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How large should your company be before you consider an internal social network?
Sort of a follow-up question to "What platforms does your company use for internal collaboration?"
Companies like Jive, Yammer, Socialcast, and Salesforce Chatter deliver custom social networks for employee introductions, communication, and collaboration. What are some signs that your company is ready to create its own custom internal community?
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- Courtney Hunt
I'd do this from Day 1 or otherwise ASAP. Closed-user-group social networks are the future of enterprise communications. The sooner the better! And I personally have a bias towards this capability being implemented entirely in the cloud and accessible via any authorized device by any authorized user from anywhere. So - social, outsourced, flexible - and now!
Hmm... The concept of collaboration is nowhere near the concept of social networking. If you actually mean social networking, are you saying that it is fine for company employees to be spending their time on Facebook (or a home-grown equivalent) instead of working? How exactly does having employees chatting away or exchanging gossip online improve the company's bottom line?
No - the mechanisms are social networking, but the content is work.Yes, it's collaboration, shared workspaces, communications, and more.
Personal story, Bob: I used to work at a large, global corporation with many branches and offices. I knew who worked on my team and in my physical vicinity, but the rest of the company was largely out of reach.
So we created our own social network for introductions and threads and, what sometimes started off as off-topic communications evolved into internal partnerships, new projects, and shared goals. I wouldn't have gotten an insight into the larger fabric of the company, and I would not have met many of the people I did if this network hadn't existed. Being in touch with your coworkers and having the ability to make water-cooler discussions broader and more accessible was a really positive thing, in my opinion.
For any company that's largely siloed and potentially has some disconnect among divisions, a solution like this makes sense... to me, at least. That's primarily why I asked the question I did.
I must respectfully disagree with Andrew and support Craig's assertion that private digital networks (a better term than social networks) "are the future of enterprise communications." In response to the initial question, I outline the organizational factors for engaging in new 2.0 technologies in Part 4 of the Social Media Primer: Ante up! Organizational Factors Relevant to Joining the Social Media Game. Although it doesn't focus exclusively on internal communicationand collaboration, the underlying principles are the same. Here's a link:
http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsPrimer4
Contrary to what many people think, the number one reason for shifting to digital networks for communication and collaboration is that doing so will increase efficiency and effectiveness. Both I and others have provided numerous reasons why and how that's true in response to some of the recent articles about "the end of email." They can also enhance an organization's efforts to develop business and increase revenue.
One of the things that has really struck me in reading the criticisms of using more 2.0 (call them social if you must) technologies in organizations is how little people understand about the new tools that are available to them, and how much better they are for many uses than more traditional tools. They don't replace them wholesale, but they do enable people to work much smarter. Less surprising of course, is the knee-jerk rejection of any tool that has the word "social" in it, the general resistance to change, the reluctance to shift away from "the devil they know."
I'll be publishing a blog post soon that more fully fleshes out my arguments for why all organizations should be moving to private digital networks and provides guidance for organizational leaders to determine the best way to proceed.
I agree with Andrew that size is not the only valid decision criterion. Does your company have offices in multiple locations and time zones? How mobile is your employee base? Do people and departments in your company operate in siloes, to their detriment? Enterprise social software can support all of these situations and others that impede the flow of information and knowledge within an organization.
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I don't think that size alone is the key criteria for such a decision.
Furthermore, I don't think it's a given that an organization even consider an internal social network. This technology is not a panacea. It facilitates communication, yes, but it facilitates some level of distraction as well. For all the complaints I hear about how cluttered people's email inbox is, what makes them think that the same non-essential bits of communication that end up in email won't transfer to any other mode of communication they use?
After all, the problem is less with the technology itself and more with the people using the technology.
Self-subscribing to lists does not automatically ensure that people will get the right information in the correct amount to be useful and productive.
Size, corporate culture, business needs, available toolset, and current communication issues should all be factored into the question of whether or not an internal social network is needed.
And undefined benefits like "better communication" should not be used to drive large-scale projects that will consume time and resources that could be going to other, revenue-enhancing initiatives.
-ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker