05/10/2010
Social Media in the Corporate Environment
The report
On October 5th, FITCE.be organized its third event of 2010 at the premises of Cisco Systems in Diegem, with the collaboration of the Belgian Broadband Platform. Around 45 people, with very diverse functions (from Human Resources to IT) and from very diverse companies (small to large) participated to this FITCE.be evening seminar.
With Social Networks and Social Media having experienced a huge growth over the past years -leading to Facebook even surpassing Google as the most visited web site in the US- companies need to be increasingly aware that their customers, partners and employees have online social network profiles and share their experiences over blogs, twitters and other social media. Goal of this FITCE.be evening seminar was to present the opportunities and threats of these new media for companies, looking at it from several angles.
In a first session, An De Jonghe from TrendQ gave an introductory overview of social media. Social Media are following a cyclic evolution, from the personal environment to the corporate environment. Social media are now at par with e-mail and cell phones, but companies need to be aware that there are many social media to consider and not all are necessarily relevant to them. The return of investment of using Twitter for a company, for example, still needs to be proven.
Social networks and social media are blurring the employees’ borders between the work environment and private life-sphere. This was the central theme of the second session of the seminar. Bert Vermeiren, Group Human Resources Director from Option, explained the growing importance of social networks – mainly LinkedIn – in recruiting. He also stressed the importance for HR to create a clear social network policy and to communicate it repeatedly. Geert Somers, partner of Time.lex law firm repeated the need for a clear policy, being part of the work regulation or other binding document between employer and employee, including rights and obligations around usage, content and behavior. This document will increase awareness and lead to better risk management, even in these times without specific regulation and laws around social networks. How to do this in day-to-day business was explained by Koen Claesen, Information Security Architect from Cisco’s IT department. Seeing a big uptake in usage of social networks, Cisco’s IT decided to embrace the evolution and to guide and control it through a Code of Business Conduct, as well as several awareness campaigns. Unleashing the power of social networks internally in the company is based on public tools with corporate-level capabilities in terms of security, data lifecycle, policy enforcement, etc.
The evening seminar ended with an open panel discussion on the benefits of social media. Ivo Swinnen from Belgian Broadband Platform explained how social media will be crucial in the Interaction Economy, and will lead to more workforce engagement, a better leverage of intellectual capital, collaboration and productivity improvement. Eveline Verschraegen, Social Media/Enterprise 2.0 Strategist Alcatel, confirmed this evolution and explained how you need to actively drive this workforce engagement. It requires focus, leadership and best practices and won’t come automatically. This change towards a culture of internal open communication was also stressed by Stijn Vander Plaetse, Vice President Innovation at Belgacom. He also indicated how a platform as Facebook can be used to increase the full experience around TV programs and promotions. Johan Taccoen, Managing Director Tidi Solutions and President Business Netwerk Café, made people aware that customers will also use it to communicate and raise their voice, so as a company you need to join the conversation.
An evening seminar with rich content and a high level of interaction through open discussion, followed by a reception to support the face-to-face networking. All attendees received a copy of the latest book of An De Jonghe “Sociale Media voor HR professionals”.
Available Presentations:
An De Jonghe - Introductory Overview of Social Media
Bert Vermeiren – The Usage of Social Media
Geert Somers – Legal Aspects around Social Media in the Corporate Environment
Koen Claesen – Enterprise Security for Social Media
Yvo Swinnen – Communication Enabled Business Processes
Pictures of the event can be found here.
Event Partners
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