2. What exactly is the social media sphere ?
Social media is a social instrument on communication with the help of
web based and mobile technologies.
Various tools like the ones mentioned below, create the whole social
media space :
 Collaborative projects
 Blogs and micro blogs,
 Content communities
 Social networking sites, virtual game and social worlds.
Social networking sites like Facebook can be used to communicate
among group of members. This is the tool we are using in our system
Tata Steel Cloud Kiosks

3. Introduction to the system
In our networking system we are considering the problems faced in organizations like
Tata steel which have a narrow span of control and taller organization structure.
• In such organizations, people down the hierarchy are not focused upon.
Hence they lack motivation which explains the high attrition rates and the
talent management problem in the manufacturing industry, steel industry
specifically.
• In such a scenario, neither the problems nor the ideas of low rung employees
who actually work on the field & are well equipped to solve many day-to-day
problems are heard by the decision makers.
• This system aims to develop a platform for solving this problem and making
their voice heard, give an opportunity to establish visibility in their peers &
managers

4. Our proposed solution, The New Cloud Kiosk – TATA STEEL’s own
employee network !
This will be the platform where a worker can get his queries resolved or work
reviewed and appreciated by the directors and senior managers by a simple ‘ping’ !
 One of the major challenges faced by Indian steel industry is attracting and
retaining the best man power starting right from the lower levels of the
organization hierarchy. Hence we need to look at solutions that will focus on
employee satisfaction, better coordination and interaction between the higher
and lower levels in the organisation.
 They need talent strategies and programmes that go beyond the ordinary to
achieve solutions that are fact-based and enable greater business performance
and drive good governance practices. In view of HR’s scope of responsibility
and areas of authority it can play an important role in embedding principles in
work structures, processes & practices and thus institutionalize good
governance. With greater emphasis on talent management, the company can
ensure talent reshaping of the employees out of self motivation.

5. Social media can help the companies here

6. Using Social media as a tool the top managers will be able to
know the contribution of employees who were unheard of till now
The central idea of the system is creating closed groups of employees in
the organization. Inside these groups everyone is able to share their ideas,
their day to day problems, the challenges they faced and how they tackled
them. The respective managers will have access to all this information &
he can look at the information is an unbiased & unprejudiced manner

7.  It solves the problem of increasing the visibility of
employees in the chain of command
 Posting those problems inside the group helps the top
management to get the solution instantaneously
 This in turn motivates the person concerned and
empowers him in contributing to the organization thereby
increasing their productivity & top line profits eventually
But low technical know how of the lower level workers &
field people might be a big hindrance in this. A solution for
that can be installing simple kiosk system as described next

8. The New Cloud Kiosk
 In developing the innovative employee kiosk, the management can implement it
using Cloud Computing and Virtualization technique – the latest buzzword that is
slowly but steadily encompassing domains outside IT and into core sectors.
 Cloud Computing : Services provided on demand over the internet. For
implementing the new employee kiosk, we recommend use of Virtualization
technology ( VMWare / Citrix etc.)
 Few advantages of using Virtualization : By outsourcing this project to some
service provider the company itself will be freed from the hassles of maintaining or
supporting it, neither it has to maintain its own database. It saves them of the
Capex and Opex and they will have the interface where employees can login with
their individual employee ids.
 Cloud computing will offer businesses the ability to connect to computing
resources and access the company’s full employee base at one go, with a previously
unknown level of ease. At the basic level, cloud services include software and
applications on demand so that the end users, from the blue-collared worker to the
tech-savvy director, can stay connected among themselves with ease.

9.  VMware Cloud Operations Services provide insight, prioritized
recommendations, and expert guidance to transform operational processes and
organizational structures, to realize the greatest value . The portfolio of
advisory and transformation services will help develop key capabilities within
the organization.
 Disadvantages of not moving to cloud  Advantages of moving to cloud and
and using traditional client-server using virtualization:
models :  Resource pooling
 Expensive to acquire and maintain  Highly flexible and scalable
hardware  Easy to deploy and use
 Not very scalable  Highly redundant
 Difficult to replicate  Optimum usage of resources
 Redundancy is difficult to implement  Saves cost to a great extent
 Vulnerable to hardware outages
 In many cases, processor is under-
utilized

10. From virtualization to cloud computing
How can we use cloud computing here ?
 You “rent” it as needed from a cloud
 There are public clouds e.g. Amazon EC2, and now many others (Microsoft, IBM, Sun,
and others . You can create a private one . With more control over security, etc
 How Cloud Computing Works :
 Various providers let you create virtual servers
 You create virtual servers ("virtualization")
 Choose the OS that will run on the kiosk.
 It will run on a large server farm located somewhere and maintained by the vendor.
 You can instantiate more on a few minutes' notice
 You can shut down instances in a minute or so and pay for what you use

11. Usefulness to the organization
 Even the bottom most person in the organization structure is able to
get appreciation and better visibility for the contribution made by
him/her. Since there is better appreciation from the management.
Labor turnover decreases, productivity of the organization increases
and absenteeism is reduced.
 Whenever some technical problems arises in the organization for an
employee, few solutions might be obtained instantaneously. This saves
the time spend in searching for the required person. Thus idle item or
non productive hours is reduced.
 The top management is able to find the troubleshooter without
spending money or calling in a specialized person for solving that
issue. In this way its cost effective for the organization.
 Even in a centralized decision making structure, decentralization of
decision making can be brought in. This helps bring in new ideas
inside the organization. But the final decision to make will still lie with
the top management.

12. GOALS
 1st GOAL - Stick to the core business
Since this is at the end of the day not Tata Steel’s core business, they
should not take the hassles of doing system administration for the
kiosks. They are a steel manufacturing company, not an IT company.
Hence cloud computing enabled virtualization is the best solution to
this.
 2nd GOAL : Bringing the employees closer to each other
Across locations, across departments and across the hierarchy thus
creating greater motivation, instant solution to the issues faced by the
employees by experts sitting at some other location, greater
transparency in the employee-manager relations etc.
 3rd GOAL : all of this at minimal cost

13. Key challenges
 As the employee’s idea is public the employees might be
discouraged about posting about sensitive topics.
 It requires participation from employees, hence some
reward mechanism must be established for it to work.
For e.g.., best entries, ‘Innovative ideas of the month’ etc.,
 Hesitation on sharing confidential policies etc., over the
online platform
 Moderately high costs of implementing a full fledged kiosk
system

14. The financial side of the system
 As we are using social media networking, there is no cost involved with
this model.
 However significant amount of money will be needed to drive the
initiative of the knowledge kiosks for the employees.
 Major cost factors are kiosk machines (~$2000 per kiosk) and short
training & orientation program that will proceed the implementation.
 A simple solution will be to get a few kiosks & try this model of
problem solving & recognition model at few locations first & then go
ahead to implement it on a cloud based world wide Tata Steel network.