New report: the social shift in internal communications





A popular meme suggests that social media can be 'explained' by reducing it to the actions it conveys. Twitter is used to alert friends to the fact that "I'm eating a donut." Facebook is helpful to let people know that "I like donuts." The suggestion that our underlying behavior - eating donuts - is unchanged is comforting, but not really true. Social media interfaces are profoundly altering just about everything besides the act of chewing: how you find donuts, which donuts you eat, who you eat them with, and et cetera.

This is true not just for consumers, but also for individuals at work, who have to do more important things than eat donuts.

Trying to keep on top of the proliferating array of gold-rush services is a full time job. Minute tweaks reliably generate reams of analysis - because of the low barriers for publication, the mediascape surrounding social media products has become profoundly captured by manufacturer PR. Discerning utility from hype is an arduous challenge.

What happens when companies get it wrong? The Social Shift in Internal Communications features an anonymous interview with a Condé Nast employee who suffered through a failed implementation of an instant messenging platform:

It wasted time because the important stuff, the conclusions of the chatter, were buried within the chatter; and you had to read through backlogs of crap if you were, say, at a meeting for a couple of hours. Also, we couldn't find a way to attach documents, etc. 

We didn't use it for that long. The more ridiculous issue is, of course, that we're all sitting within literally 30 or 40 feet of one another. 

Whether a given utility is actually useful for your working group is another problem still. This report sets out to discover the best methodologies used for making the right decisions about which internal communications platforms to use.

What we discovered is that successful companies don't chase hype, don't blindly use the most popular products, but carefully choose the solutions that prioritize the employee thought-operations that are most necessary for their organization's triumph.

They are also, sometimes, reorganizing their companies to better maximize new employment structures that have been made possible by technology. Smaller organizations especially have grown to become reliant upon distributed networks of freelancers with talents that can be activated on demand.

Is this the future of work? We're all waiting to find out...


Topics: Mobile Social Strategy & Operations Customer Experience
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Reader comments (3)

  1. Avatar-blank-50x50 Carla Anne Ernst

    12:41AM on 9th March 2012

    Nice perspective! Internal communications now is social media.

  2. Avatar-blank-50x50 Ian

    8:13AM on 9th March 2012

    It just goes to show that a lot of the hype surrounding social media is just that Hype! Apart from the noise coming from the PR and marketing departments from these enterprise 2/internal social media solutions I am still unconvinced how these tools can actually made employees more productive.

    I beleieve that they in fact add more distraction to the employee in getting their work done. As it mentioned in the post - Conde Nast staff where using IM when they could have just got up and had a face to face conversation - which is the best form of social media!

    I would be interested to learn any great implementations of social media within large organisations where it has brought a tangible ROI and real life cost savings.

  3. Avatar-blank-50x50 Zohare

    8:46AM on 10th March 2012

    This is a simple, yet elegant read. I like how all forms of communication are being categorized for simplicity in future management.

    The case in point here is very apt, across various industries and work environments. It's good to get on the bandwagon, but how quickly and what you adopt are key to sustainable utility.

    Thanks for the insight.

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