Andrea Di MaioLast Wednesday I spent a full day with an Australian jurisdiction discussing about Government 2.0. We started with a general session, which was very well attended, and then specific sessions for agency executives, HR professionals and communications officers. This gave me a unique opportunity to look at how different parts of government organizations look at the same issues, as well as to appreciate where priorities are set.
Like in other cases, people working in communications seem to be the most directly concerned. Like in other cases, their interest is a consequence of senior management’s request that something must be done to engage with people. They are definitely looking at the right issues while they develop a social media policy. However they expressed concerns about two aspects.
The first one was the balance between a whole-of-government communications strategy and an agency-by-agency approach. Clearly, while there are certain common principles that need to be applied across all agencies, it is arguable that social media allow to segment target audiences much better than with more traditional “broadcast” media, and this is probably best left to individual agencies to determine.
The other concern was indeed about the cultural shift required in communications to deal with narrowcasting and two-way communication. The job of a communication professional is to package messages in order to be effectively consumed by a target audience, but is less about listening to what people think, how they feel, and identify virtual or physical places where people are more inclined to have conversations about certain topics. Communication is more about talking than about listening.
The problem with social media is that those who should listen and understand where constituents are, are not the communication folks, but people in the business. Public safety or law enforcement officers, tax agents, teachers, social workers, and so forth. There are the ears of their agencies, they establish and manage daily contacts with constituents, know what are the relevant communities that citizens make reference to to share issues or look for help.
This implies that communication officers should not be in the driving seat of a social media strategy: they can follow what the rest of the business does and articulate the “official” agency voice on social media, if and when this is required.
As a consequence, their colleagues working on public sector management, or human source management, are those who need to step up and address the issue of how to allow employees to use social media in ways that are useful to contribute to the agency outcomes.
When I met the HR professionals though, they felt they were not supposed to lead the charge. I found that they are doing some quite interesting activity on transforming the workforce, and are certainly looking into social media as an important tool. But they also expect not to be in charge of their agency’s overall social media strategy.
It was interesting to observe, as we were touching upon the usual question of why should employee even care about social media, that most of the comments were about a vague necessity for engagement with the community. But what community are we talking about? Citizens are at the same time taxpayers, recipients of benefits, parents, workers, patients, voters. For each role they join different communities and exhibit different community behaviors. In some cases government employee can create value by joining those community, in other cases they are better off just knowing those communities exist but staying away from them, and in other cases there may be a good reason for them to create a community to respond to an emerging need.
It is quite clear that HR professionals and agency executives need to take more direct responsibility for social media policies and strategy, and make sure that whatever initiative is taken does obsessively link to the creation of value in the context of each specific agency mission. Communication officers can follow suit but definitely not lead.
Category: social networks in government web 2.0 in government Tags: government 2.0
14 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention Human Resources and not Communication are the Front Line of Government 2.0 -- Topsy.com June 18, 2010 at 8:14 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Poul J. Hebsgaard and Andrea DiMaio, Jeremy Cluchey. Jeremy Cluchey said: RT @hebsgaard: “@AndreaDiMaio: Human Resources and not Communication are the Front Line of Government 2.0 – http://bit.ly/d3FK52 #gov20 … [...]
2 Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links – June 18, 2010 | Gov 2.0 Radio June 19, 2010 at 1:11 am
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3 Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links – June 18, 2010 « Adriel Hampton: Wired to Share June 19, 2010 at 1:28 am
[...] Andrea DiMaio: Human Resources and not Communication are the Front Line of Government 2.0 [...]
4 Steve Radick June 28, 2010 at 8:40 am
Spoken like a true techie, Andrea – I’m typically a big fan of your contrarian (yet evidence-based) point of view on many Gov 2.0 issues, and think that your perspective is a valuable one. Here, however, I think you’re getting it all wrong. As a communications professional, I take issue with your statement that,
“The job of a communication professional is to package messages in order to be effectively consumed by a target audience, but is less about listening to what people think, how they feel, and identify virtual or physical places where people are more inclined to have conversations about certain topics. Communication is more about talking than about listening.”
That entire statement describes what a “bad” communications professional does, not what the communications function is supposed to do. What you’re describing is the old-school PR spin, silver-bullet theory of mass communications. Good communications professionals haven’t used this approach for years. The entire communications process is based on flexible two-way communications. Communication, especially, good communication, is at least as much about listening than talking.
Now, where I do agree with you is that IF your communications/public affairs/strategic communications function IS structured around spin, controlling the message, and pushing broadcast messages, then no, they probably shouldn’t be the ones leading the social media charge. But that’s not because they’re communications professionals, but because they’re not equipped to handle the flexibility and authenticity of the back-and-forth of social media. That doesn’t mean HR should do it or that IT should do it or that Legal should do it either – they may or may not be just as ill-equipped.
Ideally, and I truly believe this, communication should ideally be leading the charge on Gov 2.0 efforts. However, I also know that it shouldn’t be driven by the title or department, but by the person. Where he or she resides on the org chart is of less importance. I’m an advocate of integrated teams looking at this topic (http://steveradick.com/2010/03/23/who-owns-social-media-everyone-and-no-one/) and ideally communications would have a leading role. But, that’s not always the way it shakes it out – sometimes HR leads, sometimes IT leads, sometimes communications leads. The important thing is that it’s done in an integrated fashion.
But to paint the communications function as people more interested in talking than listening is to focus entirely on the poor performing communications professionals instead of the people who believe communications is just as much about listening as talking.
5 Andrea Di Maio June 28, 2010 at 9:07 am
@Steve – I do agree with you about what the role and function of a communication professional should be. But I must have been unlucky enough to meet too many of those who focus on packaging one-way communication and pretending the listen only through channels that they (i.e. government) control and trust.
I do understand why they behave the way they do, especially now that there is so much information available on social media that government is not in control of.
However, even if all communication professionals applied the approach you indicate (and – as I said – I agree with), reality is that the train has already left the station and every single employee needs to be able to communicate. Simply, the balance between listening and talking has tilted. It is no longer enough to ask people with an online poll what they think about something or to have communications professionals who browse and monitor countless social networks. It is only the people who are responsible for doing the job, who are in constant contact with their “client”, who can understand whether and how to engage.
Social networks are not a means to communicate and are not a means to make policy making more transparent and participative: most of the value comes from engaging at the point of service delivery, from involving people in solving operational problems, from leveraging the “wisdom of the crowd” to compensate the lack of resources due to shrinking budgets.
Until when we understand that everybody becomes a communications professional (as well as a case manager or a public safety officer or a tax agent), and therefore the challenge is an HR one, we will get gov 2.0 wrong.
I wonder whether it would be easier to achieve this in a place where communications professional use the old PR style and may give up quite easily, as opposed to a place where the “true” and modern professionals who believe – as you do – that they have cracked the nut of two-way communication, hold on to their role and resist the perspective that they, indeed, become a commodity.
6 Scott Horvath June 28, 2010 at 9:56 am
The trains may have already left the station, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have instructions on how to get to their destination. That’s my main point. While it may be tempting to tell your employees, “Go forth and socialize on Facebook, Twitter, wherever!”, they need to understand that there are some basic rules of the road that need to be followed and that the consequences for not following those rules are real. This is especially true within Government.
Policies, rules, regulations, etc are a way of life within Government whether we like them or not. And, often, what people would like to do with social media can conflict with what existing policies allow us to do. So until Government and social media ideologies are able to marry in social matrimony, we need to teach Government employees about those policies, rules, regulations…what have you…before they can successfully learn to engage in social media as a Government representative.
Whether it’s a communications professional, an HR person, an IT person, the Director of your organization, or John Doe working in the mail room…they are all seen as official representatives of the Government. If they don’t have some understanding of those rules then that grand goal of “everybody becomes a communications professional” will end up like a train trying to reach the other side of a ravine with the bridge out…chances are it’ll crash and burn.
Overly dramatic? Maybe. Way out in left field? Not even close.
7 Steve Radick June 28, 2010 at 10:24 am
@Andrea – oh believe me, we’ve all run into plenty of bad communications professionals – you’re not the only unlucky one
I do agree with you (and have written about this on my blog) that it’s the people on the front lines who have the most impact. That’s when the public truly “gets” Gov 2.0 – when they get to feel it at the point of sale, when it’s improved what they do on a day-to-day basis. Totally with you there.
I disagree that “social networks are not a means to communicate” though – it’s all in how you use it. For many agencies, it’s simply blasting out information, but for others, they ARE engaging, they ARE listening, and they ARE communicating.
I do like your point about making everybody a communications professional though – that’s one of the reasons why when I work with my clients, we spend almost as much time on teaching/educating/training the internal workforce as we do using Twitter, blogs, etc. to engage with the public. The Communications or Public Affairs office can’t possibly scale across an entire Agency or Department, so we have to ensure that everyone (comms professionals, tax agents, public safety officers, etc.) have at least a baseline understanding of these tools and how they can be used to more effectively accomplish their mission. But is HR the right department to lead up this internal education? Or, are you suggesting that HR takes the lead in identifying the “right” people to educate and train the workforce?
I could see it both ways – in my experience though, it’s been communications leading the charge and then engaging with HR to help effect the changes that you’re advocating for.
8 Andrea Di Maio June 28, 2010 at 12:23 pm
@Steve – I guess we are close to being in violent agreement here.
Let me spend a few more words about HR. I saw a couple of tweets dismissing the role of HR driving this. However if everybody becomes a communicator (or, better, an engagement agents), every single aspect of his or her job changes. Further, because of the unavoidable blurring between professional and personal roles, there are risks that employees need to be aware of and HR can help manage.
@Scott – You hit the nail on the head: as the train has left the station (and also in places where access to social media is banned from the corporate network because employee access from home or through their smartphones) people need to have a 360 degree view of risks and opportunities. To me this is an HR job.
9 Gwynne Kostin June 28, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Great to see another provocative post. And since you identified the “tweets dismissing the role of HR driving this” I thought I would stretch out beyond my initial 140 characters.
I don’t know a single organization in which an HR department/office/function would take a leadership role in social media strategy. Not because they are incompetent, but because it’s not their job.
HR, especially in government, manages the complex administrative functions of human resources including recruiting, hiring, performance management, salary and benefits, employee relations, communicating employment policies, and supporting training.
HR is a staff function, and social media is run as part of line duties.
We agree–and you have written on this frequently–that gov 2.0 success will be at the hands of front line employees if we just let them do it. I just don’t think that HR is going to have much of a hand in this.
HR may offer generalized training, but they don’t do communications training. Or IT training. Or the training that my staff needs to do their actual jobs.
HR may support agency-wide policy, but they don’t drive the social media policy development. I’ve seen policy development coming from IT or comms offices with input from legal, security and sometimes (hopefully!) the executive suite. HR weighs in from a labor relations standpoint. And, you are spot on that HR has a key role in supporting the organization’s internal training and communications on appropriate use policies.
But bottom line, HR engages internally with employees, they should not be expected to lead external engagement. That’s just not what they do. Not the drivers of this train.
10 Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links – June 20, 2010 « Adriel Hampton: Wired to Share June 29, 2010 at 2:55 am
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11 Mike Wood June 29, 2010 at 5:20 am
Hi, I work in Local Government in London, and the crucial point is not necessarily who delivers the message, but how that message is presented. We deliver many worthy messages to people (presented by front line professionals who know the business) but the recipients are switched off by the language used. Professionals tend to slip very quickly and easily into using internal jargon and terminology that the recipient either doesn’t understand or feels intimidated by.
The role of the ‘communicator’ (whoever they are), should be to present information that is clearly understandable, jargon free and helpful to non-professiona – not simply a policy that has been approved by a Committee.
12 Andrea Di Maio June 29, 2010 at 7:32 am
@Gwynne – It is quite clear that, as you say, policies require input from multiple parts of the organization. What I think we are debating is who is pulling the strings.
In your examples, which match those I have seen, IT or Comms lead the charge. My observation that HR is better placed, despite their traditional staff role and internal focus, is based on the assumption that engagement requires or causes a blurring between personal and professional role. Whereas IT folks can look at the security and bandwidth implications and Comms people can look at the communication strategy, reality is that with social media you do not exactly if, how and when value will be accrued, but what you know is that it will happen most likely thanks to one or few individuals in the organization, and in ways that are hard to predict. Hence my point that one needs to create the right context for employees to safely operate in ths ambiguous space between personal and professional, making sure that their performances are correctly appraised, they do not incur any major liability, their own privacy is protected, and so forth. I can’t think about anybody else than HR to create that context
13 Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links – June 209 2010 | Gov 2.0 Radio July 4, 2010 at 1:54 am
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14 Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links – June 29, 2010 « #2010Left July 6, 2010 at 4:03 am
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