The Boss's Next Demand: Make Lots of Friends

Making friends at the office has never been more rewarding.

Armed with reams of new data, companies including giants Procter & Gamble Co. and Cisco Systems Inc. are seeking out 'influencers, ' or those among their employees who are particularly well-connected and trusted by their peers.

Once found, the firms are harnessing these workers' clout to come up with new products, get workers on board with big changes like mergers, or spread information throughout the organization.

Years ago, such employees often went unnoticed, lost in organizational charts. But the rise of social media has highlighted the importance of networks, and companies are determined to capitalize on the power players lurking in their workforces. The influencers reap benefits, too: more money, promotions and opportunities to rub shoulders with top executives.

To find these people, some companies conduct surveys, asking questions like, 'Who do you go to when you're having a bad day at work?' or 'Who do you go to when you have a question that seems obvious?' They may also tap into email and calendar data, often stripped of content to preserve privacy, or internal messaging sites.

The result is often mapped out as a spider web of connections. Executives say the influencers are sometimes already in jobs that reflect their skills--such as a project manager who works with several departments--but they say they have also been surprised to discover, for example, an IT worker holding together a tenuous connection between offices on two continents.

Business-software company Salesforce.com Inc. plumbs its Chatter product, a sort of corporate Facebook, to identify its influencers, says Peter Coffee, the company's vice president for strategic research. Using algorithms, the company is continually analyzing the data: how many followers each employee has, how often they post about their work, and whether those posts generate responses. All Chatter accounts--Mr. Coffee says the company's 12, 800 employees are all on the platform--are assigned an influence rank that charts where they fall in comparison with others.

The top 20 'chatterati, ' Salesforce's term for its highest influencers, are invited to attend the company's global senior management meeting, which occurs twice a year and was formerly open only to Salesforce's top 600 leaders. Some managers also take employees' Chatter scores into account when determining promotions and compensation, though the company declined to provide specifics.

'What this does is say, 'You are more than the node that takes your inbox and turns it into your outbox, '' Mr. Coffee says.

Indeed, many companies say they are identifying a previously invisible layer of talent, key players who may not be posting top results on their own but are boosting performance across the organization.

'There's this whole underground world, ' says Kristin Kassis, a managing partner at WorkWise LLC, a consulting firm that has helped Fortune 500 firms identify influencers and often focuses on how to retain them.

But some academics caution that a data-driven emphasis on what has traditionally been a subjective trait could ultimately lead executives astray.

Jerry Davis, a management professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, says companies could be 'rewarding the wrong thing' if they put too much stock in the hubs in their social networks.

'When it comes to promotions or layoffs, that's when it starts to get hairy, ' he adds. 'Wait a minute, I thought I was doing my work really well, and because I didn't spend my time networking, I'm going to be fired?' he imagines an employee saying.

HealthFitness Corp., a Minneapolis company that provides corporate health services, called on Syndio Social, a Chicago firm that helps companies map their networks, to identify staff members who could help ease the shift to a major new technology platform last year.

HealthFitness had a lot on the line, including $30 million and high client expectations. The company flew 30 influencers to its Lake Forest, Ill., offices and gave them communication training and extra insight into the project so they could field co-workers' questions and build positive buzz.

The influencers helped bring their colleagues on board, Chief Executive Paul Lotharius recalls. But he had to remind himself that clout was only one way to assess employees so other qualities, such as technical expertise and leadership skills, wouldn't get lost in the process.

'We almost fell into a trap of getting overexcited with Syndio, ' he says. 'You just start thinking, 'Wow, I can use this for everything.'

Less cautious is Sonny Garg, an executive at energy firm Exelon Corp. When the Chicago-based firm merged with Constellation Energy in 2012, managers and employees in information technology selected a group of well-connected workers to act as liaisons between anxious staffers and leadership during the 'upheaval, ' Mr. Garg says.

He adds that the initiative didn't cost any money and may have kept employees from leaving after the merger. Influencer Kathy Bresnahan, an IT analyst with the company, says it helped ease angst in the departments.

The company is now starting to use survey data to help pinpoint its top influencers and is launching a program that would give them leadership training. Influencers, Mr. Garg says, 'can either help you or really hurt you.'

For their part, influencers are thrilled to be rewarded for their networking skills. Andrea Bredow, a manager in HealthFitness's marketing department, describes herself as an 'extrovert through and through' who likes to stop by co-workers' desks and plan group outings.