In a recent post by Will Shorten he quotes a Harvard Business review article

“The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections”

Article here 

The importance of employee LI connections.
 

Will goes onto to say


"A thought provoking article written by Harvard Assistant Professor Frank Nagle based on research by him and Shelley Li from Marshall School of Business highlighting the benefits that organisations get from employees LinkedIn connections.

In it they found that: 'companies whose real-world employee connections put them at the center of their professional communities performed better than peer companies whose workforces were less well-connected and, as a result, on the periphery of the same community'.

Key learnings:
👩‍🎓 Leveraging both human capital and knowledge sharing brought benefits to the organisation as well as the individual.

🧑‍🔬 At the organisational level the research showed a strong correlation between network data with R&D investments and more patented innovations.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏼 While at an individual level there was an opportunity to ‘reinforce the importance of robust personnel and professional networking as a consideration in hiring decisions’ with a key factor being ‘how well connected you are’.

🫵 The research also pointed out that middle and lower-level employees more than senior managers tended to be the backbone of connectedness – showing that there is still much potential to be developed in this area.

The key message of the study: there is ‘value of tangible real-world connections’."

 

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