Here’s some of the material from last week’s Conference Board workshop about how to extend brands to employees by empowering employees with social media.

The workshop was four hours, yet the time flew as there’s so much to talk about and learn in this area. What made the session especially valuable to me was the tremendous participation and insights from HR and communications executives at some of the biggest companies in the world. What a great group to teach and lead! Thanks all.

During the workshop we did an exercise about “anchors” slowing companies down from realizing the possibilities of social media, which we addressed as part of the session. Here were the biggest anchors from the group, in order of “anchor weight.” The overwhelming resistance to change was a bit frightening to me. How can companies survive, never mind grow, without some risk and and openness to new ideas?

Top anchors slowing down social media adoption

• Time and resources: Finding resources amid competing priorities, where to find budget, who to manage
• Fear: Inappropriate employee comment, fear of bad news, maintaining company secrets, afraid to fail, fear of exposure, fear of unknown - this has never been done; fear of change; loss of control
• Management buy in: Conservative culture; old guard holding on to what has always been done, senior management not in favor of “sharing”; resistance to change; senior executives are anti-communications
• Generational issues: baby boomers not always willing to embrace new technology, generational resistance
• Value: lack of clear purpose for getting involved
• Initiating: Lack of a champion who gets it; knowing how to get started, where do you begin?; no resident expertise

Additional, but less significant, obstacles

• IT: security issues; IT desire to maintain control of tools; Complexity: too many competing technologies, too complex
• HR
• Legal/risk management
• Having to try to make SAP and Sharepoint work as social tools
• Maintaining company voice
• Employees feel they are already asked to do too much