The problem with most of the data that we provide about ourselves to enterprise applications is that the data is just stored somewhere and then sits on its back waiting to be found. To be found, users have to be actively looking for it. If they are lucky (very lucky) there is an enterprise search engine that crawls the data in the enterprise application and allows them to find it – that is, if they have access rights.
When it is this hard to find the data people has supplied about themselves, why would they spend time and energy on providing the data? What incentives exist for them to maintain, improve and extend their data? What would make them go the extra mile to ensure their data is better, richer and more updated than what is the required minimum?
Just take a look at your organization’s ERP or wherever system is used to capture and store the employee data used for your employee profile. When you provide the required data for your employee profile – what ways are there find out what your data will be used for, how, where and by whom? Or that it can actually be accessed and found?
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why people don’t enter enough data about themselves or why the quality (completeness, accuracy, freshness…) of the data often sucks. Here are some common reasons:
- They have to provide a lot of data without knowing what it will be used for, in what contexts it will be displayed, how it will be displayed, and to whom.
- It is often a complex and cumbersome procedure to provide the data (don’t get me started on the usability of most ERP user interfaces).
- They often need to provide it all at once, without any guidance about what is most important and what is less important.
- It is not easy to provide feedback about the data that could be used to enhance it. Unless someone reviews their data and explicitly tells them what to change and why, they don’t know or care about any data quality issues.
- They don’t have control of what data to display, where and how to display it.
- They don’t ever get to know if or how their data has been used, for what purposes or by whom.
It is safe to say that the value proposition for providing data to employee profiles often can be improved a lot. To start with, the effort to provide the data can be significantly decreased and the value that the data generates can be significantly increased by improving the findability and reach of the data. And, perhaps most importantly, the value proposition that exists can be communicated in a much better way to the user.
Here are some possible components to an improved value proposition for providing data to employee profiles:
- You know that everybody who could possibly have use for your data has access to it. They can share it with other people and bookmark it for later use if they want to.
- All the data you provide is searchable and can be accessed from other relevant systems, thereby maximizing the reach of your data.
- You can use your employee profile as a hub to highlight your contributions and the value you bring to your organization.
- You don’t have to provide all the data at once. The systems guides you in what to provide, when and how and helps you getting started with the most basic and important data. It also tells you about your progress.
- For every piece of data you provide, you get to know what you might get in return for providing it.
- Providing the data is so simple and intuitive that you don’t even see it as an effort.
- Other people can provide feedback about your data and suggest how you can improve it.
- Other people can interact with your data, enriching with social data that allows your data to be found and discovered more easily.
- The data you provide can be automatically combined with other data to create new information and insights for you.
- Relevant data from your profile can be automatically displayed in contexts where it can expose you to new opportunities.
- You control what data is displayed, how and where. You can preview how your data will be displayed in different contexts so that you can fine-tune it.
- You can get detailed information on where and when their data has been displayed, and who has viewed, shared, recommended or bookmarked it.
- Your data can be automatically connected to other data, allowing you to discover new information and people which might be relevant to you.
There are just so many more ways data can be put to work and which are rarely used. Yet, many systems do not offer much beyond the basic create-read-update-delete functionality. If they would be better at using the data they store and communicate a strong and clear value proposition to users, the incentives for employees to create high-quality employee profiles would increase significantly. Knowing that your data would work for you, you would also be more willing to work with your data.
