WALKING THE WALK
Social media burst into mainstream consciousness last year. Some called it a fad that wouldn't last, but Facebook is ranked alongside countries in terms of its number of users. Twitter is still hailed as a revolution in how companies can promote their services and engage better with their customers.
There are, of course, many other social networks, but these two are the largest and most familiar to millions of people, and it's this familiarity that has created a curious side effect that I don't think anyone could have predicted – it's making many organisations stronger! Irrespective of your organisation's position on social networks, your employees are using them. It may not be during work hours, or using company resources, but social networking is now a communication vector they have become comfortable with and are actively using: enter Yammer, stage left.
Yammer is an interesting proposition; its goal is to "connect [you] with the people in your company or organisation" and it uses a blend of familiar features from both Twitter and Facebook. It is effectively an internal social network for companies. When Yammer first popped up I was sceptical, but the companies I have seen use it properly are finding their staff are better informed, communicate more effectively and are generally more empowered.
I'm not alone in this thinking; here's what Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital Australia, had to say about Yammer: "We started using Yammer with a small group of people inside Deloitte Australia. The more we used it, the more useful it became. We then decided to use it more broadly and did a small internal campaign to get users. We now use it for things as varied as project communications, developing ideas and innovation, knowledge sharing, marketing and many other things.
Yammer has helped build on the sense of community in Deloitte." Yammer and similar online services pose an interesting security issue for many organisations; however in these cases I am seeing the same kind of social networking behaviour start to organically occur within established enterprise network platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint and even Lotus Notes. My observation is that the end-users almost always instigate it, and that the organisations that have been successful with internal social networking have staff who 'get it'.
En masse people seem to have become a lot more savvy about social networking; this could be a by-product of the media's focus on social media and its associated issues, or simply familiarity, but whatever the reason, most people now understand the need to separate personal networks from their professional ones (and to treat each appropriately).
So, what now? Historically companies have spent a lot of time and money on team building. Days were spent at retreats helping staff "grow a sense of belonging", encouraging them to "bridge departmental gaps" and form "trust relationships that empower". Sound familiar?
We're now in the surprising position where staff themselves are engaging in the very behaviour organisations have paid experts to promote; people are talking again – and that excites me! I believe traditional team building still plays an important role in this new mix, but think it timely that organisations now revisit their position on social media, this time with a thought to how it could be used internally.
Social media tends to polarise people quickly, especially when raised at an organisational level, but think on it with an open mind. There will be the usual considerations around technology, time, resourcing and governance, but the bottom line is your organisation could be stronger for using it – and may not even have a choice.
