Last updated: 15 March 2010

SOCIAL MEDIA & LEARNING
Social Learning Examples - in the Workplace

Previous page: Social media and 5 types of learning

There are many examples of how enterprises/organisations (profits and non-profits) are using social media for EXTERNAL marketing, customer support, etc, but few real-life case studies of strategic approaches to its use INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement. Here are some examples of social learning in organisations.

[If you have an example of the strategic use of social learning in the workplace to share, please let me know.  I'm looking for the Why? What? and How?]

1. BT Dare to Share

   "It does not replace the company's existing learning programs so much as augment them with informal learning opportunities and with social collaborative opportunities.

   From a technology platform perspective, the approach is equivalent to an enterprise wide YouTube system with a strong social dimension. Dare2Share leverages Microsoft Sharepoint to enable employees to create, find and view learning segments (podcasts, documents and links), and also discuss and debate the content being created. Perhaps more important than the platform, however, is the attitude and learning culture that this approach creates across the organization. The free-form environment encourages people to experiment, innovate, collaborate, communicate and share their experiences and knowledge in engaging ways. This knowledge sharing has a positive impact on how other employees serve customers, find information or solve problems."

   The Business Case for Social Learning, Accenture, Point of View, April 2009

2. Sun Learning eXchange
   
   "When the company’s sales division reduced training hours and budget, Sun Learning Services (SLS) needed to get strategic. Observing Web 2.0 popularity, increased peer-to-peer information sharing among employees and sales team demand for “just-in-time” learning in the field, Sun brought social media into the workplace. Leveraging open source technology and Sun’s innovation culture, Sun Learning Services created Sun Learning eXchange, a YouTubelike collaborative multimedia portal on which employees can post, view, rate, tag, share or download content to computers or wireless iPod devices."

   "Sun Learning eXchange Empowers Learners to Meet Their Own Critical Learning Needs" PDF, David Mallon, Bersin & Associates, March 2009
   (No longer available)

3. Pearson People Development
   
   "Problem: Pearson’s learning strategy of face-to-face training for its global company of over 35,000 needed to change due to restrictions on travel on and after September 11, 2001
   
   Solution: Implemented an online, virtual meeting environment to increase telecourse interactivity. Began a virtual book club utilizing collaborative software for brainstorming and decision making
   
   Results: A shift from face-to-face culture to a virtual business culture. The role of Pearson People Development changed to being a learning enabler. Substantial cost savings from reduced face-to-face meeting time. Increased employee engagement because of the benefits of the new virtual processes, such as reduced stress and time"
   
   PearsonPeopleDevelopment Case Study (PDF), Corporate University Exchange, November 2009

4. SFR
   
   "French mobile phone company SFR implemented ActiveNetworker from Jobpartners to support its new social network. My SFR comprises a company blog, a central space for discussion, and the ability to build profiles that allow employees to share information on career progress, learning and development and aspirations. They can also join groups of interest ... ActiveNetworker has been well received and SFR is averaging 80,000 visits per week from the 10,000 employees that are using it.

   Social networking: E-learning on the social, Sue Weekes, Personnel Today, 18 November 2009
5. Agilent Technologies
   
   "As early as two years ago, the global measurement solution provider introduced Wiki as a collaborative learning software to its workforce across the world. Its intention? Enhance group learning within its corporate environment. ...

   Christopher Goh, Agilent’s director of global learning and leadership development, believes leveraging on such social networks allows his company to “facilitate collaborative learning and knowledge sharing” amongst its employees, especially the younger generation. “This medium augurs well with Gen Y learners who are tech-savvy and used to collaborating with each other in a networked environment.

   Wiki is used as a support group learning platform in one of Agilent’s core leadership programmes after participants completed the initial traditional classroom training. A Wiki site would be set up to allow participants work in teams to resolve their common leadership challenges, which had been discussed in the classroom. According to Goh, the participants will then work together over the web for 10 weeks after the training.
   
   The Corporate Classroom, Marketing Interactive.com, 1 October 2009

6. BUPA Social Bookmarking
   
   "BUPA have been trialling the Cogenz social bookmarking software for 6 months with 50 users from Head Office, to create a shared library of information resources and harness the collective intelligence of the workforce."
   
   BUPA Social Bookmarking, SocialText website

7. Worldwide Fund for Nature: learn2perform
   
   "learn2perform was set up for the People Development Team at WWF international in Geneva to provide a social learning and collaboration platform for WWF staff around the world. Staff members can set up an account in order to use a range of social media tools to manage their own personal learning, as well as set up group spaces  to support team or project work.  This site runs alongside WWF's e-campus where staff can access self-paced online course
   
   "learn2perform has been set up to offer a range of social media tools useful for working and learning individually and  collaboratively: creating blogs, bookmarking internal and external resources, an rss feed reader, uploading and sharing files, creating and editing web/wiki pages, providing member's news on the Twitter-like wire as well as messaging and online chat"
   
   All things Elgg, 29 August 2009

8. Qualcomm
   
   How Qualcomm is using Yammer to help employees connect across divisions and geographic regions
   
   A case study of micro-blogging for learning at Qualcomm - presentation slides from DevLearn

9. Nationwide Insurance
   
   "An internal micro-blogging tool fashioned much like Twitter, Yammer is accessible only by your staff.  Employees at Nationwide Insurance find it so useful that 7,000 of its 36,000 employees have jumped on it in the last year without prompting from internal communicators.

   How? The director of social media at Nationwide, Shawn Morton, tried Yammer and initially thought it wouldn’t be useful because it was too similar to Twitter and Facebook. Then, several senior leaders, including the president and chief technology officer tried it, which set off a chain reaction within the company. “We went quickly from a dozen users to thousands of users over the course of the next few months,” Morton says. “It’s growing all by word of mouth.”
   
   At Nationwide, Yammer links rank-and-file with the C-suite, Ragan.com, 23 November 2009

10. Oce
    
    "The low barrier to entry helped expand the number of users. The intuitive and attractive interface also helped. Samuel said that there were only about 15 to 20 people using Twitter in the company when he introduced Yammer. Now there are over 250 Yammer users. This usage has also increased the number of Twitter users. Some people had been reluctant to use Twitter because of its public nature. After they saw the value from Yammer, they extended their micro-messaging to the Web with Twitter. Yammer gave them a secure and walled place to first try micro-messaging and see its value. Samuel said he has seen the same migration with blogging, as people have started a blog inside Océ and then added an external facing one.".
    
    Implementing enterprise micro-messaging at Oce, Bill Ives, the app gap, 12 August 2009
    
    Implementing Enterprise microblogging with Yammer, 11 November 2008
11. Other examples of companies using Yammer
    
    "Twitter-esque service helps businesses foster collaboration across the nation — even around the globe"
    
    Clamor about Yammer: In-house micro-blog can unite far-flung staffers, Lindsey Miller, ragan.com, May 2009
     
12. NASASphere
    
    "Applying a social networking approach to enabling collaboration amongst the NASA knowledge workforce and thus across centers, is one way to meet NASA’s need to share and preserve information in support of the Vision for Space Exploration. NASA has been and continues to be tremendously successful at meeting its mission goals. However, new ideas and new solutions are becoming increasingly more difficult to generate at an individual level and the requirements for input from a community of people found across NASA centers to solve problems is growing. ...  An enterprise-class online social network, when implemented in the NASA environment, would allow NASA knowledge workers to exchange, capture, and create a collective intelligence for NASA that is reusable agency-wide by all knowledge workers. By providing an online social network to its knowledge workers, NASA can open up information bottlenecks and speed up the time it takes to get information to the right people to make informed decisions."
    
    Findings from the NASASphere Pilot, SocialCast, August 2009
13. How Connectbeam saved $50,000 for a company
    
    "This company saved $50,000 because of its Connectbeam implementation. Here’s a bulleted summary of the story:

     

    • An employee created a wiki page explaining how to get a discount on software
    • Wiki page was shared on Connectbeam
    • Employees in other departments Googled the name of the software app
    • The wiki page was returned alongside the Google search results
    • Other employees clicked on the link to the wiki page, learning how to get the discount
    • Result = $50,000 savings to the company "

    How Connectbeam saved $50,000 for a company, Connectbeam blog, 24 November 2008

14. Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen
    1. Business drivers and components, Bill Ives, fast forward, 8 December 2009
       "Booz Allen developed and implemented Hello, a suite of web-based enterprise tools designed to strengthen collaboration, connectivity, and communication across geographical and cultural barriers. It was created from vision to launch in under 6 months leveraging a blend of Open Source, COTS, and custom-developed products"
    2. Change management efforts and results, Bill Ives, fast forward, 11 December 2009
    3. Operational impact, Bill Ives, fast forward, 15 December 2009
    4. Financial impact, Bill Ives, fast forward, 18 December 2009
    5. Lessons learned, Bill Ives, fast forward, 22 December 2009
    6. Plans for enhancements, Bill Ives, fast forward, 4 January 2010
        
15. US Healthcare company
    This was submitted to me by an L&D professional in this company.

    "Business/learning problem: The business problem is and has been a decrease in financing use by our clients for products and services and a need for innovative solutions. In a current credit crunch potential customers are reluctant to finance even their needs. Working in isolation, nationwide staff struggled to develop sincere, credible, and innovative approaches in the presentation of financing to a credit-hesitant public.
    
    Specific tools used: The company uses SharePoint. I promoted an initiative to use the Wiki feature to engage in collaborative solution generation. I created a hypothetical client and grouped office staff (4-6) in different locations to engage the fictitious client in a fictitious conversation. Authentic client related materials are presented in the environment for the staff to peruse. SME’s would assist me in writing conversational dialog in the voice of the client. Office staff were to collaborate in the Wiki and generate a series of responses and come to consensus. These conversations would extend over a period of 2-3 weeks so as to not leave a significant footprint on production and to allow for review/reflection and agreement by the staff participants. The outcome is the creation of scripting examples to help new hires and veterans alike gain new approaches to aligning financial products to clients needs and wants.
    
    How are tools being used/ interim success? Tool use was small in select group of offices. The Wiki itself was mastered quickly. Dialog and agreement will need continual encouragement. Although the footprint is small, the offices tend to be extremely busy and therefore meeting desired completion times is difficult."

16. Northrop Grumman's Onboarding success story
    February 2009
    
    www.bersin.com/blog/post/Getting-Personal-Northrop-Grummane28099s-Onboarding-Success-Story.aspx
17. Lockheed Martin's implementation of a social networking platform
    13 June 20008
    
    itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/whatis/what-is-unity-lockheed-martins-implementation-of-a-social-computing-platform-wows-enterprise-20-conferees/
18. Virtual communities at Caterpillar foster knowledge sharing
    June 2004
    
    findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4467/is_200406/ai_n21350864/
19. How IBM uses social media to spur employee innovation
    January 2010
    
    http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/
     
20. Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Vistaprint
    • Part 1: Business Drivers
    • Part 2: Change Management
    • Part 3: Operational impact
    • Part 4: The future and lessons learned
21. Some more US examples
    
    David Wilkins has captured some (mainly) US case studies on his Social Enterprise blog.