But will it really change anything?
Acronym isn’t the only blog discussing social media; recently, two Harvard Business blogs tackled the subject. Tom Davenport argues that Facebook and MySpace won’t change the workplace, while Charlene Li says that your company needs to be on Facebook.
Both are worth a read, but I was particularly interested in Davenport’s post, since (based on the title) I thought I’d probably disagree with some or all of his argument (and we all know how Scott feels about that!). Davenport’s title is actually a little misleading, since he spends the first four-fifths of the post acknowledging the ways Web 2.0 is changing things—“these technologies are revolutionizing innovation-based industries” and “power has definitely moved to the consumer,” to use his words.
But, he says, this doesn’t mean anything will change within the workplace:
“But are there analogous trends within companies? I don’t see them. Since employers pay employees, that gives them a certain power to start with. And while employees may trust other employees more than their senior management bosses, they are usually reluctant to say so publicly. Employees don’t even fully control the content in their own emails (with widespread email surveillance and those embarrassing brand signatures many employees are forced to use), much less the overall messages that their companies send out into the world. In general, I wouldn’t say the power held by employees has increased much in recent times, and with the decline of unions, the rise of the imperial CEO, etc., it would be easier to argue the opposite position.”
Here’s where he and I disagree. He’s absolutely right that there are companies where employees are relatively powerless. But over time, even if those particular CEOs or management teams refuse to allow for change, the employees themselves will come to expect it. People aren’t going to spend their time outside of the office enjoying their status as newly empowered consumers and then come into the office and forget all about that empowerment. When someone is used to engagement and interactivity in one part of their life, they’ll expect it elsewhere. So if those imperial CEOs refuse to change, they’ll find that they are emperors with no subjects, as their employees refuse to stay.
What do you think? Will Web 2.0 change the workplace? Has it changed your association?
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Comments
Lisa- I agree 100% with your comment that "When someone is used to engagement and interactivity in one part of their life, they’ll expect it elsewhere".
It's not the technology that will drive this into the workplace, it is the expectations. The challenge is, 50-plus million people are using Facebook which means over 6 billion people are not.
For a lot of today's executives, they expect online "social networking" to be about as productive as someone playing solitaire at their cubicle.
Company intranets are a good first step in demonstrating an actual ROI inside the workplace. Many of our corporate clients start with the "intranet" concept for using our Group Engagement Network and then migrate to project based workgroups and evolve from there.
Posted by: Shaun Callahan | November 29, 2007 9:08 AM
Shaun, you're absolutely right that a lot of organizations don't think social networking is a particularly productive use of employees' time. (Although I hope associations actually will be somewhat ahead of that curve, since a good part of our value proposition is based on the value of networking ... I'd hope association employers would want their employees to take advantage of networking, too.)
Shel Holtz has actually be discussing this issue on his blog periodically--he's emphatically pro-employees spending time taking advantage of social networking during the workday. And he recently posted an interesting case study about a company that does take advantage of social media internally that might interest you: here's a link.
I could swear I also recently heard about a company giving all employees an hour a week for social media activities, but I can't remember where I saw the story ...
Posted by: Lisa Junker | December 3, 2007 8:57 AM