The introduction of social technologies to the world of business can revolutionise HR, customer service and product development activities by transforming the way that people communicate and collaborate, a study has found.
HR departments can enjoy a significant return on investment by both reducing the amount of time that employees need to spend travelling and cutting down on staff training requirements. Social tools can also lessen the time spent communicating with personnel, while at the same time improving the quality of the conversations held with them.
The study undertaken by IBM indicated that the ability of social media environments to hook people into networks in order to stimulate dialogue and innovation removed the boundaries to communication that have traditionally existed both inside and outside the average organisation. Such channels also provided businesses with real-time insight into customer trends and opinion.
Ofer Guetta, portfolio manager for IBM’s collaboration solutions, said: “The explosive growth of social media shows that people are increasingly wired to use technology to communicate and collaborate in this way. The successful business of the near future will be one that harnesses this trend to deliver improvements in products and services, as well as the customer and employee experience. At the same time, it can expect to realise substantial efficiencies in its business.”
Moreover, by simplifying and streamlining the processes of collaboration and listening to real-time feedback from customers and external experts, it was possible to make product and service design more efficient and relevant to market requirements, she added.
The role of HR
In news elsewhere, Sift Media’s analyst and research arm, K2 Advisory, announced that it was about to kick off a significant new survey in order to understand the role that HR plays in shaping the use of social networking tools in today’s workplace.
The world of work is changing at a very rapid pace and many of the drivers of this change are technology-based: a growing numbers of staff are used to employing Facebook, Twitter, smartphones and the like in their personal lives – tools that are typically way ahead of any used in the workplace. This is putting pressure on organisations to use social media to operate in a more collaborative way.
We know from our work with IT Directors and CIOs that these types of tools are employed most successfully in organisations where the HR department is fully involved in their roll-out and usage. So we want to know how involved you are with the adoption of this kind of technology in your organisation?
Click on the link to undertake the survey, which is nice and quick to do. And everyone who completes it will receive an overview of the findings.
