Embrace social networks or haemorrhage talent?
Jinfo Blog

2nd October 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Time may be running out for bosses who set their face against employees using social networking and other self selected technology in their work, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Nearly half of the European executives that EIU surveyed claimed that management was supportive of employees’ freer use of technology – but the fact is that that few companies actually provide training to staff in the workplace use of personal communications devices or social networking applications. Power to the people? Managing Technology Democracy in the Workplace (summary and download details at http://digbig.com/5bajpp – registration required) suggests that corporate and IT management will come under increasing pressure as a younger cohort of employees, reared on social networking and the like, permeates organisations. This brings risks, EIU acknowledges, but they can be managed; ‘the best business innovations tend to originate at the grassroots level, and employees should be encouraged to use their technology know-how to generate them,’ comments EIU’s Denis McCauley. Far bigger than the risk of ceding control is the risk of haemorrhaging talent – as two recent reports emphasise. The first, another EIU study called Talent Strategies for Innovation (http://digbig.com/5bajpq), points out that organisations are increasingly requiring employees to be able to collaborate, not just in internal teams, but across functions, across national boundaries and with external organisations, even competitors. But a much more dire warning comes from the second report, Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Keeping Your Team Intact (free to download from http://digbig.com/5bajpr – registration required). Published by Forbes Insights and based on a longitudinal study by the consultancy Deloitte, it warns of the awful consequences threatening unprepared companies as key employees who held on to their jobs in tough times seek out better opportunities when economic fears recede. Revealing a number of ‘critical disparities’ between what employees report they want and what the surveyed executives think they want, Deloitte’s findings suggest that the risk is greatest among Generation X and Y employees. Aged below 30 and between 30 and 44 respectively, they’re the ones most likely to have been brought up on social networking and empowered by mobile communications – and the ones most likely to demand technology democracy. LiveWire has previously reported internet usability guru Jakob Nielsen as saying that users are more likely than executives to see the value of these tools (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22830), and the consultant Gartner has also said that businesses are going to have to cede some control – although as yet many knowledge workers themselves seem far from keen on working collaboratively (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e16446). This new crop of reports offers further high velocity ammunition to information managers who are still struggling to convince bosses that ignoring technology democracy is not an option.

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