When to Use Social Networking for Expertise Location

In many organizations, there is a significant convergence of social networking and expertise location. Expertise locator systems (ELS) are designed to:

• connect people to people,
• link people to information about people,
• identify people with expertise and link them to those with questions or problems,
• identify potential staff for projects requiring specific expertise,
• assist in career development, and
  
• provide support for teams and communities of practice.
  

Some organizations use the same internal social networking site, intranet, or portal for internal expertise location as they do for communication and general networking. Many consider expertise location to be an extension of knowledge management, in that the goal is to capture and reuse the skills and experience of internal staff members in order to increase competitive advantage.

Implementation Guidelines

According to Anil Kumar, general manager of service and support for AskMe, a knowledge management software vendor, expertise location systems require cross-functional team representation for effective implementation. Key personnel who can contribute to a successful expertise location rollout include business development staff, professional services staff, and IT staff.

To ensure that the system aligns with business needs, Kumar recommends that organizations spend a significant amount of time analyzing goals and objectives during the planning process. Kumar is also a proponent of phased deployment, in which the expertise location system is introduced to one department at a time.

Benefits

The principle reasons why organizations are attracted to social networking tools are because they are user-driven, easy to use, and can be implemented and maintained at a minimal cost.

From an employee perspective, social networking offers the ability to identify and consult with experts in order to solve problems and find answers to questions. Social networking tools are usually the fastest, easiest way to locate individuals with specific skills or expertise. Users may search generally or by certain topics to find experts; search criteria are often flexible and customized. Although many professionals maintain networks of external contacts, most organizations would like to encourage employees to seek help and expertise internally before reaching out to people outside the enterprise. Often, employees search their external networks only to learn later that there were internal experts in close proximity.

Consider this example of social networking in action: An employee uses his organization's intranet to establish a social network by adding other employees he knows and has worked with on various projects. While working on a new project, this employee can send a question to his network via the social networking site. If a member of the network knows the answer, that individual can respond directly; if not, the individual may forward the query to another network. Whenever the answer is sent, it will be saved in the system for future retrieval.

Issues and Risks

Although social networking tools provide numerous benefits, there are some issues that impact effectiveness. For example, time is always a barrier to knowledge sharing and contribution, even with social networking. How do organizations convince employees to take the time to create and update profiles? What prevents employees from simply directing questions to colleagues they already know, rather than searching through profiles for someone with the requisite knowledge? Does the time investment outweigh the benefits of using internal expertise location systems? These questions must be addressed, and the value of social networking should be clearly articulated across the enterprise.

Another issue is consistency. Are all employees using the internal expertise location system, or are they turning to external sites such as LinkedIn for information? Some organizations indicate that employees prefer external sites to internal portals and intranets. Often, this is because external sites offer more freedom in terms of the type of information that can be posted, which makes them more flexible and attractive tools. For example, many organizations restrict employees from posting photographs, family information, and other personal data internally. External sites have no such restrictions and enable users to customize profiles using whatever methods they choose.