The Use of Social Media in the Workplace

Recently, I attended a presentation by a colleague, Jeremia Mthimunye on the use of social media in the workplace as a trend. More information on this topic can be found on his blog http://jamtimunye.wordpress.com . In the presentation, he outlined the evolution of social tools, with emphasis of life before social tools and how the high communication costs and low levels of collaboration created silo systems both inside and outside organisations. Social tools can generally be classified into eight types, namely blogs, social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life), collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), content communities (eg YouTube), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), social media analytics and social listening tools.

 

Social tools are becoming increasingly embedded in other organisational systems instead of being offered as stand alone systems. I had the opportunity to attend the recent Gartner Symposium in Cape Town, where the latest trends such as big data, the internet of things and information management were discussed. One of the maverick presentations titled ‘Microsoft must kill SharePoint’ suggested that Yammer (Microsoft’s social tool) and cloud computing would obfuscate the need for on premise SharePoint. According to the presenter, Jeffrey Mann (Gartner’s Research VP) Yammer would evolve over time and offer advanced functionality that would make it an integral part of a company’s collaboration tools.

 

The advantages of using social media in the workplace are pretty apparent, whether you look at them internally or externally. Internal benefits would be ease of collaboration among employees, advances knowledge management and a move towards big data management. External benefits that accrue from closer interaction with clients are a better understanding of their needs and an improved company image. The disadvantages, on the other hand are reduced productivity as employees spend more time on social tools, likelihood of data and identity theft, and data overload and its effect on the organisation’s systems.

 

Despite these obvious benefits, I see a number of additional challenges that will influence the adoption of social tools in the workplace. Firstly, culture will play a big role in how social tools become embedded in organisations. An organisation that operates in silos and has not traditionally seen its customers as business partners will not find adoption and proliferation of social media an easy task. The number of followers that some companies have for their Twitter handle, and the frequency of tweets are not reflective of a company that sees social tools as a strategic business tool. Companies that really want to capitalise on social tools need to have dedicated staff that manage and update their social media accounts.

 

Secondly, social tools were introduced with an element of freedom, i.e. it is your account and you are free to write what you want. Over time, companies have started to pay attention to what their staff members write and in a way sought to control this. The incidents involving the former spokesperson of the Hawks Polela fired from Hawks  and an applicant for the Auditor-General position Facebook musings stalk AG hopefulare cases in point.  Staff members will therefore view the incorporation of social tools and the responsibilities and consequences with a level of apprehension.

 

Thirdly, juggling between various social tools and accounts presents its own challenges. Let us take someone with personal social media accounts, who also manages the company’s social media page and also has an account with an internal social tool such as Yammer. Deciding what to post on which account, and the consequences of the post is quite a juggling act for some like this. There are obvious ways to get around this, such as linking all personal ones so that you only post on one and it is shared on the rest.

 

Despite all these challenges, companies need to embrace social tools if they want to be at the forefront of their industries and have real time communication with their clients. Stringent policies and procedures have to be put in place to mitigate the risks associated with social media in the corporate environment. These challenges also present an opportunity for academic researchers, particularly around influencers and consequences for social tool adoption in the corporate world.

 

References

 

 

Mann, J. (2013. Maverick: Should Microsoft Kill Sharepoint? Paper presented at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa 2013, Cape Town, 16-18 September 2013.