7 Arguments to Convince Your Leadership to Deploy an Enterprise Social Network

You're convinced of the value and relevance of deploying an enterprise social network (ESN) within your organization. Fantastic! Yet the need to rally the other stakeholders is already on the horizon. You'll need a “go/no go” decision with a budget, a project owner, a project team, a timeline… IT, Procurement, Management, Leadership: you'll have to find the words (and above all the arguments) to get them ALL on board with your enterprise social network project.

That's why we've put together 7 key arguments that should help you convince them.

Argument #1: The ESN will strengthen the sense of belonging to the company

The sense of belonging is tribal in essence! It reflects the feeling of belonging to a group (often with a certain pride). Notably thanks to the knowledge one has of that group: its identity, its members, its culture, its values, its codes, etc. It's therefore one of the arguments to put forward when convincing your stakeholders of the importance of the enterprise social network.

Quite clearly, the internal social network will help build and encourage this sense of belonging, in several ways:

• it connects and brings together all employees ;
• its white-label branding carries the company's colors (logo, brand guidelines) ;
• it gives every employee a voice ;
• it represents each employee in a very personalized way, with a name, a photo, and a profile page ;
• the posts and comments from one person and another, flowing one after the other on the newsfeed, make each employee feel “in tune” with their colleagues ;
• … and this, regardless of the team they belong to, or the location they work at. The enterprise social network breaks down organizational silos and geographic ones, and therefore strengthens the impression of being part of one and the same community.

The sense of belonging therefore helps give employees the motivation and the desire to go above and beyond for the group. The proof: the “Global Talent Trends 2023” study! In it, Mercer ranks the sense of belonging among the main motivation levers for employees.

In other words: the sense of belonging is what drives employees to “play as a team.” They'll be motivated to go the extra mile, rather than turning inward, for themselves, at the company's expense.

Argument #2: The ESN will improve and modernize internal communication

According to a study by the Gatehouse agency, 54% of Internal Communication professionals think that “the lack of technology is the main barrier to internal communication.”

Indeed, several companies still don't use an enterprise social network for their internal communication. The 3 most-used tools are still: the monthly newsletter, the intranet and the bulletin board. These are tools that are nearly 20 years old… No longer really suited to the habits or expectations of employees and management.

So, having an internal social network will take you a step further in internal communication.

In particular, it will let you:

• foster multi-directional communication (top-down, bottom-up or cross-functional) ;
• segment the information shared to communicate in a more relevant and personalized way ;
• spark new interactions (through posts, comments, animated gifs and emojis) and turn each employee into a player – alternately sender and/or receiver – in internal communication ;
• surface contributions, ideas, and suggestions from the front lines ;
• share all types of media (images, links, video, etc.) ;
• know who has seen each shared message, and follow up accordingly.

The technology embedded in the enterprise social network goes well beyond simply broadcasting internal communication messages. It makes it possible to engage employees, to better measure its effects, and thus to steer it more effectively.

Read also: The 6 internal communication trends to watch in 2023

Argument #3: The ESN will make employees more autonomous and more involved

By streamlining the flow of information within the organization, the enterprise social network will resonate more widely. It will gradually develop, in employees, a broader vision and a better understanding of company news.

For example, it will help them better grasp the company's strategic challenges. As a result, it will be easier for them to propose initiatives and make decisions!

With tasks and efforts that take on more meaning, employees will encourage themselves to put in more generous efforts for the company. This increased involvement is therefore one of the key arguments to include in your pitch presenting the enterprise social network.

Beyond titles and functions, the enterprise social network unleashes strengths and brings out new influencers within the company. The new influencer is someone who brings added value to content creation or expertise sharing. This new influencer won't necessarily be a manager. They can be someone who seeks to share relevant elements, initiatives, and to be a source of ideas !

By allowing everyone (even those at the bottom of the hierarchy) to take part in the “debate,” the ESN pulls all employees upward, in a logic of contributing for the benefit of the company.

Argument #4: The ESN will boost collaboration and productivity

In its Global Human Capital Trends 2023 report, the Deloitte firm shows that organizations need to rethink work and collaboration, in order to involve employees more in decision-making. A trend that requires putting the right technologies in place.

Of course, without naming them, we're talking here about enterprise social networks. They indeed bring together the features employees most expect today: welcome portal, instant messaging, newsfeed, likes and comments, video conferencing meetings, knowledge base, etc.

All these features can be found on the Talkspirit platform! To try it out, just click the button below.

Discover Talkspirit

Conversely, it's the traditional approaches (face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and even sending text messages) that have fallen out of favor. Just like the old internal communication tools, these practices are seen as outdated and too far removed from the expectations of all the company's stakeholders.

On the other hand, the communication channels in favor are those that make it possible to work with more flexibility and agility, remotely. And that's no coincidence.

Since the Covid-19 crisis, the practice of remote work has risen sharply in France. The big winners are employees … but also the company, for many reasons:

• greater employee efficiency in completing tasks
• more flexibility in managing the work/life balance
• savings on commuting time
• fewer trips and therefore a smaller carbon footprint
• reduced physical space needed in the offices

So of course, this shift in ways of working certainly also implies evolving management styles within companies…

Read also: Remote work: 7 tips to facilitate collaborative work remotely

Argument #5: The ESN will make it possible to share knowledge better

Knowledge sharing, in a logic of open collaboration, is also a key element in redefining the work framework.

Based on a “pull” communication model (and not “push” like email), the enterprise social network leads people to share information and make it available to network members. It appears in the newsfeed of employees already involved in this topic. And everyone can go and consult it if they wish. The complete opposite of over-communication.

So over time, the enterprise social network gradually builds a very rich knowledge base that everyone can consult at any time, as needed, via a search engine.

Following on from the sharing of information content, the idea of sharing knowledge and “skills” within the company quickly followed; the transmission (of knowledge, procedures, experiences) becoming a key challenge.

With an ESN, every employee can share a lesson learned or a point of view that may be useful to colleagues, in the form of a text / document / video post, a comment posted on an existing post, or during a webinar (which some ESNs such as Talkspirit make possible).

Argument #6: The ESN will stimulate collective intelligence

Following on from the previous arguments, you need to understand that an enterprise social network helps develop a culture of innovation within the company.

Indeed, these internal networks, by allowing employees to create communities and share their know-how / their monitoring / their discoveries across the network, accelerate the shift from vertical communication to a horizontal model based on autonomy and trust.

In this model, the enterprise social network acts as a catalyst for collective intelligence. It facilitates the sharing of information and knowledge, encourages co-creation, and enables genuine collective momentum. In such a setup, every employee can become an intrapreneur in the making and the organization a truly collaborative structure.

That's what Antoine Hébert (of the Lyon-based agency Novius) declared in 2014 in La Tribune: “25% of innovations come from R&D and the rest are born from interaction between employees.”

At the heart of this shift in habits: the social function of the enterprise social network. Because it's by being able to post, comment, exchange ideas, and discuss that “collective intelligence” finally emerges. That's also what the latest Mercer Global Talent Trends study from 2023 shows. 39% of the employees surveyed believe that the future of work rests above all on teams, and their ability to communicate and collaborate effectively thanks to new technologies.

The prerequisites:

• having started to soften (or even erase) the organization's vertical principle in favor of a way of operating that favors cross-functionality, bottom-up flow, the surfacing of ideas, breaking down barriers, de-siloing…
• having started to bring out a model of “cross-functional management,” where the manager no longer just gives orders to their teams. Their role is now to support, empower, and encourage them.

To sum up: a participative management style is obviously more conducive to collective intelligence !

Argument #7: The ESN will optimize the employee experience and modernize the company

In its Talent Trends 2023 study, the consulting firm Mercer of course cites optimizing the employee experience as the number one priority for HR leaders.

Indeed, more than ever, employees (especially the best ones) want:

• their achievements to gain more visibility
• to work in a more pleasant work environment
• to have modern digital tools at their disposal (leave management, collaborative platform, communication tools, etc.) that are as pleasant and effective as the ones they use in their personal lives
• to take part more in decision-making
• to feel aligned with the direction set by the company, and its values

The employee experience therefore has a huge impact on: employee motivation, team cohesion, their engagement, their sense of belonging, and their desire to stay with your company.

It's therefore up to the company to move with the times, to seek to modernize its tools (“tell me what your tools are and I'll know how you work”) and transform its ways of working to make them more agile and more 'employee-centric'.

Many of them have understood this well, since in 2023, 85% of the companies surveyed are in the process of co-creating an employee experience strategy with their employees. An initiative that helps increase engagement and talent retention, and that can rely on a tool such as the enterprise social network.

Conclusion

Modernization is a key notion that runs through the arguments above. It necessarily relies on tools – in particular the enterprise social network – that will steer the company in this direction of history.

Sense of belonging, internal communication, employee engagement, team productivity, skills sharing, collective intelligence, employee experience… All arguments without any “bullshit,” that will help you convince your Leadership of the value of the enterprise social network. Prerequisites for any company that wants to survive the shifts of the modern world and stay competitive. Because one thing is certain: within a generation, companies that haven't transformed in this way will have disappeared.