Revision 292190194 of "Corporate grapevine" on enwiki

==Overview==
Corporate Grapevine is an informal communication channel which employees within an organisation use to share and discuss amongst themselves classified or sensitive or confidential information not meant to be conversed in a formal setting. With the expansion of the corporate world with offices spanning across cities and countries, the scope of these water cooler chats and Corporate Gossips are now limited to team members present at a physical location. This becomes usually restricted if the team/individual is working offsite or is afraid of disclosing his identity while participating in these discussions. Being a part of the expanding corporate world, there would have been times where employees would have come across situation where they were the last to hear about office gossips such as Mergers, Job-cuts, Redundancies, Layoffs, Office Romance, Background of New Joinees, etc. or the employees had some Hot or Scandalous or Shocking piece of information that he/ she wanted to share it but were afraid to be the first one or be named. To fill this gap, Cornet Solutions Private Limited launched the world's first corporate social networking website in July 2008 in the form of corporategrapevine.com which acts like a Company Dashboard or a Bulletin Board.

==Channel of Communication==
Stories usually spread like fire through the Corporate Grapevine and usually involves enthusiasts to add on to the flavour of story by adding in their versions to it. However, no one takes credit for being the orginator of the story and usually say that they have heard from it a reliable source.

Keeping the above in mind the website paves way for providing an online channel to this very important form of communication within organisations. The USP of this informal online channel of communication is about the ability of employees to create multiple faces for any organisation so as to cater to different stakeholders within an organisation. It also has the functionality of creating 2 faces (Self & Anonymous) for an individual user so to express himself/ herself with more confidence. Corporategrapevine is different from other other Social Networking Websites in the form that it focus on the profile of a company rather than the profile of an individual user. Each company profile by default include two Forums - Public & Private Forum.

A Public Forum is a place where any user can view and participate in the the publicly disclosed events and happenings in the Organisation, post messages, ask queries, view job postings, make friends with others in the organisation. The Private Forum allows only current or the past employees of the organisation to do the similar activities done by members of the Public Forum. Employees of a Private Forum can create many more Forums within the same organisation. By default, when a user creates an account on the website and adds an organisation, he/ she is given access to the Public Forum by default. The user depending on his status of employment in the organisation may request the administrator to make him a member of the Private Forum.

Users have to be a part of an organisation within the website. A user has to go to the 'Manage Grapevine' and add the company which he wants to join. Once a user joins an organisation, he gets access to publicly available information through the Public Forum. If he/ she wants to be a member of the Private Forum of the organisation, then he needs to apply. This can be done by either a self validation process which requires a valid organisation email-id (to authenticate that the user is associated with that organisation) or send in a request to the organisation administrator for acceptance. Once accepted he/ she becomes a member of the organisation and gets unlimited access (ie. access to both Public as well as Private forum as well to create more Forums). Each forum in the organisation offers its members a Hot Talk Section, Soft Talk Section, Announcement Board, Upcoming Events, Job Board, and Document Library for adding, viewing, or commenting on information pertaining to that organisation.

===Hot Talks===
It has been observed in general that working professionals are shy to participate in rumours, gossips, share their story, hearsay, whistleblow, juicy buzz, etc...happening within their organisation. This might be for the fear of the repurcussions of the actions that might be taken against them or to sheild their image within the organisation. To unveil this apprehension of employees, Corporategrapevine has introduced for them the Hot Talks Section. Each user is allowed 2 options to participate in this module. They can either be revealing their identity or hide their identity and can initiate or participate in the discussions in this module by hiding their identity in the form of an Anonymous Member.

In this module users share and spread the grapevine brewing in the organisation. Users can contribute by creating a new discussion thread or by replying to the existing thread. It gives the member the flexibility to post/ reply as 'Self' or 'Anonymous' by masking his/ her identity. Viewers of the published Hot Talk can contribute to an existing Hot Talk by voting for the story as either a 'Fact' or discarding it as a 'Bluff'. The cumulative votes of viewers of a Hot Talk can help determine the authenticity of the Hot Talk.
Some of the topics that members can participate within this module are discussions on Mergers and Acquisitions; Promotion, Appraisals, Resignations, and Retrenchments; Office Love; etc.

===Soft Talk===
This channel acts as the Corporate Blackboard to discuss on information that might be of interest to others. It serves as an everyday chitchat room between colleagues to share their problems, issues, experience with others in the organisation. It can be vent for discussions on News of Interest, Knowledge Sharing between members, requesting for help from other members. Some of the topics that members can use this module for are Holiday announcment, Office Shifting, Lunch in the canteen, Staff Sales, New Releases in the theatre, Putting up Car or other items for sale, Flat Sharing, Selling Cricket Match tickets, etc.

===Announcements===
This channel acts as the public face and mouthpiece of the organisation. Only members are allowed to post an announcement within this module. They have an option to post an announcement visible to the Public at large or to the members only (Private Forum members). This is often used by organisations to announce Press Releases, Chairman's Interview on Magazine, Declaring Performance or Bonus or Dividends for the year, Company acquistions in competitor's business, Quarterly Results, Audited Annual accounts, Internal Employee Awards, etc.

===Upcoming Events===
This board helps inform about future events planned between members of the organisation. Once again only members are allowed to post an event. They have an option to post an announcement visible to the Public at large or to the members only (Private Forum Members). Each new event has options to add a vote/polling with two options. This can be used to count acceptance (eg attendance to an event), choice (meal type vegetarian or non-vegetarian), etc.
Some of instances where organisations have been using it is to announce Board Meetings, Annual Get Togethers, Inter-division Sports Days, Department Day Out, Blood Donation Camps Day, Leadership Development Workshop, Project Review Meetings, Anniversary or Dinner or Invite, etc.

===Job Posting===
Internal employees closer to either the sponsoring manager or the recruiters are usually the first of the group to come to know of any vacancies arising within their company. It is always an attempt of companies to feel the vacancy within the least time and cost.

This channel allows company members to post internal as well as external vacancies to this forum. It provides members, recruiters and job seekers a quick, effective and inexpensive platform, thus bridging the gap between employers and job seekers.

==References==
*Leverage the Corporate Grapevine ([http://www.networldingblog.com/2006/08/08/leverage-the-corporate-grapevine/])
*Managing the grapevine ([http://www.analytictech.com/mb119/grapevine-article.htm])
*Managing the Corporate Grapevine ([http://www.safetyxchange.org/the-safety-profession-and-your-career/managing-the-corporate-grapevine])
*Tell it to the grapevine: to get the word out, no other medium communicates news more quickly ([http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_4_19/ai_88253005/])
*CorporateGrapevine vs. FaceBook or MySpace ([http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1221313])
*Launch Detail for 'CorporateGrapevine.com' ([http://www.launchfeed.com/launches/view/1223048832])
*Corporate Social Networking ([http://www.killerstartups.com/tag/Corporate-Grapevine])
*They Hear It Through The Grapevine ([http://www.helpatnursingspectrum.com/load_article.html?AID=964])
*Banishing negativity ([http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/manager/2008/06/23/stories/2008062351151000.htm])

==External links==
* [http://corporategrapevine.com Corporate Website]

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