher retention rate, less confusion and the ability to work more efficiently. This is as project that could be completed successfully and the research could be applied to other large public online schools.

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Works Cited:

"Fast Facts." Fast Facts. US Department of Education, n.d. Web. 05 June 2016.

Evaluating Employee Collaboration & Communication

Problem: 

How can organizations identify, evaluate and ensure that the company culture continues to be collaborative and communication continues to be interactive across departments? Making copies of post-its is counter-productive, recording every face to face dialogue is wrong on many levels, and so is tapping into phone calls -not to mention that phone calls in the office have become less popular!

Situation:

Many organizations such as Scientific Games, the University of Alaska, Lenovo Manhattan Associates and Morgan Stanley use Microsoft Skype for Business (formerly known as Lync) for office communication. Skype for Business is a platform that helps foster engagement, collaboration and interaction via instant messaging, online sharing, online meetings, audio/video conferencing and much more.

While reading about Skype for Business, I wondered if platforms like this actually breakdown organization silos or encourage even more introvert behavior? Do companies even look at the data collected?...it would be an awesome and insightful position! I could not find research to answer these questions so I’ve decided to put together a plan to utilize the tool of SNA to evaluate Manhattan Associates communication patterns. '

Manhattan Associates is a U.S. based supply chain management software company which requires communication across departments in order for every department to achieve high results and maintain high client satisfaction.

I picked Manhattan Associates because I know a handful of people who have been working there and they claim that not only is communication common across Manhattan Associates departments but Skype for Business is a tool that is highly relied on to communicate along with face to face interaction. 

SNA will help identify employee communication and collaboration patterns and evaluate if most of company is collaborative and communication is interactive across departments while relying heavily on Skype for Business.

Hypothesis:

If Skype for Business is used regularly as a communication tool, then Manhattan Associates communication and collaboration habits are more frequent not just within their department but also across the organization.

My hope is that data from Skype for Business and SNA will prove that my hypothesis is true and also provide useful insights about the employee network.

Important Things to Note:

I would plan on doing a mid-year review of the organization’s structure and communication flow with one survey sent out to the entire company towards the end of the second quarter along with the Skype for Business data collected from first and second quarter. It is also important to note that when creating the survey, make sure questions are worded carefully to avoid bias and use a rating scale that is easy to follow/remember.

Sample questions to include in the survey are:

• How often do you use Skype for Business in the past two quarters? Use your Skype for Business chat, audio/video call and online meeting history to recall communication history.
• 1=never, 2= once every day, 3= multiple times a day
• How often have you communicated with __________ in the past two quarters on anything related to work (includes lunch break and business trips)? Use your Skype for Business chat, audio/video call and online meeting history to recall communication history.
• 1=never, 2=infrequently, 3=frequently
• How often have you socialized with ________ in the past two quarters outside of work (does not include lunch break or business trips)? Use your Skype for Business chat, audio/video call and online meeting history to recall communication history.
•  1=never, 2=infrequently, 3=frequently

Attributes to include in collected data:

• Department
• Sales, Research & Development, Professional Services, Customer Services
• Tenure 
• 1= less than 1 year, 2= 2 to 5 years, 3=more than 5 years
• Nationality
• Chinese, Indian, American, South American, European, Other
• Position/hierarchy
• Consultant,  Senior Consultant, Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, Other
• Gender
• 1=Female, 2=Male
• Age
• 1= 25 or below, 2=26 to 35, 3= 36 to 45, 4= 46 or above

What to look for in this SNA:

• individuals with high/valuable connections (highest eigenvector)
• individuals serving as a connector or bridge for the highest number connections (in-betweeness)
• boundary spanners (connectors/bridges) between attributes including departments and nationality
• hub connectors connecting with nodes (people) from various positions and departments
• relationship and communication/use of Skype for Business frequency between departments
• social and professional subgroups as well as cliques within them based on various attributes including nationality
• relationship between tenure and frequency of communication/ use of Skype for Business
•  relationship between age and frequency of use of Skype for Business/communication

Expected SNA Result:

Because I don’t have the actual data to conduct this SNA, I will go ahead and make some assumptions about the expected results I hope to see.

The expected outcome of the SNA is that my hypothesis is true and with the use of Skype for Business, Manhattan Associate’s organizational structure and employee network is a distributed network versus a centralized or decentralized network. 

A centralized network means the organization’s power is concentrated and a decentralized network means the organization’s communication is inconsistent and confined to subgroups or departments. Naturally, it is expected that the SNA will also show subgroups based on nationality for social ties and subgroups based on departments for work ties. In addition, although the expected result is that the hypothesis is true, isolates will also be identified.

Recommendations:

1. With the insights and knowledge gained, IF the hypothesis is true, there shouldn’t be one or two boundary spanners. In fact, there should be multiple nodes connecting nationalities and departments. And in order for the organization to continue facilitating a company with high communication and collaboration –they should continue investing in Skype for Business as well as training for newly hired employees to understand the importance of each department and the value of communicating and connecting.
2. Follow up or more information may be needed to understand why there are isolates/outliers present in a company with a high culture of collaboration –it could be because those individuals were recently transferred around the time of the survey and do not have connections or a communication history in Skype for Business.
3. The attribute of age will help shed light on whether younger people use Skype for Business more often than older people. Skype for Business has become vital for the organization so it does require individuals to become familiar with the platform and training workshops for Skype for Business may be needed every few months when a system update occurs or new features are introduced. The data will tell the organization whether it needs to invest time and money in this or not.
4. Individuals with the highest out degree could be given more responsibility i.e. if there are events, emergencies or urgent news which needs to be dispatched –the source or broadcaster can be utilized. Not everyone checks their emails every few minutes and a connection to a broadcaster may catch their attention quicker than an email blast.
5. Sinks or nodes who have a high in degree should also be recognized –they soak up information without broadcasting it to everyone which means they are very trustworthy. The organization can utilize nodes like these to gauge employee sentiments outside of a formal survey, not everyone will leave genuine feedback on an anonymous form but asking a sink to just listen and be a “fly on the wall” can prove very insightful for the organization
6. Professional subgroups and cliques based on department are inevitable however social cliques based on nationality means although the organization is diverse; there isn’t a lot of cross-cultural interaction outside of work. One way to combat this and encourage cross-cultural groups is for the organization to have events or monthly potluck lunches for each department focusing on embracing and educating employees about various cultures.

Some More Important Things to Note:

SNA can help HR, management and executives see the “invisible” patterns in an organization by visualizing the data in a network map. It is important to note that SNA is a diagnostic tool and there are other ways to evaluate an organizations communication and collaboration habits. In this SNA, the plan is to view the organization in the first two quarters of the fiscal year –that is just a slice of time and if an SNA is done every quarter continuously maybe the data will be more valid. In this SNA, the number of instant messages, video/audio calls and online meetings were used to help survey respondents answer the survey. One of the main reasons to use Skype for Business data was to reduce human error because people can recall or predict less than half of their communications measured either on amount or on frequency as concluded in a study called The Problem of Informant Accuracy: The Validity of Retrospective Data. Using Skype for Business helps increase the validity of this SNA.