Article: The Shift to Social: Abhijit Bhaduri

Learning & Development

The Shift to Social: Abhijit Bhaduri

Abhijit Bhaduri, Chief Learning Officer, Wipro
The Shift to Social: Abhijit Bhaduri

Social media is a shift from everything e (e-learning, e-books etc.) to everything social. The nature of work has become social and the most effective form of learning is social. The social media simply creates a platform to facilitate this behavior.

Social media enables one to have conversations with people and about people. Organizational processes are learning to take advantage of this platform. When social media is used in hiring, we are simply engaging in a two way conversation with the potential candidate. It goes beyond one way broadcast to a level playing field, where both parties have an opportunity to know about each other and find a fit. This is more meaningful than an e-mail which is a dialogue with one person at a time. Today, organizations can have multiple conversations about hiring, succession planning, and employee engagement with employees as well as potential employees. They can connect with consumers and other stakeholders with an ease that did not exist before.

There are several employees who maintain an active presence on Twitter, YouTube, etc. Wipro, as an organization, has various internal social media platforms:

• myWiproWorld – this is the in-house social network at Wipro, where employees can gather and collaborate
• Xperience Wipro and Earthian are two communities on Facebook.
• Earthian is Wipro’s sustainability program for schools and colleges. Xperience Wipro is a community for employees and others to share experiences. It leverages various initiatives like:

a) Spirit of Wipro Run - the largest employee engagement activity run globally at Wipro involves a huge interaction in terms of online applications, which test fitness levels to lung power and encourages people to share updates before and on the day of the run.

b) Online Diversity Festival - on International Women’s Day last year, Wipro ran a global event entirely online on Facebook, where an agenda and activities were planned for the entire day. We had on-ground linkages like a live graffiti wall projected from Facebook, where people could write in their comments from Wipro locations live!

c) Moments that Click - a global initiative where employees shared photographs, which to them were “moments at Wipro”. The winning photos have been used for the office hoardings and art work, thereby co-creating content with our employees.

• Hiring - the referral program at Wipro is now strongly promoted through social media. We also leverage LinkedIn and other forums for targeted hiring and other social media platforms for campus hiring, on boarding, and to create peer networks.

The client engagement managers have a community called CEMunity – which is an e-group where employees regularly post information about the clients they are working with. When someone needs any information on any particular topic, they can ask questions on this platform and get answers. It is a knowledge sharing platform.

We leverage the knowledge sharing platform quite heavily for the L&D requirements. The internal site enables employees to post videos on various topics. Social media is enabling people to engage with employees not only as employees but also as individuals.

The recent Employee Perception Survey (EPS) shows that the engagement scores have gone up on several parameters across the organization. But it is hard to say that they have gone up just because of increased usage of social media – though it certainly helps to leverage social media in an organization.
 

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Topics: Learning & Development, Strategic HR, #Social Media

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