Social Media as a form of Knowledge Management
Last week I went to a HR in SMEs conference and enjoyed a great day listening to a number of inspiring speakers talk about their experiences of managing the changes that growth brings to a business.
On the day though, I saw conferences as a form of CPD in a whole different light. Sat at the back of the room was Perry Timms of Twitter – #PunkHR – fame. Perry was managing social media at the conference and from the outset we were told, “Don’t turn off your mobile phones; join in our tweeting throughout the day.”
What caught my imagination was that throughout the conference, people who were not even in the room, at the conference were Tweeting in to ask questions of the speakers, bringing a whole new dimension to CPD.
I turned to thinking about the value of social media within the workplace, particularly as a knowledge management tool. But perhaps social media takes knowledge to another level.
Knowledge management seems to me to be process driven; a way of getting knowledge to permeate the business so that best practice is shared. It can, although not always, be hierarchical.
Social media is different in that it takes on a more informal and less structured approach; there is no reason why it cannot be used to pass knowledge across the organisation, by blogging for example, but it adds value in a different way.
Whilst knowledge management provides a framework for knowledge to be captured and shared where it can best be used, social media adds value by enabling people to use knowledge in a more innovative way; they can still share best practice but at the same time they capture their experiences and opinions so that those on the receiving end of the knowledge can make their own judgements.
Social media can add value in a different way to knowledge management as a means of employee engagement; given the technology to allow people to engage in in this way, they will do so because they identify with it, not because it forms part of a given structure in the way that knowledge management traditionally works in organisations.
Value is also provided from social media in that it encourages innovation, discussion and debate. Communication groups emerge from social media through joint interest in a theme; those who sign up to a group share its purpose and make their own decisions about participation, rather than it being something that is done to them.
Both knowledge management and social media have their place within an organisation but each need their own strategy and need to be valued in their own right as a means of communication, innovation and engagement.
How has your organisation embraced social media?
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