Using an Enterprise Social Network to build faculty engagement in Higher Education: An Experiment at Jammu, India

Abstract

Indian Higher Education is rapidly transforming with a national mission to improve quality and attain enhanced outcomes. Faculty is the bedrock of all institutional transformation initiatives. Faculty development has thus received significant attention from policy makers with several national initiatives in the offing. However, faculty support, engagement and true empowerment has not received the desired attention in a large majority of the institutions in the Indian Higher Education space. Apart from institutional commitment to building faculty engagement, an entire supporting ecosystem is required to create a culture of sustained performance leading to measurable outcomes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, online platforms for facilitating employee engagement gained traction across several industry verticals, a trend which has continued in the post-pandemic world. We present a case study on implementing an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) at an educational institution in India for building faculty engagement. Initial results establish the effectiveness of Enterprise Social Networks for facilitating information flow, communication, sharing success stories and recognition, besides effectively chronicling events, activities, and achievements. We recommend adoption of such platforms, subject to some caveats.