Speaking to Nokia’s HR-OD team over the past few months, I have learned a great amount on their strategy and approach to social networking, generational diversity, and some of their new HR-OD projects for 2010.

One of the first things to point out is that cultural change at Nokia is ongoing, what is considered a viral approach to culture change moving from one of a scale and efficiency product company to one of mobile solution provider for consumer knowledge-driven economy. On social networking I discover it’s not simply about getting information out, more about allowing people to share thoughts and opinion, debate, interact both publicly and anonymously. This internal blogosphere has allowed Nokia’s Global HR & OD to create a number of very successful internal social media where a balanced dialogue for and against takes place, allowing HR firsthand knowledge and access to how employees feel, what they want, what needs improving, what they dislike, etc. Moreover, it has allowed HR to participate and engage in a fresh dialogue with those employees, identify where passions lie and maximise employee potential. At first (I’m reliably informed) it took Nokia’s HR team years to become comfortable with open dialogue, where there is no organisational authority over these internal social networks.

Employees at Nokia are encouraged to blog, and the company aggregates the blogs into a ‘hub’ that serves as a kind of companywide repository and barometer of the organization. Nokia’s “Ask HR” – is a successful blog dedicated to HR topics.  Employees can ask questions and get feedback from corporate HR. Company management have the ability to monitor which blogs are popular and which ones generate the most comments allowing the network to indicate overall trends about the mindset of employees. They have never had to delete any postings.  They manage the policing of content.  Comments and ratings have been effective mechanisms where the community determines and enforces the company norms.  They also noted the importance of allowing employees the freedom to use profile pictures of their choosing, rather than require everyone to use the more formal, ‘official’ company ID photo.

Their senior head of OD yesterday likened it to a history of workplace reactions to new technology where the angry mob/corporate leadership over time have been terrified, even petrified by the possibility of additional costs or drop in productivity levels or both. Reference to:

The introduction of the Telephone to the workplace!

Introduction of E-mail to the workplace!

The use of Social Networks in the workplace!

My previous post on better ways of rising to the challenge, rather than the 48% we discovered in our research mid 2009 where companies have simply banned or boarded up their windows to the possible use of social networks at work, against the fear that there might be a drop in productivity levels (interesting to note that many of the same people are using networks such as LinkedIn …. during office hours). My beliefs are somewhat reinforced in that the most probable culprit are enterprise wide management-leadership issues of command and control, rather than a performance/productivity management issue. When you share something memorable, you bring the relationship to a different level. Social networking is not about technology, it is about connections and trust. Most learning is informal at 80%, so it makes sense to use social technologies to harness.

Nokia HR are one of the companies leading the way in using internal and external social networks to their advantage, even identifying better uses for twitter – not like I am here … I am sick ;o( …. at the airport … going to Vienna …  bought a new iphone …  etc but more focused on what I am working on now and communicating questions, ideas, solutions, challenges, etc. Perhaps Twitter should (if not already) be talking to companies like Nokia – I recently saw an interview with Twitter’s CEO and founder Biz Stone mentioned Twitter is only now starting to turn a revenue from companies like Microsoft on “index tweets”.

The average age at Nokia is 35. The younger generations are likened to “fish in water” when it comes to use of technology. If like me you are being categorised as Gen X you might be likened to a “scuba diver”.

Nokia have spent time and resources better understanding and coming to terms with generational diversity … as you’d expect given the resources of the largest mobile company in the world, however many of these strategies and projects can be applied to any size of organisation offering a neutral platform for better understanding your workforce and the generational crossroads at a local or global level. They have a concept of reverse mentoring, where new – younger generations mentor more senior people on technology based issues helping to share collective intelligence, experience and values with good success and I am reliable informed “all bar one”.

Perhaps each of these generations are motivated by somewhat different values. Perhaps each generation has a familiarity with various technologies, education systems, cultures, etc, and there is no reason to put them into categories and then figure out a way to bridge the very categories you just separated them into. Thinking global with special reference to cultural mindsets – take Gen Y in US v China v Europe v India – how for example traditional Gen Y workforce in India might not actually be worlds apart from baby boomers in the US.

Going forward what’s next?

The Nokia Social Phonebook will be launched in 2010 – essentially designed to keep employees connected, engaged and as a search tool for identifying work experience – who knows who, who knows what and more importantly – who know who and what NOW. This social network will not offer the same level of sophistication as facebook etc but then we are talking about work and efficiency so it might not be necessary to give your colleague 5 gold stars and 3 farmville gift requests!

On the future of work its more exciting than the current that’s for sure, I received this cut on Monday from one of my connections “The classic industrial model of command and control underlying traditional management practice is not sustainable in the 21st century. A new organizational model is needed. Advancements in optimization knowledge and information technology—together with a revolution in social capital—provide executives an unprecedented opportunity to put in place a new superstructure and system of support. To achieve maximum fitness this system and structure must facilitate the merger of process and culture.”

Employees want to connect, share and socialize; if companies give them the opportunity to do all of these they will most likely reap the rewards and benefits.