New research report on the use of social at work

Every day we are flooded with statistics about social media use, companies defining policies, companies blocking access and even companies forcing employees to delete their LinkedIn account.  Well today is no different. Manpower, a world leader in the employment services, released a report that surveyed over 7,700 business in the Asia-Pacific region. Their findings are pretty interesting.

“75% of companies did not have policies for employee use of social media in place and are opting to “wait and see”.”
Come on folks it’s time to get in the game. Social media is here to stay and if you haven’t started thinking through the strategies of how it can impact your business you are going to be left behind. Earlier this week one of the world’s most successful, AND most conservative, companies sent representative to Socialware and over 50 different companies to better understand strategies around social networking and to bring back ideas to the CEO and the rest of senior management on how to adopt these tools for their company. If they can do it, you definitely can.

“19% of Asia-Pacific employers claimed social networking was a good method for promoting collaboration and communication”
Now we are talking. Collaboration and communication is just one way companies can benefit from the use of social networking sites. You could dedicate an entire blog to this topic. In fact, there are over 42 million results on Google around the topic.

“31% of Australian employers cite social networking as helpful in building their brand.”
Quick, you need to reach 400 million people, what do you do? Superbowl ad maybe? Only if you can afford those cute talking babies from E-Trade. If not you better start looking at social media. Facebook grew by 50 million users in the last 5 months to reach a grand total of 400 million. Throw in Twitter and LinkedIn and that’s another 100 million at least. The point is there is no better way to start a conversation with the people that will care about your brand than on these sites. Find the way that works for you and then go say hello.

“Do not block them. If you’re blocking them, then your younger employees, especially those of Gen Y age, are going to either disengage and fold their arms or just get out their iPhones and BlackBerries and access them on there.”
We’ve all been here before. What happens when you forbid somebody to do something? They want to do it even more. Now with that said I’m not suggesting you open the floodgates. There are very good business reasons why you might not want employees viewing Facebook videos or photos at work. All of that activity can clog the network and rob core business applications from the bandwidth they need. So here is an alternative. Define your social media policy, turn on access, lock down parts of these sites that are off limits and then explain to your employees why. Now you’ve given them access to parts of the site that are the most valuable to your business and you’re protecting the company at the same time.

“Ultimately, businesses have an opportunity to use social media in a way that helps employees feel truly connected to the business.”
This is a good way to sum it up. Social media is here to stay. It is having a measurable impact on businesses. You can manage it on your terms. And it will increase, not decrease productivity (I have a blog post coming on that topic next).

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