No piece of web technology has had more influence in our personal lives than Facebook. It has allowed us to share information, seek information, and visualise each other and the world in which we live. It was at the vanguard of social networks' infancy.
Recently, Facebook announced Facebook at Work which will operate at the enterprise level, separate from employees' personal accounts. It is meant to compete with leading enterprise-only social tools. Many enterprise social tools that have alluded previously to being the Facebook for the enterprise have been met with scepticism and disinterest. The idea of a company's employees spending their work hours frivolously posting status updates or selfies has from time to time resulted in out and out dismissal of using any such technology at work. So how might Facebook now fare?
Facebook is a social network built in the first instance for the individual, but tools that can provide similar functionality to organisations also exist – in fact those enterprise social tools we have just mentioned. They are known collectively as Enterprise Social Collaboration (E2.0) and are largely cloud based Software-as-service applications. Their founding objectives were the improvement of employee engagement and workplace efficiency, an inception quite different from, say, Facebook. Below are three key points to better understanding E2.0.
What is enterprise social collaboration and why it is valuable?
E2.0 is social but is not meant to be a platform to socialise. It is intended to support internal collaboration and communication to enhance workforce performance. It offers similar functionality to social networks but for a different purpose. For example, a photo post in Facebook serves to entertain with a visual depiction of self or others. A photo share in E2.0 may serve to visualise an issue that is difficult to verbalise. If working with a colleague to solve that difficult problem, instead of exchanging multiple emails back and forth, wasting time and isolating communication to two points, you post a photo on the company's E2.0 platform along with any conversation and resolution. It is tagged with appropriate search words and visible to the entire organisation in perpetuity as shared knowledge. When the problem is presented again, time to resolution is now significantly reduced thus improving workplace efficiency.
E2.0 deployment requires cultural and behavioural change work?
With any technology deployment, change management is necessary for true transformation. The confusion with E2.0 has been thinking that because it is so similar to social networks, adoption could happen likewise: virally. The truth is, deployment of E2.0 requires cultural and behavioural change work within the business. If employees engage in regular meetings, collaborating easily and divulging information freely, adoption may be easier. If an organisation operates in silos, information confined to a handful of key knowledge experts then adoption will be difficult. Both scenarios require investment in behavioural and change management.
Buy-in of top level executives is critical?
The hierarchical nature of the organisation mandates a structure of communication that flows from the top down. Traditional modes of communication: email, meetings, phone calls are all initiated by the leaders and modelled by all employees. Deploying E2.0 and new ways of communicating requires that leaders engage in the same manner in order to achieve success. Employees will not feel empowered to use these applications if the message from the top does not demonstrate the need and value for their utilisation. Active engagement across all levels of management is required. Adopting social networks in our private lives has been a natural process. But adopting similar technologies at work requires a structured, and probably always at least partly mandated process. Users have to be given, or at least encouraged to develop, shared and sensible objectives that will benefit the business while they use E2.0 – something that does not necessarily sit well with how most of us utilise Facebook. That is, as our favourite waste of time.
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