Dr. Laurence Lock Lee is Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at SWOOP Analytics, an enterprise social analytics company that provides deep insights for organisations growing and maintaining an enterprise online community or digital workplace.

A trailblazer in social network analysis and researcher of corporate social capital, Dr. Lock Lee is widely published and deeply passionate about using insights to uncover and optimise internal collaboration and knowledge building,

We spoke to Dr. Lock Lee about the shift he's seen since the onset of the pandemic around internal online communities, the importance of community management to their success, and how that itself can become a powerful exercise in unlocking value.

Some organisations already run enterprise online communities and even more started the journey in the wake of the pandemic. You’ve helped many folks down that road. What do you see as the primary benefits of investing in an internal online community - especially right now?

We found that in the early days of the pandemic the senior enterprise leaders were desperate to engage in enterprise wide two-way communications with their staff, as they were forced to work from home.

For several organisations, we heard of CEOs using broadcast technologies to keep all staff up to date, at times on a daily basis.

But they also wanted to hear back from staff. How were they feeling? Were they safe? Could they still work effectively? What would they need from the organisation to help them work more effectively? The space for engaging in two-way interactions became their enterprise social platforms and burgeoning online communities.

A strong network of communities provides organisations with many alternative means for creating value.

Online community professionals measure their community’s strategic impact, activity and health over time. We know measures in online community can be highly contextual, but there are common threads. What are some key metrics your teams regularly trust to indicate an organisation is heading on the right track with their workplace community?

We have an Enterprise Social Network Maturity framework which moves from the initial phase of Social Media, where content is the focus, then through to Social Networking, where how staff connect with each other becomes the focus. The final stage is what we call “Job Fulfilment”, where we say the “rubber hits the road” in terms of tangible benefits e.g. complex problems solved, new innovations achieved. Our SWOOP measures are designed to track the journey through the stages.

We have benchmarked hundreds of organisations against this framework now. While the industry context might dictate say, how hard they may go at the social media stage, we see that over the long term, key measures like the Two-Way interactions, Mentions (tagging others into conversations), Diversity of experience (multiple community participation) and Curiosity (posts and replies framed as questions) are key performance indicators and context free.

You see internal communities struggle and thrive. What difference does it make when there’s proactive community management and stewardship in place? How do you see those differences play out?

Serious communities need community managers to thrive - no question.

Unlike traditional line management roles, we have seen the community leadership role sometimes shared or transitioned amongst core members. It is also not necessary for the community lead to be the most senior member. We have seen examples where young high potential staff have been recruited into community lead roles. Serious communities need community managers to thrive - no question.

Community is a distinct expertise, and these roles can provide these individuals with the opportunity to engage with a breadth of staff who they would not otherwise connect with. And if they perform well in building the community, what better demonstration of leadership capability. A strong network of communities provides organisations with many alternative means for creating value. Post-pandemic this is precisely what many organisations will be looking for.

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What trends can you share with us around internal online communities in Australia - and what we can expect in this space though 2021?

I sense that one of the biggest learnings from working through the pandemic is that hierarchical management of office based staff no longer needs to be the norm. It is also clear now that a majority of staff would prefer a hybrid working environment going forward.

Online communities have never relied on a hierarchy or an office to succeed. Together with online teams, I expect digital interactions will become the norm. Even for office based staff, teams will increasingly have remote members, leading to digital interactions becoming the norm.

A word of warning though. Digital proficiency with online workplace tools doesn’t happen overnight. Our benchmarking studies have shown that while collaboration platforms like Yammer, Teams, Workplace, Slack, Zoom have experienced massive growth through the pandemic, for the most part, it is the more familiar telephony functions of calls, chat, meetings that are being used the most. To fully leverage the richness of these collaborative platforms, there is plenty of room for support services to help build new workplace digital competencies. And what better place to learn than joining an online community!

We couldn't agree more, and we're excited to see online community management practice continue to thrive and support the new realities of a hybrid workplace future.