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.