But why is this concept important? The answer is simple, engaged employees lead to higher service, quality, and productivity, leading to higher customer satisfaction, increased sales, and higher profit levels.

So, if you wonder how to motivate your employees, look no further than these six employee engagement strategies that make a real impact in the workplace.

#1 Show Employee Appreciation

Employees are engaged when they feel their work is valuable and helps the company achieve its long-term goals. For this reason, regularly showing employee appreciation to each member of your team and their work will mean that you recognize and respect their efforts. Moreover, showing that you value them has the power to keep productivity, office morale, and employee retention rates high.

You can, for example, reward top performers for their achievements with a monetary prize, a wellness gift card, or days off. In addition, consider giving your team a platform to recognize one another. Feeling respected and appreciated by your peers and colleagues will help increase social bonding between them and make employees more engaged.

#2 Build a Two-Way Communication Culture

‍Building two-way communication is a great way to increase trust in leadership and strengthen the emotional connection employees feel to your company.

To engage employees, you must be open, honest, transparent, and communicate often. For example, when sharing negative news, soften the impact by providing context and letting employees know your plan to ensure the event does not occur again. Also, follow through on your word to build trust in leadership, which leads to employee engagement.

In addition, seek out your employees’ ideas, opinions, and concerns and engage them in a two-way dialogue. Also, acknowledge the feedback you hear from them. Employees want to be spoken with and heard.

#3 Uphold Your Company Values

Your company’s core values guide your organization’s interactions and relationships with customers, employees, and the environment. They must be at the heart of your company culture and clearly explained to and known by every employee from their first day in the office.

Your core values help you create a purpose, improve team cohesion, and create a sense of commitment in the workplace. In addition, they help your team establish a sense of belonging to your company and, as a result, become truly engaged. Remember, your company core values describe what truly matters to you and your team and the ideals you strive to uphold as your business expands.

#4 Provide Growth Avenues

Providing employees opportunities to grow their know-how and skillset keeps them engaged and motivated. So, if you want your employees to be engaged in their growth and strive for success, you need to make sure you provide them with opportunities and show them where that growth can lead them.

Moreover, team members value a transparent career growth plan, so you need to make sure everyone has a clear pathway mapped out in front of them. Importantly, by developing learning and growth initiatives in your company, you demonstrate that you choose to continually invest in them rather than replace them with candidates with the skills you desire, therefore showing that you value your employees as individuals.

#5 Hold Employees (and Yourself) Accountable

Another great way to improve employee engagement is by setting and upholding accountability goals in the workplace, from your managers to your newest employees.

Ensure every employee knows their duties and what is expected from them. Engaged employees are willing to go the extra mile for their company, but that does not mean you should expect them to work for everyone in the team. Keep in mind that relying exclusively on the efforts of your most engaged members will likely lead to burnout.

Create a space where everyone can share their accountability goals and ensure everyone is on track. Doing this will encourage a culture of accountability that will transgress into employees’ day-to-day work.

#6 Prioritize Health and Wellness

We all had a tough couple of years, but you do not know what your employees are going through behind closed doors. So, the least your company can do is support health and wellness as best as possible. So, for example, create an employee wellness program, promote preventive care, encourage exercise and movement, emphasize mental health and redesign the workplace.

Conclusion

Many studies point out that employee engagement directly impacts a company’s productivity and profitability. So, deploying the strategies above is key to getting employee engagement right. The result is a greater financial return, surpassing competitors and climbing to the top of the “the favorite places to work” list.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Powerful Employee Engagement Strategies That Make a Real Impact appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Sixty-six per cent of organisations have plans to deploy their 5G network by 2020, and among those, the main use planned is for Internet of Things (IoT) communications and video, with operational efficiency being the key driver.

The figures come from a recent 5G use case and adoption survey by Gartner, Inc, which was conducted in May 2018 through June 2018 among 185 companies. “In terms of 5G adoption, end-user organisations have clear demands and expectations for 5G use cases,” said Sylvain Fabre, senior research director at Gartner. “However, one major issue that 5G users face is the lack of readiness of communications service providers (CSPs). Their 5G networks are not available or capable enough for the needs of organisations.”

To fully exploit 5G, a new network topology is required, including new network elements such as edge computing, core network slicing and radio network densification. “In the short to medium term, organisations wanting to leverage 5G for use cases such as IoT communications, video, control and automation, fixed wireless access and high-performance edge analytics cannot fully rely on 5G public infrastructure for delivery,” added Mr Fabre.

Top Use Cases for 5G

IoT communications remains the most popular target use case for 5G, with 59 per cent of the organisations surveyed expecting 5G-capable networks to be widely used for this purpose. The next most popular use case is video, which was chosen by 53 per cent of the respondents.

“The figure for IoT communications is surprising, given that other proven and cost-effective alternatives, such as Narrowband IoT over 4G and low-power wide-area solutions, already exist for wireless IoT connectivity,” said Mr Fabre. “However, 5G is uniquely positioned to deliver a high density of connected endpoints — up to 1 million sensors per square kilometre.”

“Additionally, 5G will potentially suit other subcategories of IoT that require very low latency. With regard to video, the use cases will be varied. From video analytics to collaboration, 5G’s speed and low latency will be well suited to supporting 4K and 8K HD video content,” added Mr Fabre.

Status of 5G Deployment

Gartner predicts that, by 2022, half of the CSPs that have completed commercial 5G deployments will fail to monetise their back-end technology infrastructure investments, due to systems not fully meeting 5G use case requirements. “Most CSPs will only achieve a complete end-to-end 5G infrastructure on their public networks during the 2025-to-2030 time frame — as they focus on 5G radio first, then core slicing and edge computing,” said Mr Fabre.

Mr Fabre added that this is because CSPs’ 5G public networks plans vary significantly in timing and scope. CSPs will initially focus on consumer broadband services, which may delay investments in edge computing and core slicing, which are much more relevant and valuable to 5G projects.

Gartner advises that, to meet the demands of businesses, technology product managers planning 5G infrastructure solutions should focus on 5G networks that offer not only 5G radio but also core slicing and edge computing infrastructure and services for private networks. CSPs alone may not fully satisfy the short-to-midterm demands of organisations that are keen to deploy 5G quickly.

“Private networks for enterprises will be the most direct option for businesses that want to benefit from 5G capabilities early on,” said Mr Fabre. These networks may be offered not only by CSPs but also directly by infrastructure vendors — and not just by the traditional large vendors of infrastructure, but also by suppliers with cloud and software backgrounds.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Two-Thirds of Organisations Intend to Deploy 5G by 2020 And Mainly For IoT Comms appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Ethics in Social Media Research – the privacy debate

In the market research community the discussion about data privacy and guidelines for social media research (mainly focused on listening) is peaking right now as ESOMAR, CASRO, MRS and other Market research associations have published their guidelines recently. This debate is crucial as behaviors like that of Nielsen Buzzmetrics scrapping data from patienslikeme.com, a closed Online Community on health issues, can create distrust against a whole industry. I think a discussion of ethics in Social Media Research is crucial. But that doesn’t mean I agree with everything written in the recent guidelines. And I am not the only one. A rising number of market research authorities reject and question these guidelines. For example Ray Pointer states in a recent blog post that “in several areas, ‘new’ market research is at odds with the traditional guidelines. Examples of where NewMR is at odds with the traditional ethics includes: the brand-related incentives for members of communities, the brand advocacy of community members, the changes wrought by deliberative research, and most of social media monitoring research.

Other areas where research is drifting away from the classic model of anonymity include a growing amount of customer satisfaction and most of enterprise feedback systems.” So Ray is making the point that “If market research companies abide by the old ethics, in particular anonymity and informed consent, they will not be able to compete for business in most areas where market research is growing. This is because there will be no commercial benefits that will accrue to sticking to rules and ideas that nobody else does.”

While I am really curious to see where the debate is going, I don’t want to concentrate on the privacy debate in this post. For everyone interest in the discussion I recommend to follow the public forum debate on Monday, August 22 at 12:00 EST, hosted on the MRGA 365 Virtual Event Platform http://www.marketplace365.com/registration/mrga365/

Ethics in Co-Creation – the exploitation debate

I want to share my thoughts and start a discussion about another important area of ethics in Social Media, which I think is the way we integrate and reward people in co-creation and crowdsourcing projects. There is hardly a debate on this yet from an ethical point of view, as “Co-Creators” seem to be willing to share their ideas for free or relatively low money without real commitment from the company running the initiative. But in the long-term this might change! Here is why.

#1 Co-Creators will become more selective and demanding

Happily consumers seem to love the new way of participation with companies. Last year Forrester Research asked US online adults if they want to co-create with companies. Here are some results:

• 61 percent of US online adults would consider providing input to help companies design and build new products or improve existing products (“Willing Co-Creators”).
• A majority of these “Willing Co-Creators” would participate in a co-creation engagement regardless of the product, brand, or service involved.
• 30% of “Willing Co-Creators” would only participate in co-creation efforts with their favorite products and brands.
• In 12 of the 17 industries that were included, more than half of the “Willing Co-Creators” expressed interest in co-creation engagements.

So there seems to be a reasonable number of “Willing Co-Creators”. But as the number of companies that involve consumers in the development of new products will continue to grow – as I am convinced that Co-Creation is here to stay – Co-Creators will become more selective and demanding in choosing the initiatives they want to take part in. Thus attracting Co-Creators will become harder for companies. A “War for Co-Creators” – similar to the “War for Talent” might start. Attracting the most creative and/or skilled “Co-Creators” or Lead Users (see the Lead User Method) for co-creation initiatives aimed at creating breakthroughs will become the most competitive area.

The competition will force companies to spend more effort on co-creation advertising/recruiting as well as to increase the co-creation value they offer in terms of outcomes and interaction/co-creation experience. According to social exchange theory, consumers would only participate in co-creation activities because they expect that doing so will be rewarding. But For individuals, tangibles such as goods or money, as well as intangibles such as social amenities or friendship, are rewarding. Further, not only the outcomes, but also the interaction experience itself may offer a benefit.  Thus, to make participation in Co-Creation a more rewarding experience companies need to really understand consumers’ motivations to co-create and incorporate this into their campaign design, the interaction/co-creation experience, the reward system and last but not least the company’s commitment to a co-creation initiative.

Implications:

• Be strategic today to succeed in the coming “War for Co-Creators”
• Increase co-creation value to attract Co-Creators
• Understand Co-Creators’ motivations and expectations in terms of outcomes and interaction/co-creation experience

#2 Monetary rewards as necessary condition and signal for ethics and commitment

So if the competition for Co-Creators will be more intense and we will have to increase the rewards to attract the most talented Co-Creators, how should we do that? Of course increasing rewards should include more than simply increasing monetary prices. As stated above it is about increasing the value of co-creation for the participants in terms of outcomes and interaction/co-creation experience.

But I think monetary rewards are a very important aspect of co-creation in that case as it attracts extrinsically motivated people AND it shows the company’s attitude, recognition and commitment towards collaboration with external stakeholders. Attractive rewards signal that the company doesn’t want to exploit consumers but appreciates the effort that participants invest and the (potential) value that their submissions can create. Furthermore you could argue that a company that spends a reasonable amount of money on a co-creation project is serious about it and really wants to act upon your input.

Non-cash prices, brand-or ideally project-related ones are at least as important as money. Project-related rewards, like for example a visit of the headquarters and a meeting with the team behind the project can even help to build stronger relationships with Co-Creators.

Giving Co-Creators a platform to get feedback, recognition and visibility can be very rewarding for Co-Creators. Companies making their Co-Creators famous and involving them in their communication activities offer an additional value dimension to Co-creators and profit from authentic storytelling and increased advocacy and word of mouth activities.

Mc Donald’s “Mein Burger” campaign involved the winners in TV commercials:

Tchibo Ideas give co-created products that come to market a face by also showing the Co-Creator in their catalogues:

Implications:

• Monetary rewards attract extrinsically motivated co-creators
• Monetary and non-cash prices will signal ethics and commitment
• Non-cash, ideally project-related, prices can build relationships
• Recognition and visibility of Co-Creators ads value for Co-Creators and Companies

#3 No long-term engagement without real commitment

I think that in the long-term a company’s commitment for a co-creation project makes a big difference in the “War for Co-Creators”. I want to elaborate a bit on what I mean by that. I deal with open innovation, co-creation and crowdsourcing for more than 4 years and I think I know most of the prominent crowdsourcing and co-creation cases. But I only know a few products on the market that have been co-created and marketed as such (e.g. Vitaminwaters, Dewmocracy, Walkers chips, Tchibo Ideas, Quirky). There might be a number of reasons for that like ideas that weren’t technically feasible or the estimated market potential and/or profitability didn’t fit internal criteria. But I think one major problem is that companies struggle to open up and to change culture and processes. They still experiment and often have no commitment and no defined follow-up process to bring co-created ideas to market. This might become critical in at least three aspects:

• Image: Opening up without real commitment and follow-up processes that result in commercialization will lead to a sour taste of co-creation. Consumers might start to call co-creation or crowdsourcing campaigns without commitment “crowdwashing“, meaning that companies proclaim to be open but don’t act on consumers’ ideas. More demanding Co-Creators that can choose between different co-creation initiatives probably won’t choose a “crowdwashing” one (and in case they do, they won’t do it more than once).
• Reward: The most rewarding experience is going to the supermarket and buying “your product”.  Co-Creation and crowdsourcing activities that offer this potential reward will especially attract potential lead users. Lead users have very high requirements that are not served by existing products. Thus the chance to actually use a product that solves a current problem is very rewarding for them.
• Advocacy: The Dewmocracy campaign or Mc Donald’s “Mein Burger” initiative shows impressively the energy and activation power a committed crowdsourcing campaign can generate in terms of storytelling and word of mouth activity.

Attracting co-creators and building Long-term relationships can only work if companies move away from “crowdwashing” and show commitment to their co-creation activities. Especially to build ongoing relationships with the most valuable Co-Creators and Lead users requires commitment, as they won’t continue to invest their time and passion if there is no real commitment by the company and if they think their product will never be on the market.

Implications:

• Company’s commitment drives Co-Creator’s engagement
• Crowdwashing has negative impact on image and long-term relationships
• Commitment attracts Lead Users
• Commercialisation drives advocacy

Conclusion: Being successful in the “War for Co-Creators” by “sharing rewards and risks/efforts”

When thinking about Co-Creation in the long-term I think involving hundreds or thousands of consumers and paying three of them relatively low monetary prices might not be a sustainable business model, or at least not the most promising one. I prefer to think of Co-Creators as partners. That’s why I like Roland Hardwood’s simple definition of open innovation, which is: “Innovating with partners by sharing the risks and the rewards.”

Keeping this in mind you might argue that the risk and effort of consumers participating in crowdsourcing or co-creation projects is very low, so the rewards are also rather low. BUT if the war for co-creators starts companies will need to increase rewards to attract them. By increasing monetary and non-monetary rewards, showing commitment and giving Co-Creators recognition and visibility the effort and commitment they bring into the co-creation process can be increased as well. Making co-creators part-time, co-creation partners will give you more valuable input (= insights, ideas, feedback) and drive advocacy (=awareness and sales effect through word of mouth) throughout the innovation and commercialization phase.

I see huge potential in a co-creation approach, where rewards are shared to a certain extent, based on the risk/effort and potential value of the contributors. A committed co-creation project with a reward system that lets Co-Creators earn points for all the contributions they make, based on the related effort and value, allows not only to reward innovation activities but to reward advocacy and word of mouth activities of the community even during and after launch. The rewards might even be based on a percentage of sales in the first year after launch. This is already done by Quirky, a social product development company and one of my favorite cases for a co-creation business model. The UK-based Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) GiffGaff takes a similar approach and rewards their community members’ support and advocacy activities. But even more traditional companies like Walkers, which business model is not based on their community, rewarded the winner of their crowdsourcing campaign with 50k and 1% of future sales.

To sum it up, I think Co-Creation has to be fair for both parties and should avoid to be perceived as doing crowdwashing or exploiting consumers. Companies should design their co-creation initiatives as sharing rewards and risks/efforts. Companies signaling that they are fair, by offering attractive rewards, showing commitment and giving recognition and rewards to Co-Creators’ contributions will do pretty god in the coming “War for Co-Creators”.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Be prepared for the coming ”War for Co-Creators” appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Open Business Council platform have just begun phase 1 of the its Co-creation Project. Open Business Council is a Pan European organisation with a global reach and network that wants to create anm active development of solutions and reflection towards the practice of Open Business.

Open Business Council is actively contacting and recruiting a varitey of professionals that have in common the passion for innovation and business. This invitation and contact will be done to international authors, university professors, industry leaders, international speakers who are thought leaders or passionated about the new directions of business strategy and thinking. Open Business Council wants to join together professionals and experts and discuss, create an action plan to answering the challenges overal business faces with the new development and future development of social media and continous digital environment in the broad concept of Open Business theory.

This invitation and contact is being done bearing in mind the goal to help develop the Project Framework including definitions and understanding of the discipline across:

Open Innovation,
Open Planning,
Open Research,
Open Data and
Open Communications
Open Government

These areas will serve as a clear and common dictionary / direction for all Council members.

If you would like to be involved please register here

or send us a mail to editor@openbusinesscouncil.org

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Project Framework: Phase 1: Creating a Council for Open Business appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.