Using organizational social networks data to build strong teams

Business is like sports. The best team wins. But how do leaders build great teams? This is the challenge that every leader faces every day. There are a number of ways to build a great team and data analytics is one of the methods.

How
many organisations know which employee or employees?

• Can
  efficiently build cross-boundary teams;
• Can
  allow new employees to know and get used to the organization fast;
• Are
  at risk of burnout;
• Can
  stimulate innovation within the organization;
• Are
  likely to stay or leave the organisation and will that attrition leave the
  organization at risk of losing knowledge, skills, and connections;
• Can
  fit into the team(s) and how does informal communication move around the
  organisation.

How
many organisations understand which informal team that may not necessarily be
represented on the organisational structure exist within their organisation? In
this article, we will discuss some of the applications of organisational social
network analysis (ONA) to build sustainable organisations and teams.

Chief
Talent Officer of GM AI Adamsen once described ONA as a new lens to evaluate how
people show up in an organisation. Similarly one of the world’s foremost expert
on the subject, Professor Rob Cross explained that “ONA can provide an x-ray
into the inner workings of an organisation – a powerful means of making
invisible patterns of information flow and collaboration in strategically
important groups invisible”

Employee
value that enables organisational success is a result of a combination of human
capital which comprises of the traits & skill sets that enable employees to
perform and social capital which is the relationships & networks employees
build to enable them to get work done. Employees with rich Social Capital can contribute
more meaningfully to business value-creation. Although Human Capital is
visible, easily quantifiable and usually quite static, Social Capital is
dynamic but intangible and difficult to quantify.   

Analysing
networks allows the organisation to understand who is influential both positively
and negatively. When an organisation wants to drive change within the organisation
they have to use people who are influential to make sure everyone accepts that change.
After analysing networks of communication either via emails, calls or face to
face, the organisation will understand who is at the center of every
communication and is highly likely to influence others in both negative and
positive ways. General Motors use ONA to disrupt itself from the inside. An
article by MIT Sloan Management Review outlines how the different role brokers,
connectors and energisers play in a network in discovering, developing and
diffusing innovation within an organisation and essentially how to disrupt from
the inside. Microsoft also combined data from Workplace analytics (email and
calendar Metadata, not content) with engagement and business data to better
understand manager effectiveness.

Understanding
who is turning to who for information within the organisation help to enhance
learning and development for both new hires and people within the organisation.
Instead of using old methods of learning, an organisation can identify hidden
experts in different areas and allow them to train and mentor all the other
team members that need capacitation. This is more effective not only because
the experts will be able to explain and mentor effectively, but because the
other employees or team members will be able to listen and absorb the knowledge
since they trust and are used to getting all information from them. Motivating
these employees at the center who may be high performers will likely push
engagement for the whole team upward. A European Retail Bank applied ONA and
discovered that, despite employees in each branch having the same training and
similar demographics, the performance was very different. They used digital
badges to assess whether there was a correlation between network strength and
branch performance. The results indicated that the highest performing branches
had the most cohesive, interconnected social networks.

In
terms of preparing people for succession, analysing networks will enable an
organization to identify which of the employees’ potential new leaders are
basing on influence and knowledge. These people will then be coached, trained
and rewarded to allow them to pull more team members with them hence building a
strong team.

Organisations
are able to use past employee networks or communication data to predict who is
likely to leave the organisation in the future. Who will leave the organisation
has an impact on the organisation in terms of information flow, driving change,
knowledge transfer and organisational revenue. Ways of retaining these
employees if they are good performers may then be implemented.

Using
ONA to uncover a number of issues that are hidden within the organisation. These
data-driven insights will help organisations build strong teams that can allow them
to survive this era of disruption. There are many ways to build a strong
organization but definitely using data-driven insights from your employees and
building a strong team gives a competitive advantage to the organisation.

Benjamin Sombi is a Data
Scientist, Entrepreneur, & Business Analytics Manager at Industrial
Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting
firm.