I am as guilty as anyone of listening to the rumour mill. Information just seems so much more exciting when it’s a little bit illicit.  Whether it’s while you are making a cup of coffee (or tea for us Brits), grabbing lunch, or passing each other in the corridor, these informal exchanges with colleagues are the most powerful flow of information in your company. So, who are the most influential nodes in your employee network? How can we leverage the conversations already going on for our strategic advantage?

CEB has been partnering with Rob Cross, an expert in all things to do with social networks, to better understand the answers to some of these questions. Rob has developed a scientific approach of mapping influence across organizations and highlighting those individuals who hold disproportionate power – those who excite and build energy, and those who kill it – within employee networks. We are excited to host a webinar with Rob on the 20^th July to share some of the themes from his work.  CEC members can register for the webinar today.

Formal mapping of networks can teach you a lot and help you know where to focus your communication and HR muscle but there are a few tactics that we can do on our own to “grease the wheels” of the grapevine and get information moving:

• Pre-release information to a subset of employees – There is no surer way to get messages to spread than gathering some of your most well-known talkers and sharing exclusive information before its general release.  The feeling of privileged access is a great motivator for sharing and you can hope to create an increased level of interest to the communication to follow.
• Address tough questions with potential detractors –  Bausch and Lomb provides a great example here. They had their head of HR talk with a selected group of folks with high social influence to explain why (in advance of releasing it more broadly) they had made certain changes to their benefits scheme.  Opening up to tough questions and having a chance to give context to the decisions meant that when the announcements were made these individuals could convey the inside scoop to their peers.  They felt that this had helped hugely to warm the reception to some potentially disruptive news.
• Improve peer-to-peer communication between employees – Sabre Holdings and Best Buy are both examples of companies that have used internal social media very effectively to broaden the social networks within their organization.  By embracing the informal exchanges that happen naturally, and creating opportunity for more of them, information flow through the organization was greatly improved.

All of these tactics allow the downstream communication to happen naturally.  They do not go out and ask employees to talk about something; rather, they arm them with the interest, access, and tools to go out and spread the word on their own terms.

Has your company had any success in either mapping or tapping the employee grapevine? How have these worked out so far?