New research has highlighted a sea change in the way management consider’s social media’s role in the business – however security remains a concern.
Clearswift, the software security company has today unveiled new research outlining the latest business adoption of social media in the UK. The report outlines a startling change in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies compared to three years ago.
In 2007, just 11% of businesses in the UK were making use of Web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce.com and Skype. Three years on, figures released today show 61% of UK companies now encouraging or allowing the use of web collaboration or social media tools in the workplace. This can be linked to an increased awareness of the benefits of these technologies in the workplace and an uptake in the adoption of cloud-based services.
More than half of business leaders believe that making use of web collaboration technologies is now ‘critical’ to the future success of their business. Meanwhile 62% of employees see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to access web or social networking content at work. Altogether 1,629 managers and employees were surveyed globally (in UK, USA, Germany and Australia.
There is further good news for employees – despite historical concerns regarding time wasting by employees on social networks in work hours, the majority (60%) of managers do trust employees to use such resources responsibly, however 25% of employees have sent content via email and social networks that they later regretted, perhaps suggesting a lack of corporate diligence when in ‘out of work’ mode at work.
However, despite the positive steps by businesses, social media adoption in the UK is still somewhat behind other countries. The USA and Germany have higher levels of adoption at 74% and 68% respectively.
The research also uncovered that employees are noticing a transformation in employers’ attitudes; almost a third (28%) of employees say there is an expectation that they will maintain a social media presence on sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter for work purposes. This is backed up by 33% of office workers being happy to use their own private social networks to the advantage of the business heralding a new give-and-take dimension to employment in 2010.
Now the barriers to adoption now appear to focus on security, with 63% of UK businesses citing this as their main concern over Web 2.0 technologies and 51% of managers feeling that employees are ‘oblivious’ to security concerns when using web and email technology.
Richard Turner, Chief Executive of Clearswift said: “Today’s research shows evidence of a change of attitude and confidence when it comes to Web 2.0 in the workplace – from the ‘stop and block’ mentality that many businesses adopted in the early 2000s to an appreciation that Web 2.0 is good for business and should be implemented more fully.
“There’s still progress to be made, however, and clearly security is an issue that many businesses are not yet comfortable with, but the picture today is a vast improvement on even just three years ago.”
