In the podcast, Ragan runs a panel discussion as a roleplay featuring himself as a dumb CEO talking to an all-star lineup of marketing and communications professionals who are playing his communications department. The subject is blogging and social media in general. Why should he use it? What's the point? He asks for a fast explanation of various social media concepts - especially blogging. And what emerges is a fascinating look into the corporate mind.
His advisors suggest that he shouldn't be afraid of blogging - although he needn't necessarily do it himself. They say that he should encourage his employees to blog. Under the watchful eye of his legal department. They say the employees should engage with customers and potential customers, and work hard to gain people's trust and make them feel like part of a community. In today's cutthroat competitive markets, it's vitally important that people don't just feel like consumers. Because if they do they will simply focus on finding the product they want at the cheapest price from whatever company can deliver it to them at that price point. They have no brand loyalty. Unless they feel a personal connection to a company. Blogging is a great way to do that.
They then move on to explaining that a CEO should consider blogging to give the view of company "from 30,000 feet" to the public, and let employees blog about specific products that they work on themselves. When he asked them what his legal department would say about the potential for employees to abuse their corporate blogs, they point out that employees almost always have to sign legal agreements about what they do on company time - and thus are unlikely to violate those agreements. Ragan then brought up employees of a company that made satirical videos of their boss and posted them on YouTube. And also mentioned angry customers that might create a MarkRaganSucks.com site and publicly pillory him.
No problem, the panel said. Rather than hunt down disgruntled employees or have legal issue "Cease and Desist" orders to attack websites, beat them at their own game. Break down barriers with employees by releasing your own video to YouTube making fun of yourself. And encourage your employees to directly engage attack websites, and try to clear the air - being willing to change corporate policies based on the criticism if it will help the bottom line.
At this point the conversation turned to the effect of social media tools - like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and instant messaging services - on productivity. The "return on investment" was also repeatedly invoked. Ragan egged on his "staff" - demanding that they give him hard numbers showing how he'll turn a bigger profit by letting his employees "watch clips from last week's Saturday Night Live on YouTube."
The panelists then said something extremely interesting. If you catch workers watching YouTube at work, let them do it. Even encourage it. Because it seems that the rise of social media has broken down the old barriers between work time and leisure time. Companies that have tracked web server usage of their workers have found that their most wired workers tend to log in and work not primarily during traditional work hours, but more in the evenings and on weekends. In other words, they are working all the time. They may be watching funny YouTube videos at times, but more often they are responding to colleagues in other countries on their Blackberrys, IM co-workers around the world at all hours to figure out problems, and using social networking sites like Facebook for the same purpose.
So from a labor perspective, what does this tell us? Obviously, the speakers at the conference represented some of the more forward thinking views in the corporate world on these subjects. Most companies would not take attack websites or satirical videos about their CEOs lightly. Yet, when we slice through all the fine sounding sentiments, we arrive at a core of traditional corporate strategy. The panelists are bluntly telling the CEO "let people play with this new technology at work because it's ultimately going to benefit the company with increased productivity, and a lowered expectation of a workday that's divided into '8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what you will' that the labor movement fought so long and hard to win." And doubtless, none of the panelists would think very highly of employees blogging about union drives in their companies. It would likely violate one of those employee legal agreements they mentioned.
They're also saying that public criticism of corporations and their internal and external policies can be blunted by creating a touchy feely atmosphere around themselves. A good example of this kind of activity would be the new Microsoft ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. They are not geared towards selling a specific product, but rather toward generating good feelings towards Gates and Microsoft by portraying him as a regular guy - something, as one of the richest men in the world, he most certainly is not. The ads then link to a sophisticated social network presence on the web, as most ad campaigns do these days.
People can then get involved in online forums with Microsoft employees, and make critiques of products, and really feel (and in some sense, really be) involved in the company. However, the problem here is that they are providing the company a valuable service for free. They are helping the company troubleshoot products and make more money, but they are getting nothing in return. And they are being corralled into only discussing the company's activities outside the real political economy that it sits within. Without any thought to the relations between labor and capital in the company, or the company's political activities. They are being trained like Pavlov's dogs to respond properly to positive stimulus, and the negative stimuli - though the latter may be consciously hidden from their view.
On the other hand, labor leaders should think carefully about the positive aspects of the transparency that panelists were very specifically encouraging. Indeed, many labor leaders are blogging, and many of their staff are too. But few unions are forward-thinking enough to allow creativity to flourish in their staff by allowing them to basically play with new technology. By giving them time to think and interact with their peers in a relaxed way that may not seem like work, but actually results in more innovative ideas and more productivity that could ultimately benefit unions. Once again, corporations seem ahead of the curve in certain aspects of progressive management. But it would be remiss of us to state this without reminding viewers that we want to encourage labor leaders to take the best most positive practices from this discussion, and not the negative exploitative practices.
Does it generally seem like a good idea for labor to be more transparent, and for unions to allow their staff more time to network and innovate (and not just "organize, organize, organize" by the books)? Yes. Does it seem like a good idea for unions to use these techniques simply to manipulate the public and their staff in ways that would make corporations blush? No.
We'd suggest that people listen to the talk here, and judge the lessons of the panel for themselves. It's interesting to get into the corporate mindset from time to time - just as long as we don't stay there too long, and always remember what the labor movement is about, and what our goals are. A just world for workers. Be sure to let us know what you think about these issues, and what you think about the panel discussion.