Social media is a great tool for nonprofits, this much we know. I’ve written many posts in our Learn the Lingo blog series detailing how nonprofits can utilize social media to communicate with their communities, fundraise or promote. But what about using social media within the office, helping us to streamline information and share valuable assets with our coworkers?
This technology, dubbed “Enterprise 2.0”, still has yet to really take off. Many companies are starting to see social media’s perks when it comes to marketing and advertising, but have yet to understand how an inter-office, Twitter style network could really help their company run smoother.
I recently read a great article by Zach Wales, the Director of Interactive Services over at Changing Our World, which really elaborated on the subject of “Enterprise 2.0”, or what The Economist describes as “social networks of the workplace”. Zach really got to the heart of this issue:
According to a study cited in the Economist, corporate workers spend between six and ten hours per week hunting for information that they could otherwise communicate to one another seamlessly in the Facebook/Twitter-like sphere of Yammer [an inter-office social network].
And what Enterprise 2.0 tools provide that Twitter and Facebook don't is security - online communities where ideas are exchanged freely without fear of breaking confidentiality, or letting sensitive information slip. They make silo-thinking an excuse of the past, and bring an organization closer to operating like a coordinated, central nervous system.
Zach mentions the France based Danone Corporation, who is experimenting with an in-house solution to network their 90,000 employees across 10 countries. Imagine how many of those 90,000 employees are working on resolving the exact same issue, but have no communication with their peers? Now imagine how much time those employees are wasting on finding information their coworkers have already researched, or even published. “Enterprise 2.0” might just be the solution to the repetitions and endless searches that hinder organizational functionality.
For more information be sure to check out Zach’s post at OnPhilanthropy.
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