As I stated in my last post, blocking social media tools/sites from your employees just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense nowadays. You have to manage the process, yes, but there are more benefits than drawbacks in my opinion. Here are the various reasons why you need to not only stop blocking social networking from your staff, but embrace social networking with open arms. Embrace these concepts and it will become the ‘glue’ that holds your organization, and more specifically your employees, together.
Breaking down silos – When you have a pool of knowledge about your company’s products/services/information segregated in separate departments or individuals, you essentially have a ‘silo’ of knowledge. Accounting doesn’t know what Sales is doing. IT has no idea what is going with PR. And so on. And often these silos don’t communicate with each other, especially if they are geographically separated. Social networking tools can get those silos talking and sharing.
Connecting a distributed workforce (presence) – I have talked about this before. Knowing what is going on inside the company, especially with people geographically distributed, can be extremely valuable. No more phone calls trying to find out what is going on. No more wondering if that key individual is in the office right now. You’ll know.
Understanding progress – Knowing the status of other departments and what is happening inside those departments can be solved by social networking. Is mortgage processing backed up today? Is the IT department being slammed today? Is the entire Marketing department out at a conference this week?
Connecting on related activities – Knowing what others are doing allows you to connect with them if there is a benefit. For example, if you see that a fellow employee is preparing for a meeting/conference call that would help you or that you would like to participate in, then with social networking you’ll know about it.
Knowing history – there is a record of activity with social networking tools. Whatever happened with that project/meeting/issue? Don’t guess, go look!
Building community – Don’t underestimate the power of your employees getting to know each other better. Social networking allows co-workers to learn more about each other and their personal lives as well. And if you are a friend with someone then you’re more likely to work better with them and share information with them. Never, ever, underestimate the power of building community among your staff.
So there you go. My mom always told me not to play with the glue. Sorry mom, can’t do it. It’s just too darn important now!
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