grantbrewer.com

strategy & life zen

About grantbrewer.com

Legal

The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young.

Find me

Archives

Social networking should be useful in business

Posted by Grant Brewer

These days I frequently read about organisations banning the use of social networking tools like MySpace, LinkedIn or FaceBook. The issues of rising bandwidth usage and the associated costs, and the potential waste of time if employees are spending too much time on these sites that support such a decision. However, perhaps organisations should take a step back from their immediate reaction and explore a strategy that might embrace social networking in the enterprise.

Banning the use of external social networking sites may be short sighted and unnecessarily clumsy. The key is to find common ground -- perhaps limit the time that these social sites are available, say in until nine in the morning and after four in the afternoon. Or over lunchtime. Taking the high ground and embracing the the way modern employees work by implementing social networking as a form of knowledge and people management within your organisation can lead to happier, possibly more productive employees and more importantly better informed employees.

Categories

Essays | Technology | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym

Tags

social networking (1) | enterprise 2.0 (1) | linkedin (1) | collaboration (1) | information management (1) | facebook (1)