A while back, Sarah Perez wrote about the socialization of the enterprise, dubbing it the ‘socialprise.’ Phil Wainwright agreed, explaining that,
“Enterprises are no longer the passport to lifetime employment they were in my father’s time. Corporate loyalty from and to employees is evanescent, easily dissolved when a business downturn or a better offer comes along. Loyalty between individuals is much more important today. I often meet people who have worked for the same boss but at several different enterprises. Teams that build successful working relationships stick together and recruit each other to new employers as they hop from one opportunity to another.”
Still, for most people the idea of ‘work being social’ seems oxymoronic, especially in terms of social technologies.
So, what facts do we have proving that work really is increasingly social?
· Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report [March 2008] is focused nearly 100% on social applications and how they are “taking over the Internet”
· Gartner’s Report on the Future Worker 2015 and the budding ‘relationship economy’
· The increasingly need for agile communications
· Success of internal prediction markets, and sociality at fostering innovation and economic growth
· Surveys. For example, while 48% of MBA’s are most interested in compensation, 46% cite work-life-balance
· A rise in distributed work environments meaning collaboration and communication are more vital than ever
· Legislation and best-practices favoring social responsibility, social innovation and non-hierarchical organizations
If those links didn’t convince you, here are more trends and reasons for increased enterprise socialization — especially as related to technology strategies:
· Increased cross-over of consumer Internet applications used at work
· Gen-Y is eager to use newer, social forms of communications in the workplace
· As work increasingly demands more time, the need for social, human interactions become necessary within the work context
· Research increasingly points to the benefits of collective and collaborative knowledge sharing: social intelligence, prediction markets and cognitive knowledge are just a few examples
· Global talent wars and ability to find and leverage the long tail of workers (cheaper labor, specialists, etc) results in more businesses interacting with third-party providers rather than looking internally for solutions
· Business is increasingly be done in collaboratively, in project groups with team members who are not necessarily face to face or even from the same company
· The companies consistently named ‘most innovative’ encourage social interaction among employees
· Internal corporate social responsibility (ICSR) and the flattening of the office encourage participation and conversation to foster a more productive and healthy work environment
If you have more to add, please do so in the comments and we will update this post accordingly!