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Social Networks Communications

Employees Staying Away From Internal Corporate Social Networks 131

Posted by timothy from the it's-so-uncrowded-nobody-goes-there. dept.
jfruh (300774) writes As social networks proliferated in the early '10s, so did the idea of a corporate social network — a Facebook-like community on an intranet where employees could interact. Unfortunately, corporate users are staying away in droves, perceiving the systems as one more in-box they'd have to take care of and getting their social-networking fix from Facebook and the like. From what I've seen of these internal networks, another good reason is that they're not as good as the full-time social networks are, and offer access only to a small universe of particpants anyhow. They're like a central-casting "rock band" in '80s movies — they come off as conspicuously aping the real thing.
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Employees Staying Away From Internal Corporate Social Networks More

Employees Staying Away From Internal Corporate Social Networks

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  • besides that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @10:57AM (#47376353) Journal

    ...the whole idea of social networks is to get *away* from work....

    • Re:besides that (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:19AM (#47376603)
      Internal networks are typically set up with some goal in mind, like to "promote new ideas and enhance creative discussion". The main problem is that their existence is driven by the goal, not by demand. Employees are not asking for these tools. Employees can actually meet and talk to each other, there is typically already an infrastructure set up to support that. Therefore, employees are not getting any benefit from them.

      • Re:besides that (Score:4, Interesting)

        by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:23AM (#47376635)

        The trick is could these be use by telecommuters to feel more like they are at work?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tomhath ( 637240 )
          No, that's what email, telephone calls, conferences, and chat is for. A social network at work is redundant.

          • Personally, I don't see "Facebook" as a "social network" because there is no "network". It is a Social Hub. But whatever.

          • I work for a very big, bureaucratic company. Communication tool needs are really different for different scales of companies.

            I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have a lab across the bay with a couple of coworkers that I generally go to once or twice a week. My current supervisor is in Atlanta; I've never met him in person. I worked for my previous supervisor for a year before I met him. I've worked for my director for about 5 years (he's in Indianapolis, and I've never met him in person.) We wor

      • I disagree. Employees are scattered across the globe so cannot meet and talk. Also, there are so many layers and locations that often its hard to find the right person to talk with.

        When done right, people with good ideas get recognized and those ideas promoted, questions get answered, and transparency is added.

        When done wrong (most the time), ideas are stolen, people waste time, and politics are played.

        • Waste of time (Score:5, Informative)

          by CaptainOfSpray ( 1229754 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:53AM (#47376989)
          ...(1) the only contributors are employees with time on their hands, who tend to be the drones. Those employees who actually know someting useful to you are too busy to waste time with crap like this
          (2) the only employees who will tell you anything at all are ones you have actually met face to face - otherwise you are not a real person, and they don't trust you, no matter what you say.

          Been there, done this with a multinational corp.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by khasim ( 1285 )

            ...(1) the only contributors are employees with time on their hands, who tend to be the drones.

            Maybe. They do need extra time to type something up that can be read the way they intended it.

            Those employees who actually know someting useful to you are too busy to waste time with crap like this

            I'd say it was because the people with the knowledge are busy applying that knowledge to the issues that have arisen that affect X people. Do they have time to type a reply to your question if your question isn't shared

            • <quote>c. Have already established a friendship with the person who can fix the problem. I brought cookies for you! Hope you like them. By the way, there's a small problem with the X. Could you look at it sometime?</quote>

              I agree with all of your points (for large companies). I think this is generally a result of siloing and reporting chains that are vertical when necessary job activites are often horizontal across reporting chains.

              I'd like to single out your point c. as a key example of why it

          • > (1) the only contributors are employees with time on their hands, who tend to be the drones

            In fact, I have to wonder if the purpose of a hypothetical corporate social network might be to identify the drones.

            ...for the same reason you see the same group of people at every social mixer during work hours...

          • Yup. They have one where I work. But since I focus on closing out tickets, not too much time is left for this. Unless they force me to use it. I used to be able to call or IM another team about an issue. They stopped responding and said "post this on our community." So instead of actually answering my question, the "solution" is to ask it in a different place? Alrighty then.....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khasim ( 1285 )

        Think about the things you do and say with your friends AFTER work.

        How many of those things would you want to personally document for your boss (and his boss and his boss ...)?

        So when those interesting things are absent from the "social" media part it becomes just another boring means for management to distribute work-related material. Just like all those boring "team meetings" that you are forced to attend. Where the exact same material will be covered AGAIN for anyone who did not read the internal site.

        • Good point, but don't equate "work social networks" with casual social type of interaction seen on Facebook. They are really to do work related stuff,explore ideas and share information. Employers can read your emails, so having a 'conversation' on a social tool should not be a problem as long as you don't include stuff you wouldn't include in a meeting or email.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by khasim ( 1285 )

            Employers can read your emails, so having a 'conversation' on a social tool should not be a problem as long as you don't include stuff you wouldn't include in a meeting or email.

            But that is the problem. There are already different avenues for that same professional interaction.

            If you want a permanent record of something you write it down and submit it to management.

            If you want a permanent record of the discussion of something you put it in email.

            If you do NOT want a permanent record then you meet in person.

            • There are plenty of collaborative technologies that can be quite useful to a team.

              Wikis are a great example. You can have everyone contribute to them in areas they have expertise (even if the contributions are small).

              Email gives communications with a backtrail - often necessary when someone in the situation is being an obstruction and you need to have a record of what you did, when you did it, what their response was (and I love the ones who always respond by calling or visiting to avoid email responses, bu

      • Re:besides that (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @12:02PM (#47377099)

        Plus criticism has to be heavily censored and moderated, comments may end up being career limiting, and since there is no anonymity, the dialog usually driven by the strongest personality in the company, who likely is also driving every other damned thing to the ground. It's better not to have any such forum, or if forced upon you, to ignore it as vigorously as possible.

        • Again, its all about purpose. A forum to introduce new ideas and openly discuss them should not require any unwarranted criticism to be useful. The personality dynamics may come in to play, but strong personalities already impact all aspects of company activities. You can actually set rules in a forum setting that minimize those impact.

          For those that see social forums as primarily a tool for criticism, the idea of a useful corporate too would clearly be unpalatable.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Bingo! None of our users want to touch the damned thing that management bitched so heavily that we needed. Now it is just one more kneejerk made VM sucking away our resources.

          One of the biggest avoidances is because they think they will be handing HR information in a gift wrapped box. And they are pretty much right.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Internal networks are typically set up with some goal in mind, like to "promote new ideas and enhance creative discussion". The main problem is that their existence is driven by the goal, not by demand. Employees are not asking for these tools. Employees can actually meet and talk to each other, there is typically already an infrastructure set up to support that. Therefore, employees are not getting any benefit from them.

        The other problem is they're often set up to be a means unto themselves. People have em

      • You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.

        Secon

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No. The idea of social networks is to spy on you. To collect as much information about you and use it in some way, often to make money. The whole "social" thing is only relevant as a marketing term. They might as well call them spying networks. Did you sleep the last 10 years?

      • No. The idea of social networks is to spy on you. To collect as much information about you and use it in some way, often to make money. The whole "social" thing is only relevant as a marketing term. They might as well call them spying networks. Did you sleep the last 10 years?

        Ok, given that, what would a work-based social network be? What's next, social.gov?

        • No. That was first.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Why are you being purposely dense? It's like Facebook but at a company. Management hears all the chit chat going on between the employees. Just like Facebook listens in on all private conversations.

          • Because sometimes it's important to have others make a point rather than monologue it yourself. I thought that was obvious.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pla ( 258480 )
          Ok, given that, what would a work-based social network be?

          Short answer: A delusion by either marketing ("We can use our coworkers as guinea-pigs for our future piss-off-Facebook spamming campaign!") or a member of the senior management team with no clue how the internet works ("I want my own Facebook, make it happen, peons!").

          I think the real problem with this discussion involves calling these things "social" networks. You can successfully have a Sharepoint or a Wiki or even a communal message board,

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly, who the hell wants to socialize with their co-workers??? I'm just here to collect a paycheck. Most of these idiots are the ones tat make my life miserable as it is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jawnn ( 445279 )

      ...the whole idea of social networks is to get *away* from work....

      I beg to differ. The whole idea of social networks is to con the sheep into providing personal details that can be sold to those willing to pay for it.

      • ...the whole idea of social networks is to get *away* from work....

        I beg to differ. The whole idea of social networks is to con the sheep into providing personal details that can be sold to those willing to pay for it.

        Which is even more of a reason not to participate in a work-related social network.

    • Perhaps but the whole point of an ESN is to keep work at work. I've seen Yammer used reasonably well with a couple of distributed technology groups for micro-blogging, and having chat channels (Skype, Lync, HipChat) is very useful. My current engagement is mostly from home, and our company ESN allows us to be productive without having to commute.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sam0ht ( 46606 )

        Agree, we use Yammer at work and it's fairly useful to have somewhere to share thoughts or problems with others, especially for something that isn't worth interrupting others for, but if you post it up then someone may have a useful comment on.

        It isn't really a 'social network' - the resemblence to Facebook is only skin-deep - but it does form a useful channel of communication.

        Then again, I like my colleagues and trust my boss - perhaps the cases where people don't want to engage are revealing a more fundam

    • It's not just that, but that we behave and socialize differently based on context. Cops being recorded conduct themselves differently, you talk to your best friend differently than you talk to a coworker on the job and to your boss. A workplace social network by default imposes the workplace context that causes people to limit their speech with any code of conduct necessary. Even if you try to divide it up by topic and level of formality, it is still recorded and under scrutiny. It's much better to get

    • And at work I want to get away from social idiocy as well.
      So when I get an email at work saying that someone "liked" my new documentation page I was a bit confused. Then the next day I got email saying someone is following my page. Then later an email listing some pages I might want to follow. Gah, it's utterly idiotic. It's documentation, not a popularity contest! (confluence, from the idiots who brought you a whole family of stupid web apps)

  • Monitoring (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SYSS Mouse ( 694626 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @10:59AM (#47376369) Homepage

    You think the boss will not monitor internal corporate social network. You can place a lock in your Facebook inbox, you cannot put one in internal corporate social network.

    • Re:Monitoring (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WhoBeDaPlaya ( 984958 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:10AM (#47376491) Homepage
      I assume anything at work is recorded/stored and can be retrieved on request. This is problematic if you have asshole coworkers and/or bosses. Better not to leave any trace. Anything I access at work is on a personal laptop tethered to my cell, or failing which, an SSH tunnel back home.
    • More likely is that the internal social network will be a place where employees bitch about work problems thinking that someone in power actually READS those messages and cares. It will turn into a suggestion box that nobody every opens.

  • The users come for access to the other users. That's the real draw, the social aspect. If you have an alternative with a smaller subset of the people you're trying to connect with, managed entirely by your employer with the non-zero risk of disclosure and discovery... it's kind of obvious why that doesn't appeal the same way.

  • Another layer of worry (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Not only the internal "social network" are not as robust as the one outside of the company structure, the internal one also comes with another layer of worry --- that is, all the participants are workers of the SAME companies and that the BOSS are watching and listening and reading and RECORDING every bit of info

    Not that the things they are doing in FB are not being recorded (NSA, anyone?) but at the very least workers do not want their boss to know too much about themselves

  • But more importantly (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:02AM (#47376401)

    there are no games!!! What's the point of a corporate social network if users can't grow virtual crops and live stock???

    • Maybe that's the secret to CSNs: ramification. Somehow trick the staffers into coming up and exploring new strategies via online corporate games. Like "see what happens when you fire the marketing department", or "the teamsters have gone on strike: now what?"

      That would be hilarious, and might even be useful.

    • At $DAYJOB, we've had a variety of work collaboration tools over the years similar to the then-current* social networking tools. The most useful ones are instant messaging and wikis (or wiki-equivalents), and internal Usenet groups back in the day. Apparently having little badges next to your name is something that some current social networks do, so ours has that also (I haven't used it; I suspect there's some sort of "VMware User - Achievement Unlocked!" sort of thing.)

      And we do have games, like "Guess

  • in a world of social justice warriors... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kick6 ( 1081615 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:04AM (#47376417) Homepage
    who get you fired for thinks you did OUTSIDE of work *cough* Brendan Eich *cough* the idea that I'm going to WILLINGLY put another bullet in these asshole's gun is preposterous. It should come as no surprise to employers who place inclusiveness and diversity as corporate goals above profit and shareholder value that no one wants to risk inadvertently being offensive on a social intranet.

  • Survey Says! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sir_Eptishous ( 873977 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:05AM (#47376435)

    Implemented properly, ESN can be beneficial, analysts say.

    Analysts say do they?
    Well, if I were an analyst whose livelihood depended on implementing and supporting ESN, I would say so to.

  • Unfriend (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ly4 ( 2353328 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:11AM (#47376495)
    If I 'unfriend' the guy in the next county, no big deal. If I unfriend the guy in the next cubicle, things get a bit more complicated.

  • Utility is the least of the problems. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:14AM (#47376535)

    Why would I want everyone in the entire corporation to know everything about me? It's just like when my company invited everyone to "like" them on FB a few years ago. Yeah, right, so they can keep tabs on everything I do outside of work. Outside of payroll, or my boss, all anyone needs to know about me at work is my name, my title, and perhaps a photograph.

  • I have very successfully managed implementations of several transformations where amount of work has been reduced by approx 90-95% by moving several processess to social networks, Yammer to be specific. There are many areas in the corporate world that would benefit greatly from broader adoption of work and communications within social networks. When I will be managing my own business enterprise, which I hope will happen soon, there will be no email for everyone. My prediction is that in the corporate world

  • "Why are we doing this?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:21AM (#47376615) Homepage

    Whenever you set off to do something like "setting up an internal corporate Intranet site", you should always be very clear about your answer to this question: "Why are we doing this?" As in, what problem are we solving? How do we actually imagine this being used?

    Lots of people will start something like this and think, "This application looks cool. It's like Facebook, but private and we can control it." And yeah, it may be fun to set up, but why are you doing it? What problem does it solve? Does it serve a purpose in disseminating information in a way that a normal website or email mailing list would be less effective? Does it aid in collaboration somehow? Once you have a clear answer, then you have to have a plan on how to get buy-in from employees. How are you going to get them to think it's a good way of accomplishing whatever it is that you hope it'll accomplish? Why should they bother with it at all? You need to convince them and then remind them to follow through.

    But none of that works if there's no purpose in the first place. Is the intention just to socialize? First, they can do that in Facebook. If they want a more professional setting, that's what LinkedIn is for. Beyond that, lots of those people are sitting in the same office building anyway, so they can meet face to face. Throw them a little cupcake party on the first Friday of every month. It'll be cheaper, and people will like it more.

    • Whenever you set off to do something like "setting up an internal corporate Intranet site", you should always be very clear about your answer to this question: "Why are we doing this?" As in, what problem are we solving? How do we actually imagine this being used?

      That sounds like it might make a good first post for your wall.

  • Google + is a mess (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:22AM (#47376621) Journal
    Our company moved to google+. I am still not able to figure out a way to keep my corporate profile visible only to the corporation. The circles user interface does not make it obvious which email id is being added to which circle. So many of my personal friends and acquaintances have added my corporate profile in their circles. I see my personal profile in the friend list of colleagues.

    Only reason no one is complaining seriously is because no one takes google + seriously.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As bad as google is, imagine if Apple designed a social network! Based on iTunes!

      • If you have anything plugged into your USB port, you cannot add new friends
      • After the slow process of adding 5 friends, you notice an option to "sync" your friends with your facebook account. Upon clicking it, all of your Facebook friends are unfriended except for the 5 friends you've added to your AppleTalk account (without a prompt, of course)
      • Turning off your browser without logging out of your AppleTalk account removes all

    • Whenever someone circles my corporate profile from the public G+, I send them a message explaining that I only use this for work, give them my public G+ profile (and generally circle them from it), and then block them from the corp profile.

      I actually don't find it difficult at all to avoid posting publicly from my corporate profile. It seems to me that the G+ UI makes that very clear.

  • Just make it simple (Score:4, Informative)

    by beermad ( 961336 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:22AM (#47376629)
    When I worked for British Telecom, we had nice simple internal Usenet newsgroups. Some specific to particular business-related areas (like programming), others hobby-based (cycling, swimming, etc.) and some just for general chit-chat. No need for any expensive social-networking websites or anything like that, just a simple Usenet server buried in a data centre. It used to be a great way to get to know colleagues all over Britain, as well as a terrific resource when you needed help getting something working.
    • I agree. I was a contractor at BT. The internal Usenet was the absolute world's best way to find how to keep your home broadband working when the router BT supplied was trying to sabotage your connection, bandwidth, wifi etc etc. Or when Openreach cocked up supplying your broadband connection in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rizole ( 666389 )
      A few years back the civil service had it's own internal twitter clone. It's goal was for Whitehall types to be able to network but in practice it ended up colonised by benefits call centre staff who were stuck at thier pcs and often had time to kill when call volumes lulled. It was some of the most fun I've had at work with memes, running gags, songs of the day, twisted lyrics, mornington crescent, a proper, successful internet community of professional people from accross the UK, largely like minded, legi

  • Knowledge base not social network (Score:5, Interesting)

    by duckgod ( 2664193 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:23AM (#47376641)
    A knowledge base is one of my company's most treasured resources. I can't stand the idea that two of my employees might share good info and the rest of my company would be locked out. I encourage all questions to be asked on the forum for anyone to answer. Then the info is easily searchable by everyone later on. I pay my employees for everything they produce in the office. Whether that be an end product or an aha moment.

    Now to sell this as a social network is marketing bullshit. I have no use for people sharing vacation photos or making political remarks. Keep that shit on Facebook.

  • CSN (Score:5, Insightful)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:33AM (#47376729)

    ...Or, otherwise called, Corporate Social Networks, are loathed by many employees because they're shoved down said employees' collective throat.
    It's not something attractive, but rather mandatory, and people don't like being given directions in this regard.
    Some CEO thinks it's a good idea or finds this as a new toy, and then he enforces its use, his directs roll the shit downhill and all of a sudden the cubicle dweller HAS to meet a weekly/monthly activity quota. It defies the very point of a social network.

    Of course, there are some hilarious effects that pop out:
    - A VP posts some corporate bullshit and everyone under him comes in droves and "like" that post because they wanna look good and enter said VP's graces.
    - Similarly, some douche posts some corporate BS and then begs colleagues for "likes".
    - Proper collaboration tools are ditched because CSN is today's buzz and then everything happens through the social network rather than stuff be sent through the most efficient channel.

    Not to mention that corporate social network software is badly designed, badly implemented, more often than not requiring a separate account to be created specifically for it, spamming inboxes with newsletters, assigned flags and daily digests, erroring out, eating drafts and posts, the UI is horrendous, the integration with other software is buggy as hell.

    For example, out corporate social network has an Outlook Plugin which we were told to install. More often than not, the plugin bugs out and disables paste functionality for the entire machine. It took me hours to narrow down the culprit after finding out I can't copy/paste anything anymore. So now whenever I can't paste stuff I close and re-open my Outlook, which happens too often.

    Just like Communism, it's a good idea. In theory. Only it ignores how humans work.

  • Look, 'social networks' consist of a compilation of several functions - email, blog, games, and simple push broadcasting for associations you join.

    Works already provides emails and usually has a tech group that sets up email groups for push broadcasting. push. Generally you don't need the blog, and work actively discourages the uses of games.

    Could we make a successful social network for work? Yes. All you have to do is:

    1. Make it your ONLY form of email - in particular make the subgroups the only way to make email groups.

    2. Use the blogging functionality extensively. Make it your wiki/source for information about how people do their job, what to do when they can't reach you, when you are on vacation, who to reach when you are unavailable, etc.

    3. Let people play games on it for upto one 50 minutes a day (i.e. lunch hour.)

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What the hell is an "Internal Corporate Social Network"?

  • The internal social network where I used to work became an echo chamber of self-congratulatory announcements by management followed by efflusive and fawning ass-kissing comments by the serfs. It got so sickening that I had Outlook send the email updates (which was the primary form of communication of this particular software) directly to trash. Nothing of any use to me ever came across it.

    • Nothing of any use to me ever came across it.

      But how will you hear about the new cover sheets for the TPS reports, now?

  • Enforced fun (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:47AM (#47376919)

    This just reminds me of the tedious work social events designed to promote social interaction.

    I guess they're tolerable if they're on work time -- I have to be around these people during work hours anyway, I guess interacting in a non-work mode on someone else's dime isn't a problem.

    But when the activity is off the clock and on my time, I'd really rather not.

  • though it neither seems seriously pushed, nor does it divert from other, more practical modes of communication. It is mainly just there, perhaps as a pleasant, occasional distraction. My company places too high a premium on actual, focused activity to push it.

    If I was tempted to experiment with a SN, it would likely be a somewhat contained one, like a CSN, because I don't believe in just "opening my (actual) self up to the world".

  • Wrong thing for wrong reason (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The thought is fairly simple: "Everyone" uses "social" so to facilitate communication inside the corporation... well, let's go "social"!

    Yet it's wrong. The root cause is somewhere else: Ineffective communication, as evidenced that a large part of internal communication consists of laments how the communication is so poor, and if only everyone would...

    Well, there's a simple fix: Start with yourself. Learn how to communicate. Learn what type of communication is appropriate, when. Yet we do none of these thing

  • The main problem with corporate social software today is that the business dynamics are different than public social apps. With Facebook or Google+, you are a user, not a customer, and advertising is the business model. With corporations, you buy, not build the software and typically it is bloatware, trying to meet the needs of a selection committee with vague goals. So, if you can find anything good, it will be expensive (SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc).

    Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) had a vibrant

  • Almost every social network offered by companies that I have seen were stupid, so oddly enough they failed. There would be "messages from the president" or tripe from HR reminding employees not to grope each other along with other passive aggressive crap about someone not following the rules that some asshole thought they could enforce about trash can etiquette. What these sites tend to have in common is either they are ego driven or they are very complicated.

    But at the same time I have seen some awesome
  • The truth is, "Management" has a job which is largely "be an employee" eg. Their job is to organize and think about and fine tune the company and team.
    non-management has a job which is "Make, sell, process, or manufacture widgets." eg. write code, process loans, sell tires, whatever.

    There is always an imbalance. Management naturally gravitates toward more and more of an employee's job entailing "being an employee" whereas non-management seem to universally prefer that as little as possible of their wo

  • The one they set up at my work [whitehouse.gov] had a 'what are you doing?' question, but it wasn't searchable... so if you wanted to try to find people who might be working or have expertise in a given field ... you got nothing.

    It likely doesn't matter anyway -- due to how tasks are broken down, it's not like everyone wanted to advertise their skills. I've got a lot of experience that I don't list on my CV, as then I get people asking me about how to fix things all the time. As I'm a contractor, that puts me into awkward

  • corporate users are staying away in droves, perceiving the systems as one more in-box they'd have to take care of

    I've been around many of these, implemented by various companies.

    The people who own it champion it, everybody else more or less gets told that all the useful stuff will be in there and you'll need to do it.

    So, you get the company cheerleaders (some appointed, some voluntary) who say how wonderful it is, and you get a few curious people who may or may not keep up with it, and you get a slew of pe

    • It is not just yet another inbox that the employees have to monitor...it is yet another inbox and outbox that the employer monitors. Monitoring water cooler talk is far more difficult.

  • It's just a vehicle for brown-nosers to suck up to their bosses. It's the online version of the office Christmas party. You can't express what you truly feel on these corporate websites for fear of offending someone. And trust me - you will offend someone. This is the world we now live in.

    And God help you if you get on the wrong side of the HR drones. HR is is full of girls that couldn't get a date for the prom and guys that got stuffed into gym lockers. They live for this shit. It doesn't matter if you are

  • Only for work stuff. Also, they are useful and I don't socialize a lot in person due to my impediments and disabilities. :(

  • At my last job there was a big push to promote the new internal social network solution to all employees. There were even competitions with prizes involved to induce people into completing their profile and subscribing to groups and posting regular updates.

    It didn't work very well (from a technical standpoint) which was probably one reason it wasn't widely adopted, but in my particular case I had no interest in it because it was a closed system. Once out of that company (as I find myself now), I have l

  • I work for a very large multinational company. A corporate social network makes sense for us. There is all sorts of expertise possessed by our employees that isn't normally utilized in their job. This gives us a chance to cross-pollinate, to allow our skills to be more broadly used within the company. Or so that was the intent.

    Instead, it's mostly degenerated into a bunch of questions by Bangalore computer programmers that would be more appropriately asked on Stack Overflow [stackoverflow.com], if the subjects they asked

  • is all you need

  • I see no value in the Facebooks of the world and a company internal social network is no different. There are several people that I work and communicate with on a regular basis either directly or through email and instant messaging. Aside from that I would have no idea what I would post on a social network. Bore everyone with what I am currently working on? Getting bored by the garbage everyone else is posting? Go all out about my hobbies that I already know nobody shares an interest in? And even if Mary or

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