In the face of thousands of employers who have banned the likes of Facebook in the workplace, and claims that allowing people to access social networks disrupts productivity, research out this week suggests the opposite. That using social networks in the workplace can actually improve efficiency.
The research comes from AT&T who surveyed 2,500 people across five countries in Europe and reports that 65% of respondents claimed that using social networks had made them or their colleagues more efficient; 46% said it had sparked creativity.
Of course, the real detail of the report is not as some headlines might seem to suggest. The research doesn't point to more use of Facebook in the workplace to increase efficiency. It's actually much more interesting than that.
The respondents across the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands reported a range of social networking tools that helped efficiency and creativity, but rather than Facebook they were talking about internal tools for collaboration.
The top five social networking tools that respondents claimed helped increase efficiency in the workplace were:
- Companies' own collaboration sites on intranets (39%)
- Internal forums within the company (20%)
- Company-produced video material shared on intranets (16%)
- Online social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook (15%)
- External collaboration sites on the web and internal blogging sites (both 11%)
The evidence is clear that businesses are using online community and social networking tools more and more internally. They're using them to share information and ideas, connect with colleagues and to collaborate and co-create. A full 59% of these citing a tool in the survey named forums or intranets for this purpose, this compares with just 15% citing an external social network such as LinkedIn or Facebook. And I would imagine that more people were thinking of the likes of LinkedIn than the likes of Facebook here.
So when you dig into the actual research itself it isn't suggesting what many reports seem to suggest - that using Facebook can make your employees more efficient. Rather it is highlighting a more interesting and insightful trend - for employees to use social media tools as internal collaboration and knowledge share. This is a great step and I'm not surprised it is adding to the efficiency of employees. Businesses rely heavily on the knowledge and creativity of their employees and tools that can help to maximise and harness these are bound to be embraced.
At FreshNetworks we also see that the use of social tools in an organisation can make them more comfortable about using the same tools with their customers. They see the benefits they get from online communities internally and want to get the same benefits from using them externally. This research may then point to a bigger trend - the use of social tools had become a norm inside organisations across Europe, The same organisations are now looking to use them externally.
Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog
Some more reading
- Social networking makes staff more efficient
- Surprise: Social Networking Increases Efficiency But Don't Expect Facebook Ban to be Lifted
- Survey highlights employee expectations from social networking in the European workplace
- Social Networking Makes Better Workers
- Social networking sites good for business: study
- Professional Networking: Just for Fun or Part of Your Job Or Combination? Tips for managing multi-memberships in social networks?
- Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is better for business?
- Online Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs
- Adopting Web 2.0 in Organisations
Link to original post