Abuse Within the Groundswell

In reading the last two chapters of Li and Bernoff's book Groundswell what resonated with me was  the case study of BestBuy and Blue Shirt Nation in chapter 11.

While the concept of Blue Shirt Nation stated many positives that coincide with companies speaking with the groundswell within their own company, it failed to mention one huge negative. The company my mother works for* has a very similar website to Best Buy's Blue Shirt Nation. It is a forum where the President and executive board engages in conversation with their fellow employees.When the founders of Blue Shirt Nation were in the process of establishing the site "[t]hey took store teams bowling, getting feedback on what worked on the community and encouraging employees to participate" (Li, 217). This sag-ways into one of the issues of Company X's intranet forum. While the intention of the forum was to establish a direct line of communication between the employees of Company X and the higher-ups to improve the quality of the company it has not exactly panned out that way. Similar to Best Buy taking their employees out bowling, many of the questions that Company X pose are questions that are used to make the company seem more personable such as "What is your favorite band?" or "What are you looking forward to doing this weekend?" Groundswell has mentioned other companies occasionally posting questions like this on their message boards or blogs. Although this can help make a company more human, when more and more posts become like this and less about the company the groundswell is not being used in an appropriate way. For my mother, she and some of her fellow employees have grown frustrated with the companies forum. While the forum was created to increase company moral and improvement, it has not exactly done its job. My mother becomes increasingly  frustrated when she is working so much that she does not have time to look at the forum and when she finally does all she sees are multiple postings taking about the weather, their favorite band, and what their dream vacation is. What is even more frustrating is that while she is at work actually doing the job she is paid to do, many of her coworkers and bosses are on the company forum posting non work related things on the companies dime.

After reading about Blue Shirt Nation I decided to check out the forum. It turns out that since the book was published, Blue Shirt Nation no longer exists. After thinking about Company X's forum and the way it has been abused, I have to wonder if Blue Shirt Nation was really all it was cracked up to be or if in fact it proved to be more of a work hindrance after all.

*For the sake of privacy I will call the company Company X