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Virtual Communities Boost Employee Productivity

Posted on: Monday, 12 May 2008, 13:10 CDT

Today, many co-workers are finding it increasingly difficult to have face-to-face interactions with each other due to a rise in outsourcing and telecommuting.

However, some businesses realize that this can sometimes stifle creativity and result in sluggish production.

Therefore, some are taking notes from popular online social networks like Myspace and Facebook in hopes of creating an online portal that will help co-workers get to know each other on a personal level — regardless of the distance between them.

In the past, these online portals were used strictly to deliver business information between partners, but now, some are actually trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by borrowing elements from video games and social networking Web sites.

Take, for instance, Beehive, which is currently under development at IBM Corp.

IBM’s 386,000 employees found themselves working with people across the world, most of them never having met each other.

The online portal allows employees to describe their expertise, which is a common function for their use, but with Beehive, workers at IBM are able to post pictures, video, and one-sentence updates about themselves.

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive.

These tidbits help people understand each other better.

But IBM isn’t the only company who realizes the benefits in adding personality to productivity.

Leading chipmaker Intel recently tested a “visual business card” system, which allowed employees to list the standard things such as job title and location, along with pictures, brief biographies and things they like.

Intel is now venturing into virtual software that uses rich, 3-D representations of meeting rooms and auditoriums to bring its employees closer together.

CDC Software recently used similar tactics when it staged parts of an annual sales kickoff event in a virtual world created by Unisfair Inc., it included an online version of the golf outings that commonly accompany such affairs . It held tournaments in baseball and golf video games - and gave real trophies to the champions, said Julian Hannabuss, a CDC sales director.

Soon online business meetings will be able to incorporate images from Web cameras that capture gestures and face movements - so your avatar can reflect your nonverbal communication cues, crossing its legs or frowning when you do so in real life.

"Those kinds of things make you forget there's an interface mediating you and the other people at all," said Greg Nuyens, CEO of virtual-world creator Qwaq Inc., whose clients include the energy company BP Group PLC. "You'll just be in a room with them."

IBM is also looking into what it calls “Inward Bound,” through which the company hopes its employees will be able to form bonds through collaboration online.

"We can make work suck less," says Reuben Steiger, CEO of virtual-world creator Millions of Us.

Still, one big question is just how many plane trips for actual meetings can be realistically replaced by software.

"I don't think we'll ever completely replace the human interaction element," said Cindy Pickering, engineer overseeing Intel’s internal virtual-world efforts.

"Instead of us going out and playing softball together, now we'll just go play an (online) game? I don't know how satisfying I would find that."

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On the Net:

IBM

Intel

IBM Watson Research Center - Overview of Beehive

Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports

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