In modern business organizations, employees are connected not only to one another via social media but in many cases also with vendors, suppliers, clients or even customers. This leads to certain dilemmnas for the organization. The organization must actively try to leverage the contacts of employees. While on the one hand they may all be employees, but their connect to each other matters when it comes to wielding informal influence. There are some of them who are well integrated and rank high on closeness while others may not be that well linked but may provide connect to some loners so can be classified as exhibiting ‘betweenness’. The HR needs to monitor both the groups for risk mitigation as well as for damage control. The closeness exhibiting group allow risk mitigation while damage control can be done using those who show ‘betweenness’. The HR thus needs to conduct a thorough business analysis of the contacts of its employees as well as modes of communication without violating privacy norms. Greater communication by email shows formality while Skype or social media demonstrate relative informality. The talent management team must ensure that pivotal employees are not removed without creating adequate backup.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-to-do-before-you-fire-a-pivotal-employee