Internal Social Media at Work: a Necessity or a Fad?
Nowadays it is hard to find a company that in one way or another would not encourage its employees to use internal social media. The hope to foster meaningful, fast and seamless interactions among them, to break silos between departments, to look trendy and relevant compared to the competition are a few things that convinced businesses that social media was the answer. Not to mention the highly-skilled marketing experts and multimillion budgets that the giants among service providers have put on propagating their social media offerings.
To eliminate the threshold for the adoption of those solutions, many service providers decided to give them for free. The companies signed the deal, the social media suite was installed, the teams to run it were hired, and the individual employees got assigned KPIs to promote it. Then came the time for the promised miracle of engaging and productive communications.
Unsurprisingly, nothing has changed. Let’s find out why.
In its essence, social media is a way for people — who do not have other ways to connect — to stay in touch and exchange news about their lives. Maybe you met at the conference and you didn’t have a chance to exchange emails or you are not as close as to have a phone conversation, nevertheless, it would be a shame to lose a potentially valuable connection.
Inside the company though, there is an online address book that solves this issue. It contains emails and sometimes even office numbers of all employees (and contractors). All you need to know is the name or the title of the person you want to find. You click on their email address and, like magic, it takes you to a ‘New’ window of the Outlook. I doubt any social media can compete with this level of convenience in professional communications.
This brings us to the first (rhetorical) question: is there really a gap that has to be filled with internal social media? Is it actually useful? Let us not dwell on it as most companies have already introduced Yammer, Lync, SharePoint, etc. into their expense reports and the life of their employees.
The second question is whether it is used. If you ever worked for a corporation or were in touch with somebody who did, you undoubtedly heard something between puzzlement and a complaint in reference to internal social media. Indeed, where does it really fit in a working day of an employee?
You come in, you check your email, somebody pings you through a corner messenger, you work, you go to the coffee corner to find out the fresh gossip about promotions and mishaps, and the morning is over. Something similar happens in the second part of the day, with the addition of lunch and a long (and often tedious) team meeting. In the meantime, your personal WhatsApp is letting you know that your family and close friends want your attention.
That leaves no time for anything extra. Especially not keeping your peers from another side of the company or the world up to date with your work achievements. You know everything and everyone you need to know. The most important thing after doing your actual job is to keep influential people in your direct vicinity happy. You know that is not done through posting on a channel that “nobody reads anyway”.
Sometimes, though, you do wonder if you should start posting because the communications department starts actively sharing news on behalf of the CEO and the whole C-suite. But surely they aren’t going to read what a great worker you are, so why bother?
Another function of internal social media is sharing more substantial pieces of information. But when you need to share a file, you can send it as an attachment or upload it to an internal drive where you know at least your team will see it. Even if you try to support the all-company propaganda of SharePoint — you create your page, add files, send the link to your peers — the very next week the software has to have an upgrade or a new version or a migration, and all your good work is lost.
You could ask ‘What about the startups that work using social media only?’ The answer is in the question. They don’t have the budget for elaborate systems so the social media solutions such as Workplace become their only way to communicate and the only source of information among all the people involved. Besides, small businesses are not legally obliged to trace back the email exchange (as in the case of many big companies). That task would be virtually impossible with social media systems like Workplace or Mighty Networks, where due to the engine behind it’s hard to find the right thing at the right time, even if your company counts as little as twelve employees.
As we can see, there are two main reasons why internal social media remains a fad in traditional businesses with more than a hundred people. First of all, there are strong alternatives in place for all its functions. They have been around for decades, everyone knows how to use them and they are well integrated into the daily life of employees. Secondly, there are no incentives for the workers to invest extra time into something that doesn’t promise them a promotion or make their job easier.
This mindset and attitude reflect strongly on the use of customer-facing social media. The company world is locked on itself, it has its own values, its own politics, its own rules. The LinkedIn company pages of big corporations are the least visited. They are not interesting to people inside for the reason above and people outside know that they will only find well-branded stories that underwent the scrutiny of the communications department.
To be used and useful, internal social media has to be well integrated into everyday work life. Being outspoken on social media channels inside or outside of the company has to present true value to the people involved, for employees and for company leaders.
About the Author
Julia Skupchenko is a co-founder of Think Tank AlterContacts; former Strategic Advisor on Digital Innovation at a Fortune 500 company. Previous to that, Julia was responsible for communications, stakeholder engagement, and third-party advocacy at a FTSE 50 company.
