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Social computing on the rise
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Just as the Internet changed the marketplace forever, the integration of social computing into enterprise design represents another shift in the landscape, says IBM. The company notes that as the world becomes more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent and the population continues to embrace social computing, today’s companies face the dawn of a new era – the era of the Social Business. According to IBM’s 2010 Global CHRO Study, more than 700 chief human resource officers and executives from 61 countries, less than a 23% use social networking or collaborative technologies to preserve critical knowledge, while just over a quarter use those tools to spread innovation throughout their organisations. “Social networking and collaboration are still regarded by many companies as a “soft” skill. The study however suggests that these “softer” skills can have bottom-line consequences.
“By example financial outperformers are 57 percent more likely than underperformers to use collaborative and social networking tools to enable global teams to work more effectively together,” says Howard Stafford, Human Capital Management lead at IBM The study also revealed that most workers frequently employ collaboration tools to enhance the effectiveness of corporate communications and learning programs and to target and recruit external candidates. Over 21% of companies have recently increased the amount they invest in the collaboration tools and analytics despite the economic downturn – while 19% of respondents regularly use collaborative technologies to identify individuals with relevant knowledge and skills. Another 23% use technologies to preserve critical knowledge, and 27% use them to spread innovation more widely.
“We believe the most effective approach to enabling a Social Business is to help people discover expertise, develop social networks and capitalise on relationships” says Stafford. According to the study an effective Social Business evolves toward a culture characterised by sharing, transparency, innovation and improved decision making - and develops deeper relationships with customers and business partners. “Ideas and content that an organisation can leverage in the pursuit of value creation is a result of people (both inside and outside an organisation) – at the end of the day. Its people documenting and sharing knowledge and ideas, while other people recognising, refining and promoting the value of those ideas and content that is the real starting point of the social business,” Stafford concludes.
