Due to the increasingly digital world, the use of virtual social networks has become ubiquitous in workplaces (Team Myhub, 2020). Cobb EMC, a company with a wide range of influence (Cobb EMC, 2021), considers communication to be integral to its success. The company’s community outreach activities which include hosting interns, a Youth Leadership Program, and awarding scholarships to students, has led to the formation of a sub community of these participants. Each semester brings new participants for each of the roles. Although participants may remain in contact with acquaintances at Cobb EMC, there is no established professional social networking hub where the subcommunity can operate as a community of practice (CoP). Facebook Workplace, Yammer, Slack, and LinkedIn Groups, were compared based on attributes deemed to be important to Cobb EMC. The results of the comparative analysis showed that LinkedIn’s cost-effectiveness, and its built-in detailed analytics feature, met the criteria deemed to be most important to Cobb EMC. The data gathered was used to develop a plan for the creation of a LinkedIn group to be implemented by future internees. Results yielded by the test group met the following data criteria: group is searchable on LinkedIn, plan includes member recruitment, and analytics are utilized to promote the group and engage members. A potential implication of this work is a new addition to the Cobb EMC LinkedIn community which will host all members of this subcommunity. Future studies could measure the efficacy of LinkedIn as a hub for engagement for Cobb EMC’s CoP.

The goal of this study is to produce a plan for Cobb EMC to implement in response to their need of a hub for their subcommunity to operate as a CoP. Since 2001, Cobb EMC’s community outreach activities which include hosting high school interns, youth leadership program participants, and awarding scholarships to aspiring college students, have led to the formation of a sub community of these participants that increases every year. Even though participants may remain in contact with acquaintances made at Cobb EMC, there is no established professional social networking hub where participants are able to operate as a community of practice (CoP). Efforts have yielded a revolving-door system, where seasonal participants tend to enter and leave the company very quickly, but do not benefit from the networking opportunities that their shared experience derived from being a part of the Cobb EMC community offers. With the formation of a CoP, participants could share best practices and create new knowledge to advance a domain of professional practice.

Data

Figure 2: A flow chart of Cobb EMC's plan

A plan was developed to promote the group, manage membership, and to engage members since the goal of this group is to generate a hub of communication for Cobb EMC. As implementation of the plan progresses, adjustments will be made accordingly based on success and feedback to better fit Cobb EMC’s future needs.

Conclusions, Implications, and Further Research

Literature explains that when companies provide platforms for their employees to connect socially on a professional level, the employees and companies benefit (Caya & Nielsen, 2013). It has become abundantly clear that one of the main strategies for increasing corporate growth is increasing intra-organizational relationships and communication opportunities. These relationships and opportunities rely on social networking (Peñarroja et al., 2019; SHRM, 2016), but there were no studies that provided a blueprint for companies to follow in their quest to create a professional social networking platform for a group of individuals that are not directly associated with the corporation for extended periods of time, but that are linked by their common roles (subcommunity). Therefore, this research is among the first of its kind to create a plan for professional social networking platform for a subcommunity of a corporation.

A potential implication of this work is a new addition to the Cobb EMC LinkedIn community which will host all members of this subcommunity. Future studies could measure the efficacy of LinkedIn as a hub for engagement for Cobb EMC’s CoP. Not only could Cobb EMC use what this study produced, but other companies could apply this to their system, management, and organizations. The steps can be applied by any company to measure their engagement statistics of their chosen target audience because the research resulted in a step by step plan to create an intra- organizational community for a company’s associates.