Employee Relationship Management Ninja

Whenever you join a new company, there is a common problem that is seen everywhere. It is getting oriented with the company processes. If the company has more number of employees that can be counted on the fingers, then it is obvious that the newbie will be ragged and bullied by the gazillion computer systems that smash him on the face everyday.

One of the most common phrase you hear on an enterprise level application, "No it won't work on Chrome or Firefox, install Internet Explorer 6" (I am not making this up). I often wonder if microsoft pays these IT guys to promote them or why this uncanny love with Internet Explorer but whatever the fact is, these system are.

The systems are almost always slow, require some amount of dexterous skill and are working just because they are. Just like the governance in India these systems are working on some ancient wizardry. But the problem is, these enterprise system are necessary for governance. When we fill out a time sheet only then the billability is calculated and the expenses sheet is filled. The client is charged for the services provided and the company makes profit. So in the larger chain of events, the time sheet is directly responsible for the revenue growth of the system.

However, making it easier for employees is not on top priority. There are 800 million people on Facebook, each in the age group between 13 to 70 (more or less). No one had to teach them the system to use. They just did, looking at each other, collaborating, making mistakes. The enterprise systems are slow, buggy and have a big learning curve to them.

Its like telling the newbie on the first day of the job, "Hey to get into the team you need to do three backflips and two cartwheels.... start practicing."

Then there are those systems which have default values to be filled. Earlier in a company on day three I received a set of values to be filled in the application. Just fill it, they said. I had no clue what the values were. When I asked around, many people said they are filling those values for like three years. That made no sense, if there was a default value in the system, why ask employees to blindly copy paste them? Why not automate the thing completely. Its like ordering the pepperoni pizza and the delivery guy smiles and replies, "Here is your pizza, we have not put the pepperoni inside it. Here are pepperoni in the polythene bag, why don't you put it in yourself."

Well duh uh, I ordered a pepperoni pizza, so I should expect pepperoni inside it.

Employees in a way are also customers to the brand and organization. They are the internal customer to the brand and also need better relationship. In a CRM system, brands invest in relationship and in returns get cash. In the ERM system, you invest in cash and in return get a good long standing relationship with the employee.

Lets take a pledge of removing those bulky, buggy and slow enterprise level application and give your customer some blazing refreshing way to make their office fun.
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Newton third law of social media

Move aside social metrics and the fancy infographics that make you go wow over social media. Lets get to the harsh reality, in a class of 40 people when Vishnu earned the award for the best student in class, 20 of the students got jealous, 5 of them felt their ego hurt, remaining were indifferent to the obvious. Soon the rumors started floating around about him being teachers pet, him washing teachers clothes and what not.

Although these stats are made up, the point is there will always be dislikes for whatever you do. No program can go without reaction. It is human nature to criticize, criticism is one of the basic emotion of human mind, there is no need for coaching in criticism. Every brand will have their set of 'critics' who will feed off negative emotions and criticize, complain and try to stop everything that is being done.

Isaac Newton was way ahead of his time when he proclaimed, 'Every action has equal answer opposite reaction', (Newton third law of motion). These law can be adjusted for social media in a slightly different way, 'Every social media promotion will have a equal and opposite comment.' There will be likes and dislikes for everything we do on social media. If you are looking forward to form a social media utopia, where everyone likes you and your social media program, here is what you can do... Forget it.

There are three possible things that are done:
1. Try to change their mind
Good idea if you are planning to get the saint of the year award. I won't say it is a bad thing, but it is a fruitless effort wasting time. Plus argument on your brand facebook page won't look nice.

2. Banning the trouble makers
It is a good policy to keep trouble makers at bay but banning just because they cause trouble is not always a good idea. Chetan Bhagat made the mistake making, #ChetanBlocks a bigger trend that him. Trouble makers can be classified into two parts, abusers and critics. If critics are making no sense, they can be put into category of abusers. Abusers can be safely blocked, not critics. Critics have a bigger fan base and a better fan following, blocking them is equivalent to spoiling the reputation in front of all of them.

3. Let them be
This strategy will mostly work if they are busy in attention seeking tactics. Once it is realized no one is paying them any attention, they soon die out. Obviously, if people are genuinely criticizing the brand or product, listen to what they are saying and work on it. Some of the biggest critics could be your biggest fans only hurt.


There will be backlash for all your grand effort, some sour grapes will give your agents a tough time. Instead of arguing with them with all your mind, move on. If the ratio of likes vs dislikes is fine (more likes and less dislikes) you need not worry. If the dislikes are more, be a bit wary. If it has all dislikes, rethink.
Social media is transparent, honest and dangerous. This is a one way street, think hard before entering it or there will be disastrous effect, some no PR could fix.


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