Blue Shirt Nation was launched in the year 2006 as the social network site for the employees of Best Buy associates. The site is corporate-sponsored and operates outside the corporate firewall as a voluntary and open-source where the users are encouraged to post their problems and solutions to the problems of others in connection with retail store operations posted on the site. The site presently has about 22,000 users contributing to the site.
Blue Shirt Nation originally launched by Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt with the idea of gleaning marketing ideas by connecting the store employees socially, later turn out to be a cutting edge for better human resource management practices by Best Buy. The site has helped the company to build a sense of community among its employees. In a large and complex organization very rarely do the employees get a chance to voice their concerns, ideas and opinions.
By encouraging the employees to let others know about the issues faced by them, Blue Shirt Nation has developed into a popular social networking site such as Facebook. Employees are allowed to host forums on various topics of their liking including issues surrounding store operations.
The bottom-up approach of Best Buy has made the Blue Shirt Nation – named after the polo shirts worn by the store employees – an example of using social networking within a corporate environment (Grayson). One of the examples where the network has proved effective may be found in the introduction of a 401 (k) retirement plan by the company. The company could enhance the interest of the employees in the plan by announcing a video contest on the perceptions of the employees on the retirement plan which received a good response from the employees. According to Koelling and Bendt the people responsible for creating the site, the employee turnover rate among the workers using the social network site was only 8% as against the double-digit attrition in the case of other employees. Feedback received by the company through Blue Shirt Nation network on changes intended to be brought in the employee discount rates prompted the company not to pursue the changes.
The corporate social network functions on the broad goals of bringing people together and is believable to try new things. Sharing has been the main theme which is identified as the most effective path to arrive at a plausible solution for an issue. The goal of the site is to build something among the employees which the managers and the employees may not be able to do on their own initiatives. The success of the site depends on the philosophy that everyone should be willing to experiment and learn from their own mistakes so that they do not repeat them.
According to social-media consultants exposing many of the internal and personal conversations of the employees could make the organization powerful and can also bring potential intangible benefits to the company in the area of human resource management. Within the company environment, social networking undertaken in a smart way can break the information ‘silos’ which prevent valuable information from being shared among people and across different departments (Haugen).
By enabling the company to gain the ability to sort, process and polish ideas emanated through the concept of information sharing and feedback loops Blue Shirt Nation has emerged as a cutting-edge tool in the complex task of human resource management.
Works Cited
Grayson, Katherine. Best Buy Employee Site a Model for Big Firms. 2008. Web.
Haugen, Dan. Welcome to Blue shirt Nation. 2009. Web.