Businesses should get Social

Business class social media - simples

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the popular adoption of social media resources such as Facebook and Twitter in the private lives of your staff has arrived in your business. Business managers have a choice; prevent employee access completely, or acknowledge that a more intelligent approach could establish rapport with staff and build a new business advantage…

Many say that consumerization of IT is complete. This is a bit of a stretch for a modern IP enabled business. However, it is true that the expectations set in the private lives of an organisations staff are bought into the life of the office and if this is not attended to, IT managers and company’s bosses will lose control of their IT resources.

Respected IT industry analyst Gartner has been looking at the challenge and Carol Rozwell, vice president and distinguished analyst at the company said this,  "Social media offers tempting opportunities to interact with employees, business partners, customers, prospects and a whole host of anonymous participants on the social web." It’s not that long ago that employees were prohibited from using the Web at work for fear that they may be wasting time so some employers simply turned it off.

A more intelligent approach would be to establish trust with staff, provide them with clear policy guidelines that are simple to follow and then, use technology to enforce them or at least to measure compliance. Rozwell adds, "…those who participate in social media [at work] need guidance from their employer about the rules, responsibilities, 'norms' and behaviours expected of them, and these topics are commonly covered in the social media policy."

So, no matter what your sphere of operations is, it would be very unlikely that some considered use of Social Media could not add value. Similarly, there can be little doubt that the intelligent application of user friendly policy and supporting technology can make it a win-win for all parties.

Published by The IPstore – February 2011.