Social Media Behind the Firewall, part 1

Something new is bubbling up in the world of organizational communications. While most corporate communications managers weren’t noticing, a growing proportion of their internal audience has been bringing new habits of communication to the workplace.

            This younger contingent, the so-called “millennials,” mostly born in the 1980s, has never known a world without cell phones, computers and the Internet. From their early years through college graduation, their primary means of connecting with their friends has been through social media: texting, instant messaging (IM), Facebook, Twitter, and online role-playing games (RPG).

            Upon graduating college, many entered the business world. But their companies’ senior managers were communicating to them with blast emails and webcasts – i.e., those that were “modern” and “up-to-date.” Some still sent out paper memos and print newsletters.

            The internal company website, if there was one, just sat there inertly, with occasional news updates about the company. Maybe there was a blog, but without an interactive feature, a blog that hadn’t been updated for several months. How passé. How very boring. How inefficient.

Dipping Toes in the Water

Fortunately, some companies are addressing this shortcoming, dipping their toes in the water of social media internally. Yes, it’s a scary concept, particularly to legal departments and some IT folks.

            Last month, I attended a peer conference of employee communications managers where “social media behind the firewall” emerged as the hot topic of the morning’s discussion.

            Of the companies represented at the table, more than half had initiated internal social media to some degree. But none had yet gone whole hog. One company had opened a chat function on its internal network, but only for a fraction of its employees.

            In each case, the slow, deliberate pace of rolling it out was a means of proving its value and safety to skeptical legal and IT departments, as well as to work out the bugs and learn what does and doesn’t work. The employee communications managers were pleased with the experiment and eager to let it grow.

            So, what exactly is social media behind the firewall and why should communicators be interested?

            Social media has transformed the Internet into a place where people meet, learn, act, and react in real time. The kinds of activities that take place on conventional social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – are essentially people exchanging news, information and ideas electronically.

            But aren’t those the same kinds of activities that occur naturally within an organization over phone lines, in conference rooms, or spontaneously at water coolers? Yet there is widespread resistance to bringing that capability electronically into organizations, even if it does mean improved communications for multi-site organizations. The primary barrier, it seems, are IT and legal departments that fear hackers, or the spreading of confidential information.

Behind the Firewall

I’m no techie, but from what I’ve learned at social media conferences and read in various sources, embedding social media on a company’s own in-house server, behind the firewall, assures the security that companies need. Numerous vendors provide secure software, including IBM, which offers “Connections” – a suite of products to build internal social media.

            So, assuming we can clear that security hurdle, what kinds of social media should we use internally? The answer depends on a company’s culture, its size, the nature of its business, the number of employees, the number of locations, and the diversity of its internal audience.

            But wait: Let’s remember that social media is just another communications tool and should never be seen as a substitute for the real communicating that goes on between people: personal exchanges of information, ideas and insights.

            So your chosen social media tools should satisfy one core objective: to enhance and facilitate communications among and between employees, managers and leadership. That said, consider three possibilities…

            A LinkedIn style platform for multi-site companies would enable people to connect across departmental and national boundaries to discovery one another and their respective capabilities and talents. Individuals could readily find people of similar backgrounds and areas of specialty, and participate in relevant discussion boards where those in similar fields would discuss common challenges – just like the real world LinkedIn.

            A Twitter-like application might provide a venue where employees could post rapid-fire comments on everyday issues, as well as to provide links to helpful and relevant internal and external websites. Managers and leaders could use it for quick communication of important, timely messages. At the same time, it would be advantageous for employees to “follow” company leadership, as well as their operational or functional management, in addition to their fellow team members to stay atop important developments.

            An internal Facebook type app would allow cohorts to stay abreast of one another’s doings, particularly as it relates to working toward the company’s strategies and objectives. Again, leaders and managers could use the app to spotlight important news, both inside and outside the company.

            Meanwhile, leadership can eavesdrop and participate in the discussions at will, from wherever they are, whenever it’s convenient. Social media, then, can help leaders fulfill an important component of their jobs: staying abreast of what’s going on within their organizations – the “listening” part.

In part 2 of this two-part blog, I’ll explore areas for caution as well as some of the barriers that have to be overcome to assure that internal social media are effective and useful.