Successful workplaces thrive on effective collaboration and seamless communication. With the surge in remote work, organizations are in pursuit of a centralized communication platform that goes beyond traditional business tools. This quest ensures that employees can seamlessly connect and collaborate, irrespective of their geographical locations. This is precisely where enterprise social Network (ESN) tools step in as indispensable assets.
What is an Enterprise Social Network?
ESNs blend the advantages of public social media networks, offering features such as simultaneous updates sharing and real-time messaging. The differentiator is that ESNs furnish organizations with these benefits in a secure and confidential manner.
The History of Enterprise Social Networking
Research indicates that teams leveraging ESNs experience elevated knowledge sharing and collaboration across silos, outperforming teams without ESNs. In the realm of enterprise social media, the stakes can be high, along with the number of stakeholders involved.
Why is an Enterprise Social Network Important for a Business?
Social media has evolved into a critical marketing and communication tool for companies, irrespective of their size. However, managing enterprise social media diverges significantly from overseeing social media for a small business. In the enterprise landscape, a social strategy must not only drive results aligned with the organization's overarching goals but also navigate through an intricate network of people and policies. Balancing efficiency and compliance demands while achieving tangible business outcomes is a common challenge.
What Are the Benefits of using a Enterprise Social Media Software?
The fundamental question persists: Are ESNs the right fit for your organization? Let's embark on the exploration.
How to use an enterprise social network effectively
As emphasized earlier, a critical aspect of implementing an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) across your business is ensuring its seamless integration into your teams' workflow. Many ESNs come equipped with document sharing, task management tools, and chat functions. However, certain organizations may find that they can harness the advantages of an enterprise social network within an existing collaborative workplace, such as AgilityPortal, that already possesses project management capabilities.
At its essence, AgilityPortal serves as a workspace where organizations can generate, organize, and share team knowledge and project documentation. Beyond its foundational features, AgilityPortal facilitates two-way conversations and collaboration around content. Through its prominent feed, offering a glimpse of noteworthy content from across the company, teams can stay abreast of the latest announcements from their peers.
For instance, the global non-profit Oxfam leverages AgilityPortal as an enterprise social network, encouraging team members to share personal and professional achievements with the entire company. These shared stories, often in the form of internal blog posts, elicit comments of support or provoke follow-up questions, fostering a profound sense of connectedness and community among team members.
Before embarking on ESN implementation, it's imperative to address questions about the ownership and maintenance of the network within your organization. Some companies choose to centralize ownership and moderation within a specific team, like IT or HR. In contrast, others witness success by distributing ownership across the entire team. Oxfam, for instance, had IT set up AgilityPortal internally, establishing operational principles around usage, etiquette, and communication best practices that the entire company embraced.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of the chosen platform hinges on its adoption by your team. If the platform is cumbersome, achieving the desired uptake becomes challenging. The ideal platform should be user-friendly, enjoyable, and non-intrusive, aligning seamlessly with your team's communication needs, document sharing, task management, and collaborative efforts. Minimizing context-switching enhances your team's ability to concentrate on details, fostering productivity with minimal disruptions.