employee blogging: personal or work-related?
DESCRIPTION
Presented at ECSCW'07 workshop "What is missing in Social Software? Current collaborative practices in social software", Limerick, Ireland, September 24, 2007TRANSCRIPT
Employee blogging: personal or work-related?
Lilia Efimova Telematica Instituut
iceberg.telin.nlblog.mathemagenic.com
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
As long as your company views your blogging as "you chatting with your neighbors on your personal time", you pose little risk. But the more that co-workers, CEOs, and so on are on-record as being cool with blogs, the more that blogs take on the timbre of being "official". The more "official" that blogs are, the more perceived risk the company takes on by allowing you to blog. And neither you nor your CEO is really keen to make things more complicated than they need to be. And this is why, IMO, you see most companies and employees today still dancing around the issue of employee blogs and seemingly settling on a "don't ask, don't tell, and please for the love of God don't do anything stupid" policy.
Joshua Allen, 26 May 2003
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
What is missing?
Employee weblogs
Missing boundary?
Personal Business
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Approach
• Based on study of employee blogging at Microsoft– 10 weeks, summer 2005– 38 interviews++– Lilia Efimova & Jonathan Grudin (2007).
Crossing Boundaries: A Case Study of Employee Blogging. Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07)
– More• Ad-hoc feedback round via my weblog
– Dimensions of employee blogging – My weblog – Other bloggers
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Weblog shape
Personal Business
Location Personal server
Public hosting platforms
Company-affiliated servers (e.g. funded, but not a part of a corporate online presence)
Corporate servers (part of corporate official presence online)
Blog uses Not related to work Mix of personal and work-related uses Only business-related (good for my company) or work-related (good for performing well at work)
Content focus
Primarily non-work matters
Mix of work and non-work content Primarily work-related
Content style Personal, subjective, confessional
Some degree of filtering or editing to fit professional norms and business requirements
[Business, objective, defined by corporate communication policy]
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Decision-making
Personal Business
Initiative Decided myself Decided myself, but checked at work
Decided myself given positive signals (that blogging is allowed and encouraged) at work
Was convinced by others at work
Was prescribed at work
Micro-level decision making
Who decides when and how to blog? What goes into a specific post?
Myself Myself, but I listen to others at work
Myself, but I have to get permissions from others at work
Have to be negotiated with others at work
Some moments are defined by work workflows (e.g. editorial processes of product weblogs)
Defined by work needs
Defined by others at work
[Defined by business logic and exiting workflows in my company]
Technology control
Who controls blogging tools?
Control myself
Company doesn't influence it
Technology is provided by the company, but I have control over some parts of it (e.g. template customisation, adding plug-ins, etc.)
[Full control by the company]
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Integration with work
Personal Business
Affiliation with company
No
Explicitly hiding
Implicit – not immediately visible, but not hidden
Disclaimer
Yes, explicit
Impact (attribution)
Impact myself as a person
Impact myself as an employee (e.g. by helping to do work better)
Impact both, myself and my company (e.g. an incident gets into media)
Impact my company, but not me
Part of job description
No Not explicitly, but as an "extra" during evaluation
Blogging as one of possible ways to get work done
I can blog, but I don't have to
Yes, my job responsibilities explicitly include blogging
Time blogging
No, never To some degree: not officially, as a way to do the job
Yes, only blogging at work time
Content ownership
My copyright Both parties accept some rights of another side
Nobody knows for sure since it's too complicated
[Explicitly copyrighted by the company]
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Ad-hoc feedback
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Ad-hoc feedback: 15 blogs
Initiative to start
Content decision making
Process decision making
Technology control
Location
Blog uses
Content focusContent style
Affiliation w ith company
Attribution to company
Part of job description
Time blogging
Content ow nership
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Ad-hoc feedback: one blogger, two blogs
Initiative to start
Content decision making
Process decision making
Technology control
Location
Blog uses
Content focusContent style
Aff iliation w ith company
Attribution to company
Part of job description
Time blogging
Content ow nership
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Discussion
• Refining– Dimensions– Systematic analysis of blog profiles
• Business application– Extremes are not that interesting; the value is in the
middle– Where does it make sense to draw the boundary?– How that would translate into actions?
24 September 2007, What is missing in social software? ECSCW’07, Limerick, Ireland
Follow-up?
• Permalink http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/09/24.html#a1944
• More on my research– In progress: blog.mathemagenic.com– Published: iceberg.telin.nl– Contact: [email protected]